Guide to Traveling through the Northern Song Dynasty.

Chapter 1171 Epilogue : Negative Example Zhu Shenfu
Before Xie Yan even reached the school gate, he found that the front was already crowded with people, not only many scholars, but also a large number of students who had not left school.

The palace guards in charge of leading the way were clearing the scene in an orderly manner.

Xie Yan did not push forward any further, but followed a group of students to the shade of trees on the side of the road.

There was a Tai student who was about twenty years old next to him. He didn't take him seriously at first, but his eyes accidentally caught the jade pendant on his waist, and then he looked at him in surprise.

The student bowed and said respectfully, "I am Xue Can, a student of the Imperial College. May I know the name of this scholar?"

Xie Yan returned the greeting: "Xie Yan."

"Ah!" Xue Can exclaimed, "You are the damper..."

"Please speak in a low voice and don't disturb others." Xie Yan smiled in response.

Although he could usually meet many scholars at the Imperial College, Xue Can seemed particularly excited at this moment: "Thank you, Scholar. Many of my classmates are discussing your molecular paper. Although... although many are skeptical, there are also many who think your paper makes sense."

Xie Yan said: "It will be verified after some time."

Xue Can asked: "How to verify?"

"You'll know when the time comes." Xie Yan certainly wasn't trying to show off. He kept the scale hidden because he was afraid of complications and accidents.

Xue Can asked again: "Some people say that Xie Xueshi studied at the Imperial College in Jinling, some say that Xie Xueshi studied at the Imperial College in Chengdu, and some even say that Xie Xueshi never studied at the Imperial College. Which piece of news is true?"

Xie Yan said: "I haven't read it."

"Which famous teacher did Master Xie learn from?" Xue Can seemed particularly gossipy.

Xie Yan said: "Taizu's disciple."

Xue Can was stunned for a moment, then he burst into laughter.

"Brother Yuguang, you are here, it's easier for us to find you." A voice sounded, and more than a dozen students came.

Xue Can quickly introduced: "You came at the right time. This is Master Xie. Master Xie, these are my classmates."

The two sides greeted each other.

Most of these students were very respectful to Xie Yan, at least on the surface.

But there were two or three exceptions, their expressions were very cold, and they didn't treat Xie Yan well at all. Maybe it was out of jealousy, or maybe it was influenced by their mentor.

The royal procession finally arrived, with the guard of honor walking in the front.

Those halberd and golden gourd warriors were all tall and strong, with an average height of over 1.8 meters. Moreover, their armor was bright and dazzling, and their awe-inspiring appearance was breathtaking.

There were also the Royal Fusiliers, who carried muskets on their shoulders, looked very capable in their slim-fitting uniforms, and marched in perfect step with a strong sense of discipline.

Under the umbrella, Empress Dowager Ye came with the little emperor, surrounded by a group of eunuchs and palace maids.

"The Grand Princess is here too!" many scholars whispered.

The eldest princess was the youngest daughter of the late emperor. He was over fifty years old when he had her, so he loved her extremely much.

She was tall, wearing a long emerald jacket and a yellow skirt. Her chest was straight, but without revealing a cleavage, but her collarbone was white, and the sunlight reflected it, making people dizzy. Her high bun was decorated with jade cicadas and golden sparrows, and there were a few hairpins swaying back and forth.

There is a touch of elegance in her grace and luxury, and a touch of charm in her dignified beauty.

Xie Yan's gaze moved back and forth between the Queen Mother and the Princess.

Which one should I choose?

Oh, I'm so upset.

The last time I had such a difficult decision was when I was in junior high school, when I was troubled for a long time over the choice between Peking University and Tsinghua University.

Empress Dowager Ye is quite attractive, a mixed race from the Western Regions, and looks a bit like Malzahar... No, it's Guli Nazha.

But the eldest princess is very tall, she must have a pair of long legs.

“It’s actually Monk Changle!”

Suddenly someone exclaimed in a low voice, but anyone who could understand this must be old.

Changle Jushi was the nickname of female Jinshi Tao Jinfeng when she was practicing Taoism.

At this moment, Tao Jinfeng, as a court lady, followed behind the little emperor.

The dozen or so students no longer cared about Xie Yan, and all their attention turned to the royal family members.

After the court procession had completely passed, the scholars and students on both sides of the road gathered together and followed them towards the school's auditorium.

The auditorium is three stories high like a normal building, but when you walk in you will find that it is empty inside, supported by huge pillars.

The wood of this kind of pillars is generally used to build palaces.

Officials from the Ministry of Rites and senior members of the society accompanied them all the way inside. Today, even the Minister of Rites came.

The first national academic conference after the young emperor ascended the throne must be grand.

The dozen or so students stopped outside the auditorium and watched Xie Yan go in with great envy.

An official was standing at the door checking the invitations and told Xie Yan by the invitation number: "Mr. Xie's seat is in the last row."

"Thanks for the advice."

Xie Yan walked straight to the back. Being invited was already a special treatment for him, and he certainly couldn't expect to sit in the front row for the opening meeting.

Scholars came in one after another. Xie Yan looked around and saw more than a dozen female scholars.

The female scholars were arranged around Empress Dowager Ye and the Grand Princess regardless of their rank, which not only gave the two noble ladies someone to chat with, but also separated them from the men to avoid suspicion.

There are actually many women engaged in academic research across the country.

Especially those who were born as prodigies. Because of the example of Tao Jinfeng, no woman now dares to dream of becoming a Jinshi or an official.

Female prodigies usually get married while studying at the Imperial College, and very few of them can stick to graduation. But after getting married, they can still study at home, subscribe to various academic journals, try to write papers for academic societies, or write letters to friends to discuss academic issues.

Perhaps because they were burdened by family chores, or perhaps for some other reason, there were many women who conducted academic research privately, but very few of them were able to achieve results and be awarded bachelor's degrees.

The dozen or so people who attended the conference today were all female scholars, and most of them were Yaoyu scholars of the lowest level. Like Xie Yan, they were specially invited scholars and were not eligible to attend under normal circumstances.

Xie Yan found his seat. On his left was an old man, and on his right was a middle-aged man.

After greeting each other, Xie Yan learned that the old man was a professor at Jinan Medical College.

Doctors need to make friends well, as one never knows when he might have a difficult or complicated disease to treat. Xie Yan chatted with the old man for no apparent reason.

Suddenly, there was a commotion at the door. The scholars nearby stood up one after another, but were quickly forced back to sit down.

Empress Dowager Ye also stood up, holding the little emperor's hand, and walked towards the door with the eldest princess.

The President of the Royal Society was helped in, leaning on a cane.

This old president was of a very high generation, even Emperor Dingtai was his junior. As a concubine of the royal family, he did not inherit the title, but he was promoted to marquis step by step due to his academic achievements.

Of course, the status of a royal family certainly played a role, and one could not rise that high on one's own. Although the title of a scholar could not be passed down to the next generation, it was not something that anyone could obtain.

The little emperor was led to pay his respects to the old president.

The old president smiled so hard that his few remaining teeth were revealed. He first touched the little emperor's head lovingly, then reached into his arms, took out a candy, tore off the candy coating and stuffed it into the little emperor's mouth.

The little emperor was obviously confused and turned to look at his mother. Empress Dowager Ye smiled and nodded, signaling her son to open his mouth.

After a while, the opening meeting officially began.

The first person to take the stage to speak was the Vice President of the Royal Society.

The old president had long since stopped caring about worldly affairs, so the vice president was the one who really managed the affairs. He first thanked all the guests present, reviewed the important academic achievements of the past few years, looked forward to the future academic prospects, and stated that the Royal Society would always be loyal to the emperor.

Xie Yan felt that this auditorium was awesome.

He sat in the last row, and the person who was speaking on the stage was so far away that his features could not be seen, and his entire face was blurry. But even though there was no loudspeaker, the sound of the speaker could be heard in the last row.

This auditorium is a loudspeaker itself!

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Perhaps because there were too many distinguished guests in the audience, the vice president's speech ended in less than ten minutes, and then the old president was invited to speak on stage.

The old president was helped up to the throne, his voice surprisingly loud: "I am old, and I don't have much time left. Today's event was something I decided to hold on a whim. I wanted to meet my old friends and the young talents before I was buried."

"I started learning at the age of five, published a paper at the age of seventeen, and will be eighty this year. My life has been generally smooth, and I have achieved some small achievements that are not worth mentioning. I was also carried away by success and criticized young people with academic prejudice. Later it was proved that I was wrong."

"Recently, two young scholars have been severely criticized. I want to say that unless something can be disproven, you should never jump to conclusions. I made a big mistake in this regard, and I didn't even have a chance to apologize. The scholar I accused had died of illness several years before his academic achievements were confirmed."

"What can I do? I can only burn some incense at his grave. This matter has become a burden on my heart. I feel so uncomfortable whenever I think about it. I always feel that I have done something wrong. I hope I can die soon so that I can say sorry in the afterlife."

"Please take this as a warning and don't make the same mistake as I did."

After the old president finished his speech, there was applause from the audience.

Then Empress Dowager Ye was invited to come on stage, but she waved her hands, as if she didn't want to be in the spotlight.

This matter had been decided long ago, and the host knew it, but inviting the Empress Dowager to speak on behalf of the Emperor had to go through a process even if she didn't want to.

Finally, it was the turn of Minister of Rites Yan Xide to speak.

He started from Taizu and Taizong, traced back to the pre-Qin period, and talked about the academic world today. Just when people thought he was about to finish, he actually talked about foreign academics.

Yan Xide said: "Ten years ago, I was sent abroad to serve as the Governor-General of India. I came into contact with merchants from Western countries and learned about many academic developments in the West."

"The Indian countries are not good. Although they are very close to the Ming Dynasty, they only believe in messed up gods."

"The Arab countries are very open-minded. Those countries that believe in desert religion respect scholars very much. Especially the big Arab countries, they have built many imperial schools and libraries, and scholars with high moral character can directly become officials."

"The great scholars of the Arabian countries often entrusted Arabian merchants to order academic journals from the Ming Dynasty and have them shipped to them. It was impossible to prevent this, because the Arabian merchants secretly entrusted the Ming Dynasty merchants. Those Ming Dynasty merchants were greedy for money and could sell a journal for dozens of silver dollars. They thought that selling one journal was not enough, so they often copied dozens or even hundreds of copies and sold them."

"A journal printed in the Ming Dynasty would often appear in the Sultan's library in Egypt two or three years later. Especially in the past two or three decades, more and more Muslim scholars have been stealing Ming Dynasty scholarship! If the coal mine hadn't been found, Egypt would probably have even had steam engines!"

Xie Yan was stunned.

One steampunk Ming Dynasty isn’t enough, do we need to create a steampunk Middle East?

Of course, this is a bit of an unfounded worry.

The great desert religious countries in the Middle East do have a long academic tradition, but all scholars there must first be religious scholars, and everything must be based on religion.

Moreover, the education and academic systems are too backward, and most of the academic achievements cannot be used at all.

Coupled with frequent wars and extremely backward productivity, both the government and the people were extremely poor.

The sultans were more concerned with power, war and religion. While they appeared to respect scholars, they completely ignored their advice.

Military technology was advancing very quickly, and muskets and artillery were used in naval battles. However, due to economic and productivity constraints, the size of the firearms force was always small, and it was only used as a trump card at critical moments.

The corrupt and incompetent late Qing government even sent students to study in Europe and the United States.

But what can these schoolchildren change?
Not only the desert religious countries in the Middle East, but even Byzantium had access to Ming Dynasty academic journals, but they were only spread second-hand from the Middle Eastern countries.

Even the Pope reads academic journals!

When the previous previous previous previous Pope read about the heliocentric theory, he immediately wrote to the monarchs of European countries and joined forces to ban all the fallacies and heresies from the East.

The monarchs of various countries readily agreed, but they privately asked for the papers to read on their own. Because they could not understand most of the papers, they put away their strong curiosity.

Today, except for the Papal States, the entire Italian region is the territory of the Holy Roman Empire.

In several major commercial cities in Italy, some nobles have been secretly studying Eastern learning. The more the Pope banned books, the more they wanted to read them, and they were not afraid at all.

Because they are the subjects of the Holy Roman Emperor, and the Holy Roman Emperor has a deep conflict with the Pope.

Even if the Pope had ten times the courage, he would not dare to send people to the territory of Shinra for a barbecue.

The Emperor of Shinra had actually secretly developed firearms. It was just that the Emperor was old and there were many conflicts in the country, so he didn't want to start a war.

The next Holy Roman Emperor will inevitably use firearms to fight, and the first war he will start will be a civil war!

Just look at whether Shinra will collapse as it did in history with the secret firearms unit, and whether the Hohenstaufen family will lose power.

Eastern learning spread to the West and became more and more popular.

Western history in this time and space will inevitably become even more unrecognizable.

In any case, from Italy to Byzantium, and then to several major countries in the Middle East, countless scholars regarded the Ming Dynasty as the "Heavenly Kingdom" and the Ming Empire as their spiritual homeland.

They admired everything about the Ming Dynasty and made up all kinds of stories.

Those stories often contain political metaphors, and the Ming Dynasty always appears in a positive light.

Well, the medieval Yilin.

Moreover, Zhu Guoxiang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, appears the most times in various stories.

Zhu Ming, on the other hand, became a monarch who only knew how to fight wars and often acted impulsively without considering the consequences. At this time, Zhu Guoxiang would stand up and educate his son with philosophical words. Zhu Ming would correct his mistakes immediately after hearing the admonition.

Those Western scholars who made up stories are all evil.

They compared themselves to Zhu Guoxiang and the monarch to Zhu Ming. The central idea of ​​those stories is that the father teaches his son, and they also teach their monarch.

For example, one day Zhu Ming became lustful and rode out of the royal castle on horseback, ran to his own direct territory and robbed a woman.

At the critical moment, Zhu Guoxiang appeared and made his son turn over a new leaf with just a few words. From then on, he ordered all the nobles in the country not to forcibly abduct women.

As a result, girls in the Ming Dynasty could go out freely without worrying about safety issues.

This kind of story is too common, and Zhu Ming's image becomes very strange. It seems that he has done all kinds of bad things, so bad that he has sores on his head and pus on his feet, but he is also a wise ruler who knows how to correct his mistakes.

The messy little story spread more and more widely, and even women in the countryside used Zhu Ming to educate their sons: "Far away in the East there was a Zhu Shenfu, who was as naughty as you when he was a child. Later he listened to his father, corrected his mistakes and became the emperor!"

(End of this chapter)