Those who apply for the official academy are all high-ranking officials and nobles. They come from official families. Their families are either rich or powerful. In addition, most of them hold official positions and have a lot of money.
Fan Xiren was naturally not a man short of money. Due to Fan Wencheng's relationship, the Fan family's status in the Qing Dynasty was not low. Moreover, Fan Xiren was also a disciple of Zhang Zhidong. After Li Hongzhang's death, Zhang Zhidong became the leader of the late Qing Dynasty.
The status is self-evident.
Fan Xiren quickly understood what Lin Binghua had just done. He was a young man after all, so naturally he would not be offended by the arrangement. He pointed to Lin Binghua's table and said to the waiter: "Give me the same dish to my table."
Lin Binghua sneered after hearing this, thinking that was nothing more than that.
But Fan Xiren added: "I want the shark fin to be spine fin, and the recipe requires three shreds of shark fin, and the sea cucumber needs Dalian Liao ginseng. Let your chef cook it yourself, and you tell An Lingdong, and say it was me, Fan Xiren, who said it."
After all, the Fan family is a family that has existed for thousands of years, and its ancestors have produced a lot of high-ranking officials such as ministers.
Lin Binghua was just a local official in Hebei, and his official position was obtained through donations. In terms of cultural background, he was still far behind Fan Xiren.
Li Yu smiled and said: "Brother Fan, it's not necessary."
Fan Xiren waved his hand: "Brother Li, don't worry about it. It's my treat today."
Ouyang Mouyuan kept smiling and said nothing. The Ouyang family was not an ordinary family. Lin Binghua glanced at them and knew that he had lost the round today. He would eventually pursue an official career in the future, and he did not want to offend the two of them, so he could only take care of himself.
I ate shark's fin and sea cucumber with rice.
From the conversation, Li Yu felt that several people should be able to pass the exam, and Fan Xiren said that the scoring standards for the official examination must be significantly lowered.
Li Yu picked up the wine glass: "I'll raise a glass and wish you all the best in the gold list!"
Everyone raised their glasses and drank together.
The dishes on the table in front of us are also quite interesting. The nine-turn large intestine with sea cucumber and shark fin is so visually impactful! The food on the table is also very delicious.
There will still be exams the day after tomorrow, so drinking is just a taste of things. Anyway, there will be plenty of opportunities to meet in the university hall in the future.
The first test on the third day is six questions on arithmetic, proportions, square roots, and algebra.
Li Yu felt it was too simple at first glance:
(1) What is the number obtained by multiplying three thousand nine hundred and sixteen by seven hundred and sixty?
(2) If there are five-sixths, eight-ninths and seven-fifteenths today, find the common points.
These two arithmetic problems are just like elementary school mathematics, okay!
There are algebra questions later:
(3) Now there are two algebraic formulas such as: trimethyla⊥diethyltrimethane and trimethylmethane⊥ethylethane⊥fiveethyltrimethane. Find their sum.
This is based on the mathematical expression of the Qing Dynasty. If translated into modern words, it would be: 3a+2b-c and 2a-b+5c, find their sum.
Um, elementary school mathematics too?
Another algebra question is that the expression is a little more troublesome:
(4) If we use three T eight to make an appointment with T eight days T three every day, what will we get?
Well, at first glance, it looks messy. In fact, translated into modern mathematical language, it is: (x3-8x-3)/(3-x).
x3 there is x cubed.
It should be counted as first grade mathematics.
There is also an application question:
(5) Today there are two kinds of gold and silver mixtures. One contains 850 gold in a thousand parts, and the other contains 925 gold in a thousand parts. Now, mix these two kinds of materials to make gold coins.
Five taels, one thousand points contains nine hundred percent of gold. How much of each should be extracted?
It’s also quite simple, elementary school application questions.
Finally, there is a geometry question:
(6) Question: How can we prove that the sum of the triangles inside a triangle is equal to two right angles?
In short, looking at it this way, it is really very simple, and it basically does not exceed the first grade mathematics.
Li Yu finished it in less than 5 minutes.
I thought it would be at least as deep as high school mathematics, but unexpectedly, this is it?
Although it is very simple to do, when I think about it carefully, I still feel sad that the entrance mathematics test for the prestigious Capital University is so simple!
No wonder Ding Weiliang said at that time that Chinese scholar-officials were adults in terms of literature, but they were still children in terms of science. This was clearly a question for children!
The following physical chemistry exam is also very simple:
Question: Among physicists, there are three kinds of metamorphosis in the change of matter. What are the three kinds of metamorphosis? Let’s try to discuss them.
Question: Today someone throws a stone far away. Instead of seeing the stone falling straight, he sees the stone falling in a curve. What is the reason?
Question: When people are walking on a train, they don’t know where the train is going, but they see houses and trees on the road receding. What’s the reason?
It's basically the most basic common sense of physics.
Question: What is the difference between chemical changes and so-called changes in physics?
Question: What is the principle behind the burning of objects?
Question: Someone asked that the sun's rays are made up of seven colors. How can it be proved?
Chemistry is also very simple.
Except for the history study on the first day and the difficult questions about self-cultivation and righteousness, today's Western Studies subjects felt like a joke.
Geography is also very simple:
Question: The most famous author of the names of capital cities and commercial ports in European and American countries.
Question: England and Japan are both called powerful countries on earth, but they don’t have long rivers or great rivers in their countries. Why?
Anyway, that's generally the level of difficulty.
The foreign language question asked you to choose between English or Japanese. Li Yu happened to have learned Japanese recently and wrote an English article and a Japanese article.
It’s just that today’s exams are too easy and too boring...
However, the entrance examination in Japan at the same time was not that simple, which explains why the outstanding students sent out by the Imperial Academy still had to go to middle school for a period of time before going to Japan and other countries to take the entrance exams for Japanese universities.
After all, in the Capital University, they only learned the content of elementary school and middle school.
This is the current situation.
How can we not fall behind?
Li Yu actually hoped that the difficulty would be as difficult as the history and literature questions on the first day.
What a shame!
After taking the exam, I discovered that even a student who had just completed nine years of compulsory time traveled back in time to 1902 to apply for the Imperial College. As long as he could read traditional Chinese characters and understand the special mathematical expressions of the Qing Dynasty, he could be admitted to the Imperial College.
Of course, everything is difficult at the beginning.
In a few years, this situation will be greatly improved, and the level of domestic universities will improve rapidly. Although it will not reach the level of Cambridge and Oxford, it will at least reach the normal level.
Just like learning a ball game, you will make rapid progress in the beginning because there is so much room for improvement.
After the exam, Ding Haoliang, Wu Rulun and others gathered together to start marking the papers by subject.
The test paper is very similar to the scientific examination. The examinee's name cannot be seen by the marking teacher, which is fair.
As for the result announcement time, it is similar to that of the scientific examination. The results are usually released three days after the end of the examination.
Fortunately, there are not many test papers. After calculation, the official school received a total of 165 test papers, and the normal school received a total of 652 test papers.
Ding Weiliang was the fastest in grading papers. After all, in mathematics, if you know it, you know it, and if you don't, you know it. The paper contains very little content, so he finished reading all the papers in half a day. The following physics and chemistry papers were also finished in less than half a day.
On the contrary, the grading of self-cultivation and pedagogy was particularly troublesome. Wu Rulun and Gu Hongming were reading long papers one after another.
When Wu Rulun saw an article on education, he was suddenly shocked and said: "There are actually candidates who use Western pens to answer their questions!"
Gu Hongming said: "I also saw it when I was reading the article on self-cultivation and righteousness just now, but the article was really average, so I only gave it a passing score of 60."
Fortunately, Gu Hongming saw Li Yu's test paper. Otherwise, given Wu Rulun's level, he would definitely have failed after seeing what Li Yu wrote. After all, Wu Rulun, an old Confucian scholar, is still very serious about classics and meanings.
Gu Hongming was educated in the West, and his research on Chinese studies was not very deep, and he was too familiar with pencil calligraphy.
It would be okay if it just passed like this, but when Wu Rulun heard it, he said: "Let me see!"
Finished!
He took Li Yu's "Cultivation of the Righteousness" and could tell at a glance that it was written by the same person.
If it is a scientific examination, you can avoid recognizing the handwriting by having someone transcribe it, but the Capital University obviously does not have that much time and manpower.
Wu Rulun looked at it for a while and said dissatisfied: "No, how can it be sixty points? For this calligraphy and this article, I can only get sixteen points at most!"
Gu Hongming was ashamed, it was too bad. But Wu Rulun was the head teacher of the middle school, so he had the final say.
Wu Rulun turned to look at the education paper in his hand, "It's just that this education article is really well written. If I were to give it a score, I'd probably give it full marks."
Yan Fu and Lin Shu next to them became interested, "Full score?"
The two of them came together one after another. It was extremely difficult to get full marks in education. Just like in later generations, mathematics and physics often saw perfect marks, but basically no one could get full marks in Chinese.
However, after reading it, the two of them felt that the writing was very insightful: "It deserves full marks!"
As the Minister of Management and Education, Zhang Baixi was very concerned about the content of the education examination. After hearing this, he came over and after only taking a few glances, he exclaimed that it was excellent and picked it up to read it carefully.
The more Zhang Baixi read, the more frightened he became. In fact, he was currently studying academic reform, and what he was studying was almost exactly what Li Yu wrote.
At that time, Zhang Baixi once submitted a memorial to the "Regulations of the Imperial School", which was the Renyin school system, hoping to carry out educational reforms, but it was not implemented and not many people knew about it.
Because Zhang Baixi was not good at officialdom and was obsessed with education. Although the Renyin academic system he proposed was very close to the modern Western education concept, it was not adopted because there were not many people in the court who supported him.
It would not be until next year, 1903, that Zhang Zhidong, Zhang Baixi, and Rongqing would jointly submit a petition to reform the academic system, that is, the Guimao academic system.
This academic system advocates a Western-style education based on Japan. However, the proportion of subjects has been modified based on Zhang Baixi's work, greatly reducing the proportion of Western studies. Students mainly study a subset of classics and history. It can only be regarded as a transitional reform.
Moreover, if Zhang Zhidong had not personally submitted the memorial, I am afraid that the Guimao academic system would have been difficult to implement.
Now that Zhang Baixi saw Li Yu's article, he really admired it very much. Every word was written in his heart: "I also think it can be given full marks!"
The Minister of Management and Education has already spoken, so naturally there is no problem.
But the chapter on self-cultivation and righteousness really only has a pitiful sixteen points.
Although Lin Shu translated many famous works, he actually did not understand foreign languages. He basically relied on others to translate them and then polish them into Chinese.
Therefore, Yan Fu was mainly responsible for grading foreign languages. Soon he also found an article written in pencil.
In fact, Yan Fu marked the papers very quickly because there were too many blank papers in foreign languages, especially those from the Shixueguan, where there were not many foreign language topics.
If it is said that using a pencil to write articles on moral cultivation and righteousness is seeking death, then it is perfectly suitable to use it to write in English.
At that time, people's writing habits with brushes were difficult to adapt to the English horizontal direction from left to right. Even if they were forced to write, many of them would be crooked and difficult to read.
On the contrary, Li Yu's English handwriting is as beautiful as fireflies in the dark night, which is so eye-catching.
Coupled with many years of learning English under modern education, Li Yu's English level is not low. Yan Fu has nothing to say, so he gets full marks!
As for the Japanese article, there are a few people who can write better with brushes. After all, Japanese people’s writing habits are the same as those in China.
But Li Yu is not bad either, he still got a high score of 90.
Seeing that some of them were very excited when they saw the pencil writing, Ding Haoliang was unmoved. He had already seen Li Yu's answer sheet, but in fact he didn't want to read it at all, because these questions were as simple as breathing to him.
On the last day of marking, several people submitted their summary results. The first batch of enrollment targets for the Capital University School were originally 100 students for the Official School and 100 students for the Normal School.
But in the end, only 55 people from the official school passed and 76 people from the normal school passed.
Wu Rulun asked tentatively: "Sir, do you want to lower the standards and admit full applicants?"
Zhang Baixi seemed very determined: "No! Just recruit so many!"
Yes, the admission requirements have been lowered to such a low level and cannot be lowered any lower!
The final results were released, and indeed Li Yu ranked first. Although he failed in one subject, his scores in other subjects were so outstanding that his overall score undoubtedly ranked first.
Of course, the only one who failed in the chapter on self-cultivation and righteousness was Li Yu, who was also very dazzling.
Li Yu felt strange when he saw the list. It would be difficult to become the top pick of Peking University in a hundred years, but now it is easy.
Looking back, Feng Zuxun, He Yujie, Wu Jinglian, Fan Xiren, Zhu Xianwen, and Ouyang Mouyuan were all in high school.
A few people gathered at Dongxing Tower again in the evening, and had a feast of good wine and good food.
Li Yu asked: "Why did I only see the announcement of the results but not mention when to enroll?"
Fan Xiren is well-informed: "Of course it will take some time to enroll, but it will definitely start this year."
Li Yu nodded. Zhang Baixi and the others should be working intensively on various specific matters such as student accommodation, schooling, and teacher recruitment.
It was not easy to open a university in the late Qing Dynasty. Starting from scratch was the most difficult thing.
I have to say that Zhang Baixi’s contribution is indeed great. Without the saplings he planted, Cai Yuanpei and other presidents of Peking University would have an even harder time in the future.
Li Yudao: "From now on, you are all alumni, take care of each other and support each other. I wish you all a bright future and work together to revitalize China!"
Feng Zuxun said: "That's good. From now on, we must be like Mr. Li Yu and let foreigners see what we Chinese are like!"
Everyone is very happy. After all, they are in high school. Although they are not Jinshi in high school, their future in college is not necessarily worse than Jinshi, because their cognitive level has begun to slowly awaken, and this is the real killer.