The Soul of the Han Dynasty in the Late Ming Dynasty

Chapter 25 Education
Jiulitai Village, where more than half of the people have been evacuated, is much quieter, except for the sound of "ding dong, ding dong" from the iron stove at the east end of Zhuangzi.

Blacksmith Yang Laoshi is a craftsman. He is 40 years old this year. His wife, Yang Huang, has three sons and two daughters. The two adult sons, Kong Wuyouli, are already his good helpers.

The Yang family is well-known for its ancestral blacksmith craftsmanship. His family is often conscripted by the government to perform hard labor, as has been the case for generations.

Of course, the place where they serve the most is the army. Repairing armor, making weapons, and even making matchlock guns are inseparable from blacksmiths.

The most disgusting practice of the Ming Dynasty, which is also a national policy that seeks death, is to squeeze artisans without restraint. The artisans are the cradle of industrial workers. Besides, the artisans of the Ming Dynasty are still handed down from generation to generation.

In the eyes of most officials and lords of Ming Dynasty, there is no country, no common people, let alone hard-working craftsmen.

Withholding and squeezing plus corruption, many products that were originally world-leading in technology were wiped out by Daming's defective products, and in the end hot weapons were no match for cold weapons.

Today, Yang Laoshi's work is different from the past, because he feels that he is looked down upon by young people, and he is unhappy. He wants to repair the nine sets of fine iron armor in his hand as if they were new armor, and wants to show the eldest son of the Huang family his ancestral craftsmanship. how?

Of course, many of the armors captured by Huang Han were broken, and they must be repaired before being used to equip the servants. The only family of blacksmiths in the village was the only choice.

After Yang Laoshi looked at the iron armor that Huang Han brought with him from several servants, he estimated the working hours and the iron materials needed to consume, and quoted the price of 12 taels of silver to Huang Han.

He told Huang Han that he often forged armors in Ji Town, and he also made quite a few blunderbusses, so it was easy to do these repairs.

Unexpectedly, Huang Han joked with a smile: "It turns out that those bird guns that would explode at any time and most frontier veterans dare not use are made by you! You have to work hard to help us repair the iron armor. These are the brothers in our village who have to equip them to save their lives, lives are at stake!"

Yang honestly said that he often made firearms for Jizhen to show off his skills. Unexpectedly, Daming's bird-making guns were cast aside in the army, and only stupid recruits dared to load and shoot according to the ration.

He blushed with embarrassment all of a sudden, and stammered: "It's no wonder we were blasted. The Shangguan should give twenty catties to Sugang. In the end, ten catties may not be enough. We also have to eat. In the end, it was really exhausted." It won't exceed eight catties, so it's strange that such a thing doesn't blow up."

How can the disadvantages of Ming Dynasty be explained clearly in a few words? Huang Han decided not to quarrel with honest people, saying:
"Let's not talk about this today. I will give you 15 taels of silver. Can you repair these armors with real materials?"

Yang Laoshi was surprised and said: "My 12 taels quotation is to use real materials. I know the weight. How can I cut corners and cut materials to make armor for my family?"

"It's okay, I'll give you 15 taels, I hope your craftsmanship can be passed down for eighteen generations, hahaha..."

Huang Han laughed and walked out of Yang Laoshi's blacksmith's shop. Yang Laoshi followed behind and corrected him: "From the time when Meng Yuan was beaten, my family's blacksmithing skills have been passed down for 21 generations."

In the blink of an eye, it was already the tenth day of the twelfth lunar month, and the north wind howled on a cold winter night. The largest room in Huangyizhou's family in Jiulitai Village was full of nearly 100 men, women, young and middle-aged people.

This is a temporary large classroom, and a few thick candles are lit every night for illumination.All the servants spend one hour a day studying culture here.

Because Huang Han not only taught everyone literacy and arithmetic, but also told many vivid stories, young people in the whole Zhuangzi who had not yet gone up the mountain to hide in the shelter came to attend the class.

Both a sheep and a flock of sheep are driven. Huang Han not only does not reject young people who come to take classes, but also encourages them to learn how to read carefully. If they can write [-]% correctly when it comes to dictation, everyone will get a lottery of [-] cents.

Huang Han did not start his enlightenment from the Three Character Classic like Mr. Private School. He is a pragmatist. In the first class, he selected a line from the prodigy's poem "There is no such thing as a general, and a man should strive for self-improvement".

The next step is to carry out nationalist education, telling the story of Yue Wumu beating the Jurchen, and the literacy class starts with Yue Fei's poem "The river is red, and the crown is full of anger".

Huang Han's small class has grown from less than 20 people at the beginning to nearly a hundred people. The young people in Jiulitai are already looking forward to this precious study time every night.

Gradually, the eyes of young people who have been enlightened are no longer empty. They know their own nation, their motherland, and the sages and national heroes of the Han nationality.

Of course, there is another kind of subtle influence that is quietly injected into the hearts of these young people, that is, the recognition of Huang Han. As time goes by, this kind of thinking will become a habit, and they will become more dependent on Huang Han.

The trust exuded from the bottom of his heart is a great strength, and Huang Han will not let these folks down, "There is no kind to a man, and a man should be self-improvement." It is not a slogan but can be seen and touched.

Well-trained, you may be a strong beam in the future!As long as these starting families can survive, there is a high probability that they will become generals, and it is unknown whether they will be crowned as dukes or marquises in the end.

Huang Yizhou never imagined that his son, whom he hadn't seen for three or four years, could be so knowledgeable. Even he likes to come to class to listen to his son tell stories and allusions.

He asked his son many times who was a erudite Confucian scholar in the army, and was he a civil servant who was born as a scholar in the second list?

No way, Huang Han could only make up stories. He told his father that he often read history books with a few scholars who worked as aides in the General Military Mansion, so he had a little knowledge of culture.

Those who can get middle school students are of course scholars, and they are also respected in the four towns and eight regions. There are not many such people, at least not one in Jiulitai Village in 100 years.

Huang Yizhou immediately felt honored that his son was able to get guidance from a few masters of talent.

He no longer doubted his son's intellectual progress, after all, there is Yan Ruyu in the book, a scholar can know the world's affairs without going out, etc. The words of mythical scholars have been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.

There are too many uncertainties at this time. Even though Huang Han remembered the manufacturing methods of many things in his heart, he did not dare to make them with golden fingers. If these new technologies and new products were captured by the Hou Jin army, wouldn’t it be possible for the enemy to climb the technology tree? ?
Huang Han just bought some spirits and distilled them by local methods. After repeated several times, although the alcohol obtained is not as pure as later generations, the disinfection effect used to wash wounds must be a leap forward in this era.

Distilled liquor was called shochu in the Ming Dynasty, and it appeared widely among the people in the late Yuan and early Ming Dynasties, but the alcohol content is not very high, and it may be that the number of distillations is not much.

Huang Han knows that alcohol will volatilize at room temperature, and the boiling point temperature is less than [-] degrees. When distilling the bought shochu, control the heat, as long as it is lower than [-] degrees, to avoid a large amount of water vapor from boiling water, and the alcohol content is higher than [-] degrees. Eighty earth alcohol is not very difficult.

People-oriented, every servant is the seed of the general, we must take care of them as much as possible to avoid war damage, whether the treatment on the battlefield is timely and effective, and whether we can snatch the dying robe back from the king of hell are very important.

The mortality rate of the wounded in this era is extremely high, and the biggest threat is death from bacterial infection.

In the era without penicillin, wound disinfection was the only way to control infection.In the later stage, the wounded and sick are managed scientifically to reduce the source of secondary infection. With the tolerance of people in this era, the possibility of survival is extremely high.

(End of this chapter)