Traveling through time and space to become a child, supporting the family by catching fish and shrim

Chen Lang handed Guoguo to Li Xiuzhi and returned the greeting. "I am a student from this county. I wonder if you two have any advice for me."

The tall scholar said, "My name is Ning Wenxu, and this is my cousin... Ning Qi."

"We two brothers are from the neighboring Jing'an County. We came here specifically to participate in the Nanhe County Poetry Festival."

"But after wandering around the county for the better part of an hour, I couldn't find the specific location of the poetry gathering. Seeing that you are also a scholar, I came up to bother you and ask. I hope you can tell me. I would be very grateful."

Chen Lang raised his hand and pointed southwest, saying, "Do you see that tall building?"

"That's the Fuyang Building, where the poetry gathering is held."

"But I would like to remind you two that if you want to enter the Fuyang Building without an invitation, you must first write a poem and post it on the poetry bulletin board outside the building for people to review. Only after it is accepted by the majority of people will you be eligible to enter."

"Or you can write a poem and give it to a brothel girl to sing. If it's a good piece, someone will come to you and invite you to enter the Fuyang Building."

Ning Wenxu was very happy and said, "Thank you for letting me know."

"Brother, you are also a scholar. You should also participate in the poetry gathering at Fuyang Tower, right? Why don't you go together?"

Ning Qi tugged at Ning Wenxu's sleeve and whispered, "Didn't you see he has a family?"

Ning Wenxu reacted, patted his head, and said, "Oh, I forgot about this in the excitement. Please don't blame me, brother."

Chen Lang said: "Ignorance is not a crime, and I do want to go to Fuyanglou, but not now."

Ning Wenxu said, "Then let's go ahead, brothers. We'll meet at the Mansion later."

"Farewell!"

After bidding farewell to the Ning brothers and sisters, Li Xiuzhi said, "Erlang, don't delay your important work. Guoguo and I will go back first."

Chen Lang said, "No rush. We are just attending a market right now. It's still early for the poetry gathering."

"Besides, how can I feel at ease if you two go back?"

"Keep walking around and see if you can run into Xu Fei. I'll feel at ease if he takes care of you."

Li Xiuzhi asked, "Erlang, don't you need to prepare some poetry?"

Chen Lang tapped his temple and said, "Don't worry, your husband has kept countless masterpieces here."

Li Xiuzhi thought Chen Lang was just comforting her, but she didn't know that Chen Lang's words were still conservative.

The family of three continued to stroll around the county town, but this time they didn't guess riddles.

As a father, Chen Lang would not allow himself to fail to guess the riddles in front of Guoguo.

After strolling around for more than half an hour, the family of three arrived at the Fuyang Building.

When I first arrived here, I heard bursts of exclamations.

"Beautiful sentence, beautiful sentence!"

"It seems that the top scorer in this year's county case must be the young master of the Zhang family."

"Haha, the Xu family's young master's poetry is not weak at all. It's too early to say who will be the first in the county case."

"These two, one fourteen and the other fifteen, if they pass the exam, they will be the youngest scholars in the county."

"It's a disgrace to the imperial examination system for a student from a merchant family to take the exam!"

"Who is talking nonsense here!"

"Are you people thinking of experiencing the hardship of corvée labor again?"

The empress dowager of this dynasty is a money-grubber, and the emperor of this dynasty is a filial son.

In order to satisfy his mother's extravagant spending, the emperor of this dynasty issued an edict in the third year after he ascended the throne.

As long as a merchant family pays a certain level of tax, their children will be eligible to take the entrance exam.

Moreover, the taxation is tiered. For example, if you pay 5,000 taels of tax a year, your family can have a child pass the college entrance examination.

If the tax payment exceeds 10,000 taels, the number of places increases to two.

And so on.

After this decree was issued, it aroused strong opposition from scholars all over the world, but the emperor did not care about it. No matter how much opposition there was, the decree must be implemented.

The scholars were furious and joined forces to try to resist the imperial power and refused to take part in the imperial examination the following year.

When the emperor learned about this, he immediately changed the time of the imperial examination!

In the past, the county examination started in February, the prefectural examination was in May, and the academy examination was in July.

This process involves two exams every three years.

Starting from August, there are the county examination, provincial examination and palace examination, which are held every three years.

After the scholars refused to take the imperial examination, the emperor moved the county examination from February to September, which was after the autumn harvest and before the corvee labor.

The reason for this arrangement is very simple. Anyone who does not take the imperial examination will be directly arrested and forced to perform labor service!

Those who took the imperial examination but failed were also arrested on the spot and forced to do labor service.

And they are the most arduous labors!

With this change, the children of merchants were not affected at all because they were rich and could be exempted from labor service by paying bribes even if they failed the exam.

However, those students who turn a deaf ear to the world outside and only focus on reading the books of sages are complaining bitterly.

Their bodies were so fragile that they could not withstand the ravages of hard labor.

In just two years, the number of scholars who died from forced labor exceeded four digits.

But the emperor's small treasury was filled with gold and silver collected from merchants. Some idle people in the market roughly calculated that the emperor's small treasury had earned at least one million taels in the past two years!

In the face of such huge interests, scholars will just die.

Besides, not all children of merchants are good-for-nothings. There are also many very outstanding children who enter the court and officialdom through imperial examinations.

When the scholars saw this, they realized that they could no longer resist, otherwise the world would become the domain of merchants.

How can such a pure and innocent world be tainted by the stench of money!

So these scholars picked up their books again, determined to take the world back from the hands of merchants.

When scholars get angry, they are indeed more powerful than children from merchant families. A few years later, the number of officials in the court who came from merchant families was only about 30% of the peak period.

After the literati regained the right to speak, the first thing they did was to "patch" the emperor's decree of that year.

Children of merchants could take the exam, but were not allowed to get involved in any business from then on.

Once discovered, the qualification to take the exam will be permanently revoked.

Scholars who have obtained academic titles are also not allowed to do business. If discovered, their qualifications for taking the imperial examination will be revoked, and in serious cases, all their academic titles will be revoked.

After the patch was released, an endless struggle began in the court.

Officials representing the interests of merchants and officials representing the interests of literati attacked each other and sabotaged each other, while the emperor sat on the dragon throne. As long as it did not affect his making money and being filial to the empress dowager, he did not care how the two factions quarreled.

The emperor even hoped that the officials would fight each other, because if the ministers were busy fighting among themselves, they would not fight against him, the emperor. He could also consolidate his imperial power through the fight between the two factions!