The literary giants of the late Ming Dynasty began by copying books

Chapter 87 Xu Guangqi Reading

South Zhili, Songjiang Prefecture.

After the students from the private school returned home, Xu Guangqi was too lazy to clean the room. He leaned back on the Taishi chair and opened the "Tianyan Lun" he bought on the way to the private school in the morning with the tea in hand.

Half a month after "Tianyan Lun" became popular on the market, various bookstores joined the printing competition.

The number of words in "The Theory of Heaven's Evolution" is only a few thousand, and it can be printed in just a few pages. The low-quality movable type printing version only costs [-] cents, which is just one day's salary for ordinary people. It is completely affordable, and scholars naturally compete for it. Looking to buy.

Masha Bookstore in Jianyang immediately followed suit. Some of them have even cooperated with Wang Wenlong's workshop to directly use wax block mimeograph machines. The printing cost is far lower than that of Sanwu calligraphy.

The edition of Tianyan Lun that Xu Guangqi bought was the Jianyang-engraved edition. Although it was not a wax paper mimeograph, the cost of Jianyang-engraved edition was already very low, with a copy only costing [-] yuan.

The only problem is that the printing quality is not good, the text is very blurry, and you can see large areas of ink smearing after turning two pages.

But Xu Guangqi didn't care. He specially selected a book with less ink. The dirty marks were only on the corners of the page. Xu Guangqi could tolerate it as long as it didn't affect his reading.

Xu Guangqi was from Songjiang, and his family conditions were average. After he passed the scholar examination at the age of 20, his family had no way to continue to support his full-time study, so Xu Guangqi went out to study with his reputation as a scholar.

Ordinary scholars can just sit near their hometown, but Xu Guangqi went to Guangdong to study in order to earn a higher salary.

Xu Guangqi is not a man without talent. Ten years ago, he went to Taiping Prefecture in Anhui Province for scientific research with his friends Dong Qichang and Chen Jiru.

The reason why I had to go to Anhui was because the competition for candidates in Taiping Prefecture was smaller than that in Songjiang Prefecture.

That provincial examination changed their fate.

Dong Qichang passed the imperial examination, and then went to Beijing to take the examination and passed the imperial examination, and became rich in one fell swoop.

However, Xu Guangqi and Chen Jiru who went with them came back defeated.

Chen Jiru was stimulated and had the idea of ​​abandoning his scarf.

The only one who took it calmly was Xu Guangqi.

Xu Guangqi's family was not as rich as Chen and Dong's family, nor was they as talented and famous as the two. After he failed, he just thought it was normal, so he honestly returned to Guangdong and Guangxi to continue teaching.

Two years ago, Xu Guangqi returned to Nanzhili to take the exam again.

This time his exam location was in Nanjing.

In this era, candidates also have to check their place of origin. I don’t know how Xu Guangqi, a native of Songjiang, managed to get there. Anyway, he finally passed the examination in Nanjing two years ago and successfully landed.

In fact, just because Xu Guangqi can associate with Dong Qichang and Chen Jiru, we know that he is also quite talented and well-known in Wuzhong. With his reputation, there is no problem in living a leisurely life in Sanwu with the title of celebrity.

The reason why he chose to go to Guangdong to teach was very simple - he wanted to make more money.

Xu Guangqi's character is probably a standard township entrepreneur mentality in later generations, being frugal with himself and working hard to make money at the same time.

In later history, he was already a Jinshi in high school, but the main content of his letters to his family was still telling them which houses to buy and where to buy land.

For example, in the 41st year of Wanli, he was ordered to compile books around the capital and discovered that there were abandoned fields near Tianjin. His first reaction was to inspect the local water conservancy conditions, and then immediately wrote a letter asking his family to quickly get money to buy it.A few months later, Xu Guangqi wrote another letter to his family: "Tianjin has harvested [-] shi early, and the beans are about [-] shi, but the report has not yet been reported..."

At this time, his family had come to Tianjin to buy land in accordance with his instructions. Xu Guangqi himself was an agricultural expert. He observed this year's grain output in the north in the experimental field, so he directly wrote to his family to calculate the family's farm output and see if there was any problem. Don't let the employees below get corrupted.

You must know that Xu Guangqizhong was a busy man after becoming a Jinshi. He was ordered to compile books, and later he was appointed to the cabinet during the Chongzhen Dynasty, and then went to supervise the military affairs of Liaodong. Under such circumstances, it would be good for a normal person to have rest time, but he could actually ask himself accurately Which acre of land should be planted with mulberries and which acre of land should be planted with beans?It shows that he really loves his career.

Xu Guangqi was known as frugal in later generations. Pan Yunduan, who was also a Songjiang official, was just a minister, but he bought a large area of ​​land in Songjiang Prefecture to build Yuyuan Garden. In contrast, when Xu Guangqi became a cabinet minister, his old Songjiang house only had nine rooms, occupying only a corner of the suburb of Songjiang. People at the time said "Pan Bancheng, Xu Yijiao".

Some scholars went to Xu Guangqi's home and were greatly impressed when they saw that his house had almost no decoration and the tables and chairs used were very simple.

But that's just because Xu Guangqi doesn't want to waste it, it doesn't mean he has no money.

After the Pan family fell, the Xu family directly used their assets to buy all the Pan family's land. After that, the land occupied by the Xu family included the entire Xujiahui, the magical capital of later generations, and became the largest landowner in Songjiang in one fell swoop.

Xu Guangqi is really frugal. He has now passed the examination and has no problem living the life of a small landowner. However, he still sits in the office and studies while managing his own property. When buying books, he only buys the cheapest masha carvings.

Xu Guangqi slowly turned the pages of the book, and while it was still dark, he finally read the entire "Tianyan Lun", and then he closed the book in admiration.

"Mr. Jianyang is really a great talent. He wrote the "History of Portugal" to bring the disputes in Europe to life, and he also wrote "Tianyan Lun" as a supplement to "History of Portugal".

When Xu Guangqi came to teach in Guangdong, he came into contact with missionaries in Macau. He was extremely fascinated by the Western knowledge taught by the missionaries, and mainly worshiped European technology.

Xu Guangqi was a very realistic man. He studied European science and technology because he believed that European technology could make him rich.

If it is small, it will make a fortune; if it is big, it will enrich the country and strengthen its army.

Xu Guangqi's thoughts were relatively objective. For example, some of the European mathematical geometry knowledge taught by missionaries at this time had been circulated in the Ming Dynasty. The so-called "theory of spreading Western learning to the East" was popular among scholars in the Ming Dynasty. They were learning geometric algebra from Europeans while talking about these things. They were all invented in China at that time, but they were lost in China and retained by Europe.

Xu Guangqi did not shy away from ridiculing this statement. He believed that the geometry of Europeans was not "lost to Tang and Yu", but "an addition to what Tang and Yu had never seen".

He feels that if people are strong in science and technology, they should study hard. After mastering it, their own country will be rich and powerful. There is no shame in learning from others. It is shameful if you don't learn well.

After seeing the power of European technology, he became obsessed with agricultural and industrial technology research, and therefore was deceived by missionaries a lot.

In order to preach, missionaries in this era had to create a paradise-like image of Europe on earth and convey that Europe was better than the Ming Dynasty in terms of technology and academics. It could have the effect of technological dissemination in that European technology was indeed more developed. But there are many aspects that are also outright deception.

For example, European medicine in this era was still in the stage of bloodletting. It also relied on taking pulses to diagnose diseases, which was much behind traditional Chinese medicine and had no advantages at all.

But in history, when Xu Guangqi asked the missionary Pang Di about Western medicine, Pang Di still taught him "Western medicinal methods". Pang Di didn't understand pharmacology, so he told Xu Guangqi that Western medicine and Chinese medicine are the same. Plant herbal recipes.

But the advantage of Western medicine is that "no medicine residues are used, and all the medicines are taken fresh and have magical effects."

I don’t know how many times Pang Di lied to Xu Guangqi on weekdays, and he was so confident that he told a completely nonsense method, but Xu Guangqi really believed it.

Xu Guangqi greatly admired Pang Di in his diary and believed that his pharmaceutical method was very reasonable. However, he did not have the conditions to collect the raw materials of the Liuwei Dihuang Pills and Ginseng Guben Pills that he usually took in fresh conditions at the same time. , practice it.

Fortunately, he didn't practice it. If he really used fresh herbs that had not been processed to remove the poison to make Liuwei Dihuang Pills, Mr. Xu Ge would probably eat himself to death.

(End of this chapter)