Datang: My apprentice is Li Chengqian

Chapter 191 The Unlucky Kong Family

For the people of the Tang Dynasty, the threshold for studying is very high.

On the one hand, the price of books and paper is very high, which is definitely beyond the reach of ordinary people.

Even if the papermaking workshop of the Qin family has greatly reduced the cost of paper, the price of a book is not acceptable to ordinary people.

A book that always costs twice a penny at every turn is basically equivalent to a book worth a few thousand yuan a book in later generations, or even a book worth tens of thousands of yuan a book.

Not to mention the tens of thousands of dollars at the beginning of the 2021th century, even in [-] when the currency has depreciated a lot, this expensive price is not acceptable to ordinary people.

On the other hand, reading and literacy requires a teacher to teach you.

Otherwise, you won't even be able to read and write.

It basically takes a few years for a child to change from not knowing one big character to knowing thousands of commonly used characters, according to the current normal education speed.

But now Li Chengqian said that there is hope to reach this level in a few months.

This statement is really too hard to believe.

Forget it, now Li Chengqian said that arithmetic, which is difficult for ordinary scholars to understand, can be easily mastered by a young child.

How can this be?

"Gao Ming, are you sure you're not talking about individual child prodigies, but the general situation in elementary schools?"

Li Shimin looked at Li Chengqian suspiciously.

Obviously a bit disapproving of his bragging.

"Your Majesty, I can testify that there is no exaggeration in what His Royal Highness said, but simply reported the situation here.

If you have doubts, you can take a look at our math books for children, and then find a few children to test and teach. "

At this time, Qin Xiedao had already received the news and came to Li Shimin's side.

When he made these things in the first place, he expected that this day would come sooner or later, so he didn't panic at all.

"Okay, since you are so confident, then I will have a good look at it."

Soon, Li Shimin came to the classroom under the leadership of Qin Xiedao.

However, originally he thought he could watch a joke and expose Qin Xiedao's lies face to face.

As a result, those children's answers were far beyond his expectations.

"Xiedao, are these children really just learning arithmetic for less than a year?"

Li Shimin didn't deliberately make things difficult for Qin Xie, and only selected older children.

But according to his normal cognition, it is normal for these people to be able to do some simple addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, but that kind of complicated algorithm can also do it, which is really beyond his expectation.

"Your Majesty, let me just give a few examples, and you can see the benefits of Zhenguan characters.

For example, multiplying 43 by 120, if you follow the traditional calculation method, it may take a long time to calculate it.

But in our case, after using Zhenguan characters, we can get the answer in just a few breaths according to this method of calculation. "

As Qin Xiedao spoke, he demonstrated it himself on the blackboard.

After that, he gave a few more examples, which completely let Li Shimin see the extraordinaryness of these things.

"Xiedao, sort out these things, and let the Ministry of Rites arrange personnel to come over and communicate with you in detail later.

In the future, all the textbooks that you are using now will be added to the teaching books of various elementary schools and elementary schools in Datang. "

After seeing the benefits of this thing, Li Shimin would naturally not miss it.

Although he has only been on the throne for one year, Li Shimin has always been prepared to do what he has always planned to do to promote the poor family's scholars to enter the officialdom and promote the academic development of the poor family's scholars.

In a vague way, Li Shimin felt that what Qin Xiedao created was helpful to his own thoughts.

……

Taking advantage of Li Shimin's appointment of the Qin family's elementary school textbooks as textbooks for all elementary school and elementary schools in the Tang Dynasty, the Qin family's Sanlian Bookstore opened.

I don't know whether it is to take advantage of the hot spot or to disgust the Qufu Bookstore. The Sanlian Bookstore is located opposite the Qufu Bookstore.

Of course, in addition to selling books such as "Three Character Classics" and "Mengtong Mathematics", there are also popular books such as "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms".

As for the traditional Four Books and Five Classics, there are naturally not many.

There is no concept of copyright these days. As long as you want to print and you have the ability to print, you can print whatever you want.

The printing cost and paper cost of Sanlian Bookstore are lower than other bookstores, which directly leads to the fact that almost no book in Sanlian Bookstore is sold for more than usual money.

Even the thickest "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" is only priced at 99 cents.

As for pamphlets like "The Analects of Confucius", they simply set a low price of one hundred cents.

The price of one hundred coins is equivalent to several hundred in later generations.

From the perspective of future generations, it must be very expensive.

But from the point of view of Datang, the price of [-] Wen is definitely a new low.

The most important thing is that other books such as "Shangshu" and "Spring and Autumn Annals" did not sell for more than [-] Wen.

In this way, even if the opening of the Sanlian Bookstore was very low-key, it would have brought a huge impact to Chang'an City.

For three consecutive days, the inside was full of people.

There are even some booksellers who directly buy books wholesale from Sanlian Bookstore, and then take advantage of the fact that Sanlian Bookstore has not yet opened branches in other state capitals, and then transport these books to Luoyang and other places for sale.

With such a turnaround, the profit margin is even as high as 100%, and it is still very marketable.

"Boss, in the past three days, we haven't sold a single book in our store, if we continue to develop at this pace, then our bookstore will be finished.

This Qin Xiedao really doesn't follow the rules, it doesn't leave us a way to survive. "

Kong Zhiqiang only endured it for three days, but he couldn't bear it anymore.

No way, even if he wanted to be an ostrich, he couldn't.

"Have you figured out the reason why the prices of the books in Sanlian Bookstore are so low? Is it because they just wanted to impress the public or is it true that their cost is relatively low?"

Kong Yingda didn't care much about the business affairs of the house.

But the current situation is really too bad.

If you really don't ask, it is estimated that within two months, the Qufu Bookstore with a history of [-] years will close down.

"I heard that their paper has a special production method, and the cost is very low.

That's why books can be sold at such a low price.Of course, sensationalism is definitely something, otherwise, wouldn't it be good to earn money? "

Although Kong Zhiqiang couldn't find any good tactics to deal with Sanlian Bookstore, it wasn't like he didn't do nothing.

"If that's the case, then let our papermaking workshop also find ways to reduce costs!"

Kong Yingda said a word as a matter of course.

This made Kong Zhiqiang want to cry.

If the cost of papermaking could be lowered so easily, it would have been lowered long ago.

"Boss, maybe...maybe not so optimistic..."

Kong Yingda:  …

(End of this chapter)