A Man of Science and Engineering in Troubled Times Wandering in the Late Qing Dynasty

Chapter 226
When Li Yu returned to his residence in Dongchang Hutong, Feng Ling immediately said to him, "Sir, the heroine came this morning."

"Heroine?" Li Yu asked.

"It's that Bicheng heroine," Feng Ling said, "I've also seen a lot, but such a heroic and beautiful girl is really rare."

Zhao Qian rushed out and said, "Sir, Fengling even lent her your horse, I can't persuade you no matter what! How can you lend such a precious Sanhe horse to a strange woman casually!"

Feng Ling wanted to drive him away: "What do you know? Your head is like an elm lump!"

Li Yu looked at the stables, and the famous horse was gone.

Li Yu asked: "What does Miss Bicheng borrow the horse for?"

Zhao Qian rushed to say: "That little lady actually said that sir, you don't know how to ride a horse, so let it go to waste here. It is too troublesome for her to run back and forth, and she said that she will ride back in the afternoon."

Feng Ling slapped her and slapped her: "You called me, little lady?! Get the hell out of here and wash the car!"

Zhao Qian stuck out his tongue, very unconvinced: "Slandering Mr. is just not okay! In my opinion, Mr. Riding is at least at the level of a general! Why do you say Mr. can't ride a horse?"

Li Yu coughed lightly: "Is this horsemanship, I still need to practice it again..."

Feng Ling leaned over and said, "Nv Xia is good at riding horses, let her teach you."

How can Li Yu get rid of this old face? He also knew how to drive in his previous life. Now riding a horse can be compared to driving a car. At that time, female drivers were always teased.

Now let a female driver teach him instead?
It's really embarrassing!

Li Yu said embarrassingly, "We'll talk about this later."

In the afternoon, Lu Bicheng really rode that Sanhe horse over.

"I finally met you. I heard from Teacher Yan that you made Mr. Gu very angry!" Lu Bicheng said, "You can't just get your graduation certificate and deal with him. If things go wrong, I'm afraid your certificate will be destroyed." was taken back."

"So it's for this matter," Li Yu said with a smile, "He's not the principal, that's not how he is."

Lu Bicheng was very worried: "As the No.1 graduate of the university, you must know how to respect your teacher. Even if you disagree with Mr. Gu, you shouldn't be so angry with him. If he really sues you to the court , it’s not like you can get by just laughing and joking.”

Li Yu saw that Lu Bicheng was just very worried, so he said, "I don't think Mr. Gu will be so narrow-minded. He is a well-educated person, so how could he get angry over a trivial matter?"

Lu Bicheng sighed: "I really don't know why you are so optimistic every time."

Naturally, she didn't know that Li Yu was a time traveler, and she only had this mentality after seeing through the times.

After Li Yu returned to Beijing, he really wanted to visit the university hall, but the campus was too small, and he was really afraid that he would run into Gu Hongming, and there would be another verbal confrontation.

Li Yu said, "Come in and have a seat. I bought a newspaper from Shanghai. According to the Times, the last two Star Wars movies are quite popular right now."

The newspaper is in English, but Lu Bicheng can understand it too.

Now Collins Publishing is about to make money, and the sales volume is amazing. No one would have thought that a science fiction novel written by a Chinese scientist would be so popular in Europe and the United States.

Lu Bicheng asked: "Did the foreign readers say something? What's wrong with the choice of words?"

Li Yu said: "Novels are still science fiction. Don't worry too much about them. As long as you have enough imagination, you can read them smoothly. Besides, English literature is actually much less difficult than ours."

"That's fine, I'm afraid readers will complain," Lu Bicheng said, "I've always wondered why your National Academy of Sciences is so poor. Didn't you go to a private school when you were young?"

Li Yu had no choice but to say: "People's energy is always limited, and I study completely according to the model of Western studies, so the content of Chinese studies is less."

Lu Bicheng still couldn't believe it: "Even so, you have memorized ancient books and classics, but you failed in Confucian classics."

Li Yu often buys newspapers now. After all, there is no Internet, so he can only rely on this. In front of him, "Ta Kung Pao" also has a few poems by Lu Bicheng, such as "Jiangcheng Plum Blossoms" and "Ding Fengbo".

Li Yu pointed to them and said, "Although I don't know how to write poems, I learned how to write poems written by foreigners when I studied Western learning."

Lu Bicheng wondered, "Poems written by foreigners?"

"If it is translated, it will be like vernacular poetry." Li Yu actually wanted to talk about modern poetry, but it seemed a bit out of date.

Lu Bicheng asked: "What genre is this?"

Li Yu wrote a short poem on the paper:
"I walked through the south of the Yangtze River

The face waiting in the seasons is like the blooming and falling of a lotus

……

My Dada's horseshoe is a beautiful mistake
I'm not a native, I'm a passer-by"

That is Cheng Chouyu's "Error".

In fact, Li Yu thought about this poem when he first time traveled. A time traveler seems really like a passerby.

Lu Bicheng tasted it for a while and said: "Although it is very straightforward, the artistic conception is very long."

Li Yu said: "Our culture is too long, it is difficult to explain to foreigners. But in art, I think the most difficult to explain is the best to explain to foreigners, which is what we advocate when we create art. Artistic conception. Just like Chinese landscape paintings and foreigners’ oil paintings, although there is a big difference, it cannot be said that we are inferior in art. It’s just that the art of words involves too much background, and it’s really hard for foreigners to understand.”

Lu Bicheng nodded: "I think it's very reasonable for you to say that. Although your level of Chinese studies is poor, your insights are so high, it's really unpredictable."

Li Yu almost fell apart, pointing out that he was poor in Chinese education so straightforwardly...

"Actually, vernacular poetry is also very good." Li Yu said.

"As far as the song in front of me is concerned, it is indeed quite good," Lu Bicheng said, "Do you want to publish it in "Ta Kung Pao"?"

Li Yu quickly shook his head: "Forget it, how many people can accept this form? If it is really sent out, I am afraid that Mr. Gu will use this to criticize me severely."

Lu Bicheng chuckled: "Didn't you say that you are a turtle biting a bastard?"

Li Yu said: "That's why we should avoid it as much as possible, and don't add extra details. If you think it's good, this poem will be given to you."

Lu Bicheng froze for a moment and said, "Give it to me?"

Li Yu said carelessly, "Yes, don't you like it?"

"I..." Lu Bicheng paused again before saying, "Okay, then I'll accept it."

While the two were talking, someone came to visit.

"Brother Shucai, did you bother you?" It was Yan Fansun who came.

Li Yu greeted him and said, "Mr. Yan is here to make the humble house luxuriant."

Yan Fansun also knew Lu Bicheng, and when he saw her, he said, "It turns out that she is a famous talented woman from Beijing and Tianjin, and she really looks like a talented woman."

Lu Bicheng blushed: "Mr. Yan, I am also here as a guest."

Yan Fansun quickly said: "I'm sorry, I'm sorry! But what I said is also true. She is indeed a giant in science and a talented woman in the literary world."

Li Yu said, "Mr. Yan, please come in quickly."

After Yan Fansun sat down, Li Yu asked Uncle Wang to add more tea for him, and then said: "Mr. Yan, I'm sorry, I don't have any good tea, only ordinary green tea."

Yan Fansun said: "It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, if I want to drink tea, I won't come here. I'm here about the Enke event that the imperial court will hold soon."

Li Yu asked, "Enke? Imperial examination?"

"Exactly," Yan Fansun said, "the imperial court has decreed that a special economic department will be held in the near future. The reference personnel are not limited, and they can also be people who already have fame, but they need to be recommended by courtiers to participate."

Li Yu asked: "Economy Special Branch? What is this?"

Yan Fansun said: "Six years ago, when I was studying politics in Guizhou, I hoped that the imperial court could reform the imperial examination system, so I proposed to set up a special economic department in addition to the traditional imperial examination, so as to recruit students who understand diplomacy, style, law, A man of manufacturing and arithmetic. The imperial court did adopt it, but it was delayed until this year to start the course.”

"So, it's still an imperial examination, so I'm afraid it's useless for selection?" Li Yu said.

As early as several decades ago, Wei Yuan had already pointed out that the selection of talents by the imperial examination method was extremely useless, and even said that "the selection of talents from all over the world is for a useless purpose, and there is nothing in the previous generation", criticizing the disadvantages of stereotyped selection of scholars.

After the Opium War, even Feng Guifen, who had previously won the Tanhua Award, believed that the imperial examination system was established by the rulers "to destroy the talents of the world, not to cultivate the talents of the world".

Western missionaries knew that imperial examinations were useless. Martin, Timothy Lee and others had suggested to the Qing court several times to adopt a Western education model, but the Qing court did not adopt it.

It was only in 1888 that a provincial examination of mathematics was held, but only one Juren was admitted.

This is not only the No.1 Western learning examiner in modern China, but also the only practical result of the imperial examination reform during the entire Westernization Movement.

This person Li Yu had met before was Hu Weide, the ambassador to Russia.

However, after only one session, the mathematics subject quickly declined.Since then, in the previous township examinations, the Shuntian Township Examination was used because there were too few candidates for the subject of mathematics, and the subject of mathematics existed in name only.

Therefore, Western learning, or the modern education system and the imperial examination can be said to be completely incompatible.

Yan Fansun's original proposal of the special economic section is a compromise strategy.

Enke was set up once in Kangxi and Qianlong, and it was a erudite CI department at that time.

The imperial court also adopted Yan Fansun's suggestion, but the imperial court's idea was that the examination would only be held once every ten or twenty years. After all, it was called Enke, not a permanent one every three years like the imperial examination.

It took ten years to think about recruiting a few people who understand Western learning, and it is completely clear that the thinking of the Qing court still did not jump out of the shackles of the imperial examinations, and they did not understand at all!I thought it would be enough to deal with the current era as long as I recruited some people who understand Western learning.

Even for Enke, which only happens once in ten years, with the failure of the reform movement and before the implementation of the Special Economic Section, the Empress Dowager Cixi launched a coup. .

Including the decision to abolish stereotyped essays during the Reform Movement of [-] was also rejected, and stereotyped essays revived again.

Of course, this is a flashback.

(End of this chapter)