Guide to traveling through the Northern Song Dynasty

When the situation in Japan changed, the Supreme Emperor had already started his journey.

The first stop was Tuxiu Academy in Baishashan, Gong County.

Meng Zhao and Yu Shanwei, the couple, moved here to live in seclusion and run a school since the Qin Hui case.

The original nameless mountain range was renamed Baisha Mountain in ancient books. Now it has developed into one of the top unofficial academies in the two capitals and surrounding areas.

It was initially small in scale. In the first year, it only educated surrounding village children free of charge and only imparted some elementary knowledge.

In the second year, the first batch of school buildings were built, and two famous Confucian scholars and seven famous teachers were invited to teach. Although the number of formal students is small, the family is either rich or noble.

In the third year, enrollment was expanded and a scholarship system was established to exempt students from poor families from tuition, accommodation and food expenses.

However, if you want to always receive student aid, you must have excellent scores in the entrance exam. And every year when taking the exam, students must maintain Grade A grades in more than three subjects, and at least Grade B grades in the remaining subjects. If it fails to meet the standard once, it will be left for observation. If you fail to meet the standard twice, your qualification for student aid will be cancelled.

In the fourth year, a great Confucian was hired to teach, and Shangshe (elite class) was opened to recruit failed scholars and candidates.

To this day, 67 students who have studied at Tuanxiu Academy have been admitted to the scholar examination, 33 have been admitted to the imperial examination, and 14 have been admitted to the imperial examination.

This ratio may seem strange, but it's actually easy to understand. For example, among the 14 people who passed the Jinshi exam, 10 of them came to Tuanxiu Academy for tutoring after failing the general examination.

But it is not a school cramming for the imperial examination. While daily management is strict, the academic atmosphere is extremely free and open.

Every quarter, Hanlin Academy officials, Taixue professors, or top private scholars are invited to the Kuanxiu Academy to give lectures.

Every six months, another group of scholars will be invited to the Tuanxiu Academy for academic exchanges—even academic debates!

"Student Meng Zhao (Yu Shanwei), meet my mentor!"

The couple took a few teachers and students down the mountain to greet him. They knew Zhu Guoxiang's temper and did not disrupt today's teaching activities. Most of the teachers and students are currently attending classes in the academy.

Zhu Guoxiang smiled and nodded, and went up the mountain with everyone.

The magistrate and chief registrar of Gong County also came with them, and they all had officials on their heads, saying they wanted to protect the safety of the Supreme Emperor.

The mountains here are not steep, so Zhu Guoxiang took his wife and children to watch them all the way.

It seems that I heard that the Supreme Emperor is coming. The teachers are teaching hard and the students are studying very energetically. Especially the children in the primary school class read aloud at the top of their lungs, and the sound of reading can be heard from far away.

Yu Shanwei said: "The elementary school class is opened at the foot of the mountain, mainly for children from two nearby villages. They are free of tuition and go home to eat and stay. There are relatively few Mongolian children from outside and have to pay various fees. Those with excellent results in the elementary school class can Go up to the mountain and study formally.”

"It's great to benefit our neighbors." Zhu Guoxiang nodded in approval.

Meng Zhao said: "This is also following what my mentor (Zhu Guoxiang) did in Daming Village and Wangchuan Valley."

After walking for a while, a school building appeared on the hillside.

Yu Shanwei introduced: "Here are the outer house and the inner house. Students who have just come to the academy usually study in the outer house. If they have the reputation of being a scholar, they go directly to the inner house. If they have the reputation of being a scholar, they go to the upper house on the top of the mountain. further study.”

Zhu Guoxiang stayed at the top of the mountain for a day and personally inspected the students' homework.

In the afternoon of the next day, a middle-aged man hurried over. He was urgently invited by Meng Zhao and his wife to give lectures.

This person was dressed as a commoner, but he was wearing silk clothes: "Your Majesty, Zhang Lixiu, pays homage to His Majesty the Emperor!"

"Do you have an official status?" Zhu Guoxiang asked.

Zhang Lixiu said: "I am a native of Kaifeng, and my family has been doing business for generations. At the age of eighteen, I entered Kaifeng Taixue Waishe (self-financed class). After graduation, I was awarded the status of a scholar. I failed the exam three times. Later, the imperial court reformed the system of subjects, and I was admitted to the imperial examination. I worked as a craftsman and participated in the development of steam coin machines and steam water pumps. I had the honor to meet His Majesty the Emperor twice before.”

Zhu Guoxiang laughed: "So we are still acquaintances. Are you an official in the Ministry of Industry?"

Zhang Lixiu said: "My father passed away a few years ago, and I returned to Kaifeng for Ding You. Although the court shortened Ding You's time, I did not return to Beijing to resume my duties. Now, although I have an official status, I have no official position."

"Why?" Zhu Guoxiang asked.

Zhang Lixiu explained: "While I was in Dingyou, I suddenly had an idea. In order to verify this idea, I traveled all over the country. I just returned home not long ago and wrote a paper that has not yet been published. The content of today's lecture is exactly this."

Zhu Guoxiang smiled and said, "Then I won't ask. I'm waiting to hear your lectures." He then encouraged, "You are very good like this. If you have an idea, you will verify it, and you will work hard and not be attached to official position. This is how learning should be done. purely."

The next day, morning.

All the students came to listen to the lectures, and they could sit in the front row.

If you are an internal or external student, you have to fight for your place. My hands and feet were slow, and I was sitting at the very back, so I couldn't hear what was being said on stage.

Zhu Guoxiang naturally sat in the front row.

Zhang Lixiu took out some experimental equipment and placed a glass tube filled with mercury upside down in the water tank. The mercury stopped falling after it dropped a few centimeters. These few centimeters of space are vacuum, and the atmospheric pressure can also be calculated.

Zhu Guoxiang and his students had proposed and verified relevant scientific knowledge as early as ten years ago.

Zhang Lixiu stood on the stage and said: "Some students who love physics should have known about atmospheric pressure and vacuum for a long time. But is the atmospheric pressure the same everywhere in the world?"

When this question was asked, Zhu Guoxiang smiled.

The teachers and students in the audience didn't think much about it. Of course they felt that the atmospheric pressure was the same everywhere.

Zhang Lixiu continued: "After I gave my father Dingyou, I took a boat all the way south. Everywhere I went, I measured the atmospheric pressure there. I climbed to the highest mountain in the area and drilled into the deepest valley in the area. I also went to the coastal provinces, I measured the atmospheric pressure on the seashore, then went from the east to the west, and also went to the newly established provinces of Yunnan and Guizhou, and then to the Tibetan tribes in the far west..."

"Based on the field measurement data, I can draw a conclusion: the atmospheric pressure at the seaside is the strongest, and the atmospheric pressure over Tubo is the weakest! For a very high mountain, the atmospheric pressure at the bottom of the mountain is the strongest, and the atmospheric pressure at the top of the mountain is the weakest!"

Everyone was stunned, and Zhu Guoxiang smiled even more happily.

Zhang Lixiu was still expressing his opinion: "As we all know, water flows to lower places. When rivers enter the sea, the source of the river is naturally higher, while the sea is the lowest. Coupled with the difference in air pressure between the top of the mountain and the bottom of the mountain, can we speculate? : The higher the place, the weaker the air pressure; the lower the place, the stronger the air pressure.”

Tuanxiu Academy mainly focuses on imperial examinations, but it places more emphasis on regular subjects (the Four Books, Six Classics and Mathematics) because students all want to be civil servants.

There are also courses in academic subjects (physics, chemistry, astronomy, geography, literature and history, epigraphy, etc.), but the number of students willing to study is relatively small.

A physics teacher raised his hand and asked: "If you follow what you said, if people can fly into the sky, the higher they fly, the thinner the air will be?"

"Yes!"

Zhang Lixiu said: "People need to breathe to live. There should be a kind of Qi in the air that is necessary for people to continue to live. This can also explain why it is extremely difficult for people to breathe in the extremely high-lying Tubo tribes. It’s impossible for people to do strenuous activities there, and one of my followers died in Tubo inexplicably.”

Teachers and students who knew a lot about physics began to think seriously after hearing this.

Zhang Zhangxiu suddenly picked up the chalk and drew the sun, earth and planets on the blackboard: "Is there a possibility? The closer we are to the center of the earth, the more abundant the air is. The further away from the center of the earth, the thinner the air. . As the altitude increases, the air decreases little by little until there is no air at all.”

The person who was most shocked this time was the teacher who studied astronomy and geography.

A teacher asked: "What do you mean, your Excellency, the earth is surrounded by air, and the outside is completely vacuum?"

"Yes!"

Zhang Zhangxiu has spent several years doing field measurements and has come up with his own set of views: "Those who study physics and astronomy already know that the sun, earth and five stars all have gravitational pull. The sun has the greatest gravitational pull, so the earth and five stars surround the sun. Operation."

"The air is also an invisible but perceptible entity. The earth's gravity attracts the air, because the air is flowing, and more air is attracted to the ground, so the air at high altitudes is naturally thinner."

"I guess that the air is the earth's shield, protecting the earth from the sun. The herdsmen I saw in Tubo had their faces sunburned and their skin was rough. My followers and I visited seven tribes in Tubo. For months, our faces were all red. The sun there was not strong, but it felt like pinpricks after being exposed for a long time. Is it because the air is thin and the sun can hit people’s skin directly?”

The more people listened, the more mysterious it became, but they could not argue. They had never even been to Tubo.

Zhu Guoxiang became more and more satisfied, but soon he was speechless.

Zhang Lixiu started talking about yin and yang: "The two qi of yin and yang interact with each other, so there are all living things on the earth. These two qi of yin and yang exist in the air. The pure yang energy in the sun is too strong, and the living beings in the world cannot face its sharpness. , it is necessary for the air to protect the earth like a shield. This is the process of yin and yang reconciliation. The two qi of yin and yang exist in the air. The spiritual practitioners in the world can absorb and refine the essence in the air to achieve the effect of longevity. "

Zhu Guoxiang had an embarrassed look on his face. Why did his normal lecture on physics involve Yin and Yang and cultivation?

Immediately afterwards, Zhang Lixiu began to talk about the creation of Yin and Yang, and the crooked building almost tilted out of the solar system.

Zhu Guoxiang had to interrupt: "Do you have any other discoveries?"

Zhang Lixiu finally returned to science. He asked his entourage to carry a large number of fossils: "In the past few years of traveling to various provinces, I think what Shen Mengxi Gong (Shen Kuo) said is reasonable. The earth has gone through great changes, and the mountains, rivers, and oceans are all changing. I even In the extremely high terrain of Tubo, where it is difficult to breathe, we found the remains of shells that should have lived in the ocean, and there were quite a lot of them, piles embedded in the rocks.”

Zhu Guoxiang was satisfied again, as long as he didn't talk about metaphysics.