The so-called "taking millet into prison", as the name suggests, means donating rice and grain (money and grain) to the court to obtain the qualifications of a prison student.
Jiansheng are students from the Imperial College. In the Ming Dynasty, Imperial Colleges were established in both northern and southern Zhili.
Li Jia, the male protagonist in Du Shiniang's Angry Treasure Box, was a prison student who accepted millet into prison. Therefore, Li Jia, a scholar, immediately hesitated when he heard that his family did not allow him to take Du Shiniang back.
Person A is a kid from a wealthy family who relied on his family to buy his diploma. After his family threatened to cut off the debt, he naturally gave up on love.
In the early years of the Ming Dynasty, Imperial College students were very valuable. After completing their studies as Imperial College students, they could be directly appointed as officials. At that time, many famous ministers were Imperial College students.
But in today's era, if the Jinshi degree is not high enough, you can only be a county magistrate, and the status of the supervisor has dropped a lot. Even if you are successful, you can only be awarded an academic officer like Hai Rui at most.
However, there is another advantage for prison students. As long as you enter the prison, you can automatically qualify for the provincial examination and do not need to take the boy examination.
To put it bluntly, this is to donate your reputation as a scholar.
In the Ming Dynasty, the introduction of millet into prisons began in the Jingtai Dynasty. In order to "study abroad" in Wala, the Mingbao Zong began to take millet into prisons to raise military expenses.
Later, when the Wanli year came to aid the DPRK against the Japanese, Emperor Wanli of the Ming Dynasty also reopened the policy of accepting millet into prison. By the time Emperor Chongzhen of the late Ming Dynasty, not to mention accepting grain into prison, as long as he donated money to the court, he could directly
Become an official.
Su Ze said seriously: "Thank you Brother Lin for the news, but sending millet to prison is not the right way to take the imperial examination, and I won't do it."
Lin Qingyuan looked at Su Ze with envy. Only a scholar like Su Ze could say this. People like him who had become officials could no longer take part in the imperial examination.
Of course, Su Ze would not go to the Imperial College to put him in prison. First, if he wanted to put him in prison, he would have to "sit in prison", that is, go to the Imperial College in the North and South Zhili to go to school.
If you were imprisoned in the Northern and Southern Zhili, you would have to take the imperial examination in the Northern and Southern Zhili.
If the provincial examination in Fujian is the most difficult test, then the rural examinations in Zhili in the north and south are the most difficult test in the world.
Southern Zhili is the largest examination area in the country, including Jiangsu, Anhui, Zhejiang and other popular places for imperial examinations. Su Ze went crazy to go to Southern Zhili and these gangs of imperial examination candidates.
Moreover, Su Ze was preparing to rebel. How could anyone go to North and South Zhili to prepare for rebellion?
However, the imperial court allowed millet to be taken into prison, indicating that the financial problems of the Ming Dynasty were serious again.
After saying goodbye to Lin Qingyuan, Su Ze led Ma Xian to the editorial department of "Surprise".
Chen Chaoyuan and Lin Qingcai were indeed there. They were sitting behind a table, painfully opening the submissions from Nanping County.
Su Ze opened the door and walked in. Chen Chaoyuan and Lin Qingcai immediately expressed their bitterness.
"Brother Su, do you have the latest article? Let us two wash our eyes?"
Su Ze smiled slightly and looked at the basket full of submissions. Sure enough, "Surprise" attracted submissions from all the readers in Nanping County.
Su Ze quickly said to the two of them: "Thank you for your hard work! School is over today. I invite you to go to Yueyue Tower to relax!"
Chen Chaoyuan took out a book box, handed it to Su Ze and said, "This is a readable article that the two of me finally picked out. Brother Su, please read it."
Su Ze opened the book box and found a total of three articles inside.
Two of them are ghost stories modeled after Su Ze's "Liaozhai". Their quality is quite satisfactory, and it is enough to be published in "Paiden Surprise".
Another article aroused Su Ze's interest. It told the story of a woman who disguised herself as a man to participate in the imperial examination and became the top scholar in high school.
Isn't this "The Female Number One Scholar"? Su Ze continued reading, and the ending was different from the ending of Xu Wenchang's "The Female Number One Scholar". The identity of the female number one scholar was revealed, the emperor wanted to punish her, and then the female number one scholar angrily rebuked the undergraduate.
The Jinshi was actually inferior to a woman and then committed suicide.
interesting.
Su Ze saw that the handwriting of this submission was elegant, but there was no signature.
"Why are there still unsigned articles?"
Lin Qingcai said: "There are many articles like this. They may be famous people in the city. They are afraid of being rejected, so they are anonymous."
Su Ze thought for a while and said: "We can't publish all ghost stories in "The Surprise". Let's just keep this one "Female Number One Scholar" and save the other ghost story for the next issue."
Su Ze selected the article, and then the three of them walked to the county school together.
As he walked away, Chen Chaoyuan said: "Brother Su, we need to print more this time. In the past few days, in addition to the people who came to the editorial department to submit articles, they also requested more copies. Last time, all 300 copies of "The Surprise" were sold out in less than half a day.
, even Brother Lin and I couldn’t buy it.”
Su Ze asked doubtfully: "Are there so many scholars in the city?"
Chen Chaoyuan said: "The story of "The Surprise" can be understood as long as you are literate. Not only scholars, but ordinary people will also pool their money to buy a copy and read it back. In addition, I heard that several surrounding counties have also heard about "The Surprise".
Due to its reputation, some big families send people to Nanping County to buy newspapers, and some businessmen sell newspapers to other counties."
Su Ze also didn't expect that "Surprise" would be so influential, but this was good news for him.
After Su Ze's research, he has roughly understood the art of literature.
The dissemination of an article, from "little literary fame" to "rising fame" to "famous", you can get corresponding experience rewards at each stage of dissemination.
In other words, the more widely Su Ze's "Surprise" is circulated and the more people praise it in the above article, the faster Su Ze can gain experience.
Su Ze secretly had a new idea. Since there are businessmen who are willing to sell the crime-fighting surprise to other counties, Su Ze can directly discuss cooperation with them, print more newspapers and sell them to them, and let them sell newspapers directly in other counties.
.
We need to talk to Lin Xianliang from the bookstore about this. Su Ze took note of this and entered the county school with Chen Lin.
After passing the Lingxing Gate, Lin Qingcai said in a low voice: "Brother Su, have you heard? The imperial court is going to allow millet to be imprisoned."
Su Ze nodded and said, "When I entered the city, I met Brother Lin's clan brother. He had already told me."
Chen Chaoyuan was a little moved. He was an old boy who had been taking the exam for many years. He was obsessed with scholarly fame, so being admitted to prison was one way to do it.
Lin Qingcai sighed and said: "I still advise Brother Su not to take this path. Although there is no county test to admit millet to prison, the rural test in Nanzhili is more difficult. Brother Su's talent can make him a Jinshi, but it is not necessary.
Take shortcuts like this.”
Su Ze smiled and said: "There are so many things going on in the guard house, it is impossible for me to go to the Imperial College to study."
As they talked, the three of them arrived at the dormitory. This time, Xiong Yue didn't come to school yet.
The three of them were a little worried when they saw Hai Rui push the door open and come in and said:
"Xiong Yue's mother is sick, and he serves her at home."
Su Ze quickly asked: "Teacher, is Xiong Yue's mother's illness serious?"
Hai Rui shook his head and said, "Xiong Yue just sent fellow villagers to come to the county to take a leave of absence. He didn't say anything specific about his mother's condition."
Everyone sighed again. Xiong Yue was originally the richest among the four. His family had a tea garden at the foot of Wuyi Mountain, and there were many hired tea farmers in the family. He was considered a rich peasant and a small landowner.
But things are unpredictable. First, the court wanted to increase the amount of tea offered, and then the court changed the tribute to silver, and his family was allocated more silver. Now his mother fell ill again, and he suddenly fell from the rich peasant class.
This is how the peasants of the Ming Dynasty were wiped out. A grain of ashes from the imperial court fell on the heads of these rich peasants, which was the result of bankruptcy. By the time of the Jiajing period, natural and man-made disasters continued, and there were victims even near the capital. The entire dynasty had reached a precarious stage.
situation.
Hai Rui sighed and said, "Let's continue class."
In class, Hai Rui also talked about the incident of Nasu being imprisoned. He said seriously:
"Taking millet into prison is not the right way to take the imperial examination. With your level, it is not difficult to become a scholar if you study well. There is no need to take such a crooked way."
As a scholar, Hai Rui hated having Su imprisoned.
This not only violated the rights of scholars, but also made the Imperial College even more mixed.
Originally, the Imperial College was a legitimate path to becoming an official, but now serious scholars are no longer willing to go to prison to study, and the Imperial College has become a gathering place for dandies.
Moreover, admitting millet into prison also violated the interests of students from poor families. After the Imperial College expanded its enrollment, more people took part in the provincial examination. Scandals involving cheating in the provincial examination have frequently broken out in recent years.
Any system is implemented by people. As long as the human element is retained, the system will always have loopholes.
Hai Rui just hoped that the imperial court would send upright ministers to preside over the provincial examinations in Southern Zhili this year, but he would not let anything go wrong again.
However, Hai Rui quickly regained his composure and began to give lectures to the three of them.
Nowadays, Su Ze studies at home and can increase his imperial examination skills by 12-15 points a day.
Studying at the county school in one day can increase your imperial examination skills by nearly 50 points.
Then you can gain more than 400 points of imperial examination skills in a month.
However, upgrading from Lv5 to Lv10 requires 15,000 experience points, which would take three years if converted.
The speed is still too slow. Next year is the year of the provincial examination. Do we have to wait for the next provincial examination?
Still have to think of a way.
Now Su Ze has only two ways, one is to increase the intelligence attribute points and improve the efficiency of liver examination skills.
If you can have twice the intelligence attribute, it will only take a year and a half to improve your imperial examination skills to Lv10.
In addition, he participated in activities related to the imperial examination. For example, the last time Baizhi County had to answer questions on his own in the county school, Su Ze gained a lot of experience in the imperial examination.
By completing activities related to the imperial examination and reading books related to the imperial examination, you can also gain additional experience in imperial examination skills.
Feeling that he didn't have enough time again, Su Ze decided to go to the Yu family's bookstore to see if there were any good imperial examination reference books and think of ways to gain extra experience.
The next day was still homework. Hai Rui corrected the eight-legged essay written by the three of them at home. He once again used Su Ze's article as a model essay and explained the ideas for solving the problem and the format requirements of the eight-part essay.
After finishing the class, Su Ze had to attend Yu Gongzi's mother's birthday on July 16th, so he continued to stay at the county school for one day.
"Dad, I want to go too!"
Fang Ruolan protested to Magistrate Fang in dissatisfaction, which frightened Magistrate Fang and almost threw out the herbal tea in his hand.
"Nonsense! It's the birthday of the commander's wife, why are you joining in the fun!"
Magistrate Fang couldn't argue with his daughter, but Mrs. Li had the ability to suppress her bloodline, so she refuted her daughter.
Fang Ruolan immediately said: "I can disguise myself as a man!"
Mrs. Li scolded: "When you get married, you can go anywhere!"
Fang Ruolan's momentum was shattered. The Ming Dynasty's etiquette was very strict for women who had not left the imperial court, and a lady from an official family like her had to pay even more attention to her reputation.
But for married women, they can participate in various activities, and there are even many women in Fujian who show up to do business.
When the magistrate Fang saw that his daughter was exhausted, he couldn't bear it. He said, "I haven't seen you clamoring to go out on weekdays. Why do you have to go this time?"
Fang Ruolan told the truth: "My daughter heard that this is the conductor's wife's birthday, and the Yu family theater troupe will perform a new play."
I see.
The prefect suddenly understood that in the past few days, Yu Zongyuan had been promoting in the county town that his troupe had arranged a new play, which was a hundred times more exciting than Mr. Tuohu's troupe, and it whetted the appetite of the people in the county.
Originally, the reputation of the Yu family was so bad that many officials in the county were not prepared to celebrate their birthdays in person. As long as they gave birthday gifts, it was considered a good etiquette.
But when they heard about the new play from the Yu family's theater troupe, many ladies were eager to get involved. There were only a few entertainment activities these days, and they had heard the new play from Mr. Tuohu's family theater troupe several times.
Magistrate Fang stroked his beard and said, "I heard that Chang Ning Wei Su Ze personally arranged the play for the Yu family troupe. He should also have written the script for this new play."
Mrs. Li had also heard of Su Ze's reputation. She asked, "That's the Su Ze who wrote "Du Shiniang"."
Magistrate Fang nodded, and Mrs. Li added: "It's a pity that he has no fame, but he is just a scholar."
After speaking, Mrs. Li glanced at her daughter.
When she raised her younger brother, her family was also very poor, but she had no requirements for her son-in-law's family background.
On the contrary, Mrs. Li was also influenced by her younger brother and believed that those big families were mostly fake Taoists with strict rules, and her daughter would suffer if she really married into a big family.
However, it is impossible for a daughter of a dignified prefect to marry a poor scholar with no fame.
Magistrate Fang felt that his blood pressure was high again: "Can Su Ze pass the imperial examination at this age? If he can pass the provincial examination next year, he will definitely be a Jinshi in the future! Those who want to marry him in that city can go to Fuzhou City!"
It used to be said that "Jinshi at the age of fifty" means that no matter what era it is, those who can pass the examination before the age of thirty are regarded as young and promising.
(Exceptions include Zhang Juzheng, a pervert who became a Jinshi at the age of 23)
According to the household registration registered by Chang Ningwei to Su Ze, he is now twenty-two years old, and he will be twenty-three next year. If he can win the imperial examination at the age of twenty-three, he will definitely be rushed to get married by the dignitaries of Yanping Mansion.
Hearing that her daughter was here to listen to the opera, Mrs. Li's tone softened and she said: "You pretend to be my maid, don't do anything inappropriate when you get to the Yu family!"
Fang Ruolan knew that her old father had no right to speak at home. Mrs. Li's words were the final word. She immediately said: "Thank you, mother!"