jdhmnovel Chapter 147 Magistrate Yang: We must not let them be idle.
Chapter 147 Magistrate Yang: We must not let them be idle.
As winter set in, the weather grew colder and colder. Every morning, a layer of frost could be seen, and the ground gradually began to freeze. The once vigorous land reclamation had to be gradually halted.
Yang Shaofeng, the county magistrate, stood on the edge of Liumiao Village's land and looked directly at Liu Sanshier, asking, "How many acres of land has your village cleared? Can these acres be used to grow beans next year?"
Liu Thirty-Two looked ashamed and replied awkwardly, "Reporting to the lord, although there are cattle and horses bestowed by His Majesty and His Highness the Crown Prince, this time the land reclamation was all uncultivated land, so the amount of land reclaimed was relatively small. On average, each family reclaimed about ten mu, and the whole village reclaimed less than four hundred mu of land in total."
Magistrate Yang nodded in agreement.
With about 300 mu of land, assuming a family of five, that's an average of two mu more per person. And if each mu yields 200 jin of soybeans, that means each person could have an extra 400 jin of soybeans. If the soybeans are planted earlier, and other crops are planted after the soybean harvest, each person could have at least 500 jin more food per year.
It's a bit less, but if you add the fifteen mu of grain that were originally allocated to them, each person can get about 3,500 jin of grain per year on average. Based on each person eating 600 jin of grain per year, each person can save about 3,000 jin of grain per year.
Is this still the same impoverished Ningyang County?
Tsk tsk, to be able to turn Ningyang County into this state in just one year, I am truly awesome!
After secretly praising himself a few times, Yang Shaofeng, the county magistrate, simply lifted his robe and walked into the field wearing only his boots.
The ground was frozen solid and a little rough to the touch, but for Magistrate Yang, it brought back the feeling of stepping on the ridges of other people's fields on his way home from school in winter when he was a child.
After pacing back and forth in the field a few times, Magistrate Yang began to secretly make plans.
The land is frozen solid like this, so clearing the land is impossible. If we insist on clearing the land, the able-bodied men will have to consume a lot of food every day to keep up with the energy expenditure, which is not cost-effective.
Similarly, the road to Yanzhou Prefecture could no longer be repaired, and the brick and cement kilns also had to be shut down, including the last artificial lake in the north of the city that had not yet been completely excavated.
Before the ground thaws next spring, Ningyang County's original population of over 2,000, plus more than 200 soldiers including Bo Wu, people who migrated from nearby areas, and all the exiled prisoners, totaling more than 3,000 people, will be left with nothing to do.
There are more than three thousand people, and almost half of them are men. If we don't let them do anything, what if one of them gets bold enough to say, "I have a bold idea"? And if there are a few other people with clever ideas and some skills around, who knows what kind of mess they might get into?
This is not okay.
We must not let them have any free time.
Magistrate Yang pondered for a long time before saying to Liu Thirty-Two, who was following closely beside him, "These next few days, let the able-bodied men of each village and neighborhood rest well. After Brother Limpy Fifth and the others finish their wedding, you village and neighborhood leaders should organize the people to learn to read and write. If everyone in any village or neighborhood can recognize one hundred characters and write their own name, I will reward them with a pig."
Liu Thirty-Two's face immediately fell.
Ever since the magistrate arrested the heads of the eight communities and sixteen villages and sent them to the Confucian temple to learn to read, these heads of communities and villages in Ningyang County have entered the darkest and most hopeless stage of their lives.
Hongwu Zhengyun?
The words on that thing are quite nice, but while I, Liu Thirty-Two, recognize those words, I don't recognize them!
Especially those initials and finals, those things are neither words nor characters, yet they look somewhat like words. The key is that they all look pretty much the same. Today you remember one and forget another, tomorrow you remember one and forget this one. Memorizing them is really a nightmare!
And another thing, it's easy to use a twig for other things, but when you actually try to write like a master in a sand table, your hand just can't control the twig!
What that master writes can be called calligraphy, but what I, Liu Thirty-Two, write is not even scribbling!
Now, the magistrate has asked me, Liu Thirty-Two, to teach the young and middle-aged men of Liu Temple Village to read?
My goodness! This is going to kill me, Old Liu!
The more he thought about it, the more panicked he became. So Liu Thirty-Two tentatively asked, "Sir, how about we arrange for them to do something else? I really can't teach them to read."
Upon hearing Liu Sanshier's words, Magistrate Yang immediately recalled Liu Sanshier's abysmal academic performance.
Or rather, every single head of the eight communities and sixteen villages in Ningyang County is an expert at farming, and they could probably make a name for themselves as bandits, but as for learning to read and write, well, that's just laughable.
They found learning difficult, but Magistrate Yang found teaching even more difficult!
Left with no other choice, Magistrate Yang had to abandon his idea of having Liu Sanshier and others teach the people of each village to read.
After a long silence, Magistrate Yang finally spoke, "Forget it, I won't count on you anymore. However, the school is about to have its winter break, so you should organize the villagers and have the students teach them. I will first teach a few of the better students to be junior teachers."
Liu Thirty-Two's eyes widened immediately.
My goodness! Those kids from Liu Miao Village who are studying at the county school are much younger than me, the village head, and the oldest one is even a generation younger than me. Yet I, as their uncle, am the one who has to organize the villagers to learn to read and write from those immature children.
The more he thought about it, the more frightened he became. Liu Thirty-Two put on a bitter face and said, "Sir, please spare us. We really can't read books. Otherwise, we won't trouble the teachers at the school."
Yang Shaofeng sneered and said, "Liu Thirty-Two, I am informing you, not discussing with you, understand? Why bother the young teachers in the school? If you had studied harder and mastered the initials and finals of the 'Hongwu Zhengyun' earlier, you could have taught the villagers to read yourselves. Why bother the students in the school?"
"Don't you think about it? These students in the school, even if they don't become officials, will at least be educated gentry. If this were back in the days of the Tartar government, you wouldn't have been able to get gentry to teach you to read and write even if you knelt down and begged. Now you have the opportunity to have gentry personally teach you to read and write, and you don't cherish it? You're really something!"
After giving Liu Sanshier a stern scolding, Magistrate Yang finally snorted and said, "Now I'll give you two choices: either let the students in the school be junior teachers and let them teach the people of your villages and communities to read and write, or let those temporary teachers in the school teach you."
Liu Thirty-Two was immediately dumbfounded.
The young teachers in the school were all juniors from their respective communities and neighborhoods. It would be a loss of face for the community leaders and neighborhood chiefs to have them teach the people from their communities and neighborhoods to read and write.
But the people the master mentioned, who were temporary teachers in the school, were relatives of Liu Hongchang and Master Geng, and they knew almost all the people in the villages. It would be even more awkward to let them teach.