Guo Xuexiu informed Zhang Yue and Guo Lin that Miao Sanniang would not come to the private school for a while.
Zhang Yue and Guo Lin were stunned.
Only then did Guo Xuexiu explain the reason clearly. It turned out that Miao Sanniang's father was a wealthy family in the county, and his family had purchased many acres of land. However, this man had a big shortcoming, which was picking.
This person treats his family and servants as sparingly as possible, even for himself. He lives a simple life, wears out his clothes for several years, and only has one wife and no concubines.
Miao's father did not love anything other than food, clothing, housing, and the only thing he loved were his two sons from his first wife. He doted on them to the point of being lawless, but he was as stingy as an outsider towards his own daughter Miao Sanniang.
He could have asked a female teacher to teach his daughter how to read at home, but Miao's father was unwilling to do so and asked her to go out and study in a rural school like Guo Xuexu. If Miao Sanniang hadn't insisted on studying, Miao's father would have stopped even studying for her.
Now that Miao Sanniang has been studying for two months, Miao's father felt that Miao Sanniang was a waste of money in studying, so he sent her home. Miao Sanniang cried and fussed all night to no avail, and finally said goodbye to Zhang Yue and Guo Lin.
No chance either.
Zhang Yue felt very sad when he heard the news. After all, he would have no place to eat in the future, but when he turned around, he saw that Guo Lin's expression was indeed a bit secretly sad.
This was also the case in ancient times. There were relatively few interactions between men and women. It was possible for a man and a woman to develop feelings for each other after being together for so long.
As for Zhang Yue, he was also sad for a while. It seemed that he would have nowhere to earn a living in the future. Since there was no such channel, Zhang Yue had no choice but to focus on his studies.
The Book of Changes is the first of the Five Classics.
Guo Xuexu also didn't understand the explanation very well, but asked Zhang Yue to memorize it first. Zhang Yue didn't blame Guo Xuexu. The Yi Jing was so difficult that no Confucian scholar from ancient times to the present dared to claim that he could really understand it.
There is no special effort involved in reading the Bible. Memorize every word and sentence and make them familiar. One day in the future, you will be able to understand them all. If you speak a lot, you will naturally be able to speak.
No wonder Confucianism in this era is called elite education for no reason. This is like uncooked rice. No one with a good stomach can digest it. Most impatient people are stuck in this half-way, memorizing a lot of books but not having any knowledge.
Reading hard every day makes it impossible to understand it.
In the following days, Zhang Yue continued to discuss with his senior brother. If he didn't understand something, he asked senior brother Guo.
Zhang Yue was still afraid of disturbing his study, but Senior Brother Guo said: "Although I have learned the Book of Changes a long time ago, I am afraid that I will forget it. If you ask me again, I can review the past and learn the new."
Zhang Yue heard this and put down his psychological burden.
"But Junior Brother, why do you memorize the Yi Jing so fast? Yesterday I saw you were still reading Meng Gua, and today you have read Kan Gua and Li Gua. Are you sleeping during the day, but got up in the middle of the night and secretly lit a lamp to read at night?
?”
Zhang Yue couldn't laugh or cry and said: "How can senior brother make such assumptions about me? Am I the kind of person who steals some lamp oil to study?"
Guo Lindao: "Then why can you memorize the sutra so fast? It takes me three to five days to memorize it, but you can memorize it in one day."
Zhang Yue thought for a while and said: "There is no other way. I don't know why I memorized it after reading it once. Maybe this is the so-called photographic memory!"
Guo Lin doubted: "Are you really such a genius? But I see that your diary is not very good. Yesterday I asked you where you put the candlestick. You said you had forgotten it. It took you half a day to find it. If it is true that you have a photographic memory,
Forget, it won’t be like this.”
Zhang Yue smiled and said, "I only do this when it comes to studying."
"Then I'll give you the book, and you can recite a paragraph to me on the spot!" Guo Lin insisted.
Zhang Yue laughed...
Fortunately, Guo Lin is not a serious person: "With your talent, if you work hard, you will definitely be able to study in the county. Then you can return to the city. I remember that last year, the county study was compiled by Zhizhai, and there were fifty chapters each of the scriptures and their meanings.
As long as you can answer six of the ten questions correctly."
"It's different when you enter the county school. In addition to the Zhang family's clan in this county, the county school is a gathering place for outstanding people. After you enter the county school, you can learn from classmates Xuezheng and even give lectures in person. In this way
It might be possible to issue a solution test in two or three years."
Zhang Yue nodded after hearing this. This is a bit like getting into a good high school in order to get into a good university. These things are all too familiar to Zhang Yue, who has experienced the torment of essays and questions in his previous life.
For a student like him who relies entirely on rote memorization of the Nine Classics, the teacher is actually less important. The most important thing is that the county school has a collection of Nine Classics. This set of Nine Classics given by Qingshi after the establishment of the school is the Imperial College.
Supervised engraving.
The supervised engraving is not only exquisite, but also has absolutely no typos after proofreading.
The ones engraved in folk bookstores are equivalent to dB books, which can be said to be full of typos. Other typos are fine, but if one word is wrong in the Nine Classics, and this question happens to be tested in the future, then it will be wrong.
There was a joke among scholars in the Song Dynasty. There was a scholar named Xuezheng who wrote "Kun is a cauldron" in the Yi question as gold. The following students asked Xuezheng for advice, and Xuezheng explained it clearly, and he was able to justify himself.
The next day, the student read the scriptures and asked for advice. After the truth came out, the student slowly said: "I'm afraid what you read is the Jian version, and the Jian version is the word cauldron."
This Jianben is the Jianyang edition.
Therefore, Guo Xueguo also spent a lot of effort to borrow the I Ching from the county school Xuezhengli to Zhang Yue instead of reciting it himself or lending them the copy copied by Guo Lin like a teacher.
The purpose is to maintain the accuracy of the original text. You still have to take responsibility for yourself when it comes to reading.
In the Song Dynasty, many ministers from poor backgrounds left behind good stories about borrowing and copying books when they were studying in county schools. For example, the famous minister Liu Zhi studied Zeng's "Spring and Autumn Biography" by Gu Liang in Zeng's Prefecture School, and Fan Weizong's "Book of Han", which he read by hand.
Of'.
Having said this, Guo Lin paused and said, "Sir, I have taught a total of twelve disciples, including you and me, and none of them has ever been able to get into the county school. Senior Brother Han could have tried before, but he gave up halfway."
.”
"What if I don't go to county school?" Zhang Yue asked.
Guo Lindao: "Since the establishment of the county school in this county, there has never been a scholar outside the Zhang clan school or the county school who has been admitted in the Fajie examination. You may have heard of Zhang Xu in the county school. He entered the county at the age of twelve.
He is one of the best in the county in terms of academics, articles, and poems, but no one dares to guarantee that he will pass the examination."
"With your qualifications, if you work hard, you can enter the county school in the future. As for me, I have to work hard and maybe have a chance. In the future, if you want to pass the exam, but I didn't pass the exam, senior brother, I will lose all face."
"If you are admitted to the county school and fail the exam, then you are not ordinary!" Zhang Yue said again.
Guo Lindao: "It's different. Not only can you save tuition fees by enrolling in a county school, but I heard that grain and rice are also subsidized recently. From now on, everyone in the county will respect you and call you a talented person."
Guo Lin made a long speech to ask Zhang Yue to strengthen his determination to take the county school examination and to stimulate his potential.
"Let's give it a try!" Zhang Yue replied.
After Guo Lin said these words to Zhang Yue, he did not want to promote the biggest person, not Zhang Yue but himself.
Guo Lin used to study like a man before the lights were on at midnight, but now he is even more diligent. Sometimes when he gets tired of studying at night, he pricks his knees with bamboo sticks.
This is all due to the overhanging beam.
This is self-abuse.
Seeing that his senior brother was like this, Zhang Yue did not dare to idle away. He even reduced his nap during the day, from two hours to one hour.
At night, I read for an hour after dark, then go to bed and sleep until midnight.
But for Zhang Yue, how comfortable is it to read for ten hours during the day and then for another ten hours after going to bed? So when Zhang Yue woke up, his eyes were filled with the words of the Nine Classics.
The past few months of studying were difficult, but it reminded Zhang Yue of the time when he was in the third year of junior high school and the third year of high school. For some reason, Zhang Yue particularly liked those years when he thinks about it.
It's not that he worked hard to get into a good school, but that he likes the self who works so hard. He thinks of the self who chased the moon and was illuminated by the moon. He has never encountered that kind of self again.
Later in life, he only learned how to 'fish'.
But one day Zhang Yue got up at night and went to Guolin to hide in a pine and cry alone.
Guo Lin cried and hit the tree with his fist: "I have studied so hard, but why am I still not familiar with the Nine Classics? I am so stupid, even worse than my junior fellow apprentice who is lazy every day, I am really useless.
I failed my father’s intentions.”
"Sanniang! Sanniang! I miss you so much, you know."
Zhang Yue heard this...Senior brother is really boring and doesn't even mention it to me on weekdays.
Now that he was studying like this, Zhang Yue was really worried that Guo Lin's body would not be able to bear it. If he fell ill, his life would be lost, let alone studying. However, what Zhang Yue did not expect was that it was Guo Xuexue who fell ill first.
Summer passes and autumn comes, time flies like an arrow.
After autumn, Zhang Yue had memorized both the Yi Jing and Er Ya. When he was about to read other scriptures, Guo Xuexu fell ill.
Guo Xuexiu had a cough at first, and then a high fever. Later, he asked the local doctor in the village to diagnose him as typhoid fever. Typhoid fever was a very serious disease in ancient times.
Knowing this, Guo Xuexuan could no longer teach, and the children stopped coming. His wife boiled some herbs grown in the mountains for him to take every day.
Guo Lin was a very filial person. Seeing that Guo Xuexue had no money to buy medicine for treatment, he was very worried.
Forced by desperation, Guo Lin decided to find a way to make a living to treat Guo Xuexu's illness... This way of making a living was as a servant.
Being a book servant means copying books for others. This is a livelihood specially provided for scholars.
Many celebrities have had this experience.
Take Ban Gu, for example. It is recorded in the Han Dynasty that Ban Gu's family was poor, and he often wrote letters to official servants to support him. He worked hard for a long time, and he quit his job and wrote with a sigh: "A man has no other ambitions. He should just imitate Fu Jiezi, Zhang Qian made contributions to foreign lands in order to win the title of marquis."
, An Neng has been busy writing and studying for a long time?
There is also Kan Ze, a famous official of the Eastern Wu Dynasty during the Three Kingdoms period. The Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms records that "the family was a farmer, and he was eager to learn. He lived in poverty and had no resources. He often wrote books for others to provide paper and pen. After he finished writing, he also recited it many times."
In the Song Dynasty, there was a man called Cai Ding, who "came from a small and poor family. His father was a slave, and he made a living by writing letters from county jailers. He was educated as an envoy, traveled to rural schools, and became slightly famous."
It can be seen that many poor scholars started out as servants.
As for the place that provided Guo Lin with this livelihood, it was the Zhang clan school a few miles away.