Chapter 321: Mao Zhong

High noon.

When a large, calloused hand grasped the rope and shook it up and down, the "ding-dang, ding-dang" of the bronze bell resounded throughout the campus.

After the bell had rung for half a minute, the lame gatekeeper Great Lord stepped down from the square platform in the center of the campus and walked alone toward the main gate.

And from the teaching building behind him, a huge wave of students soon surged out. These students, both men and women, were uniformly dressed in blue cloth school uniforms and canvas sneakers, all at that half-grown age. The moment they burst from the building, they shouted and roughhoused as they charged toward the mess hall.

Chikan Middle School had not been established long; its construction only began after the Fourth School was completed.

As immigrants continued to arrive, the early Chikan Academy had already been renamed Chikan First School, and several subsequent schools had sprung up one after another in their corresponding residential areas.

Things were different now from before; a certain regime already had a population of over 400,000. With such a large base, a small number of people were bound to be selected. Though the knowledge structures of these individuals were somewhat incomplete, they could already study junior and senior high school curricula.

By this point, the establishment of the first middle school had inevitably been put on the agenda.

Thus, once Chikan Middle School was built, it immediately gathered over 200 students.

The student body was divided into two parts. The first part consisted of the top students who had graduated step-by-step from the various schools.

Although it had been less than two years since the Transmigrators arrived, because the schools only had two subjects—mathematics and language arts—there were always some children in every class who could endure the loneliness and tedium, working tirelessly from morning till night, plus evening self-study. The primary attribute of a top student is the ability to endure hardship.

After graduating in just over a year, these children entered the junior high division of Chikan Middle School.

The other part of the student body consisted of older Ming people.

The majority of these Ming people were from the urban classes of places like Hangzhou and Fuzhou. As for their identities... down-and-out certified students, unemployed shop assistants, begging monks, and a few Xiucai scholars—their professions were quite a mixed bag.

The literacy rate in the Ming Dynasty was very uneven; in remote areas, an entire county town might not have more than a few scholars. But in a large city like Hangzhou, even among the urban class, the literacy rate was quite high. Ordinary weaving households would usually have their children learn arithmetic and characters... so that in the future, if a shop was short a clerk, with luck they could endure until their thirties or forties and possibly become a shopkeeper.

As the times grew increasingly harsh over these years, there were always local "city folk" who, unable to get by, would flee to Dayuan to make a living.

Indeed, recently, the proportion of urban-class individuals among the immigrants shipped from the direction of Hangzhou had shown a slowly rising trend.

The arrival of these people added much vitality to Dayuan society. Not to mention those who could read, even ordinary weavers were ready-made workers capable of enduring tedious assembly-line work, far more useful than those sluggish, dull-witted farmers.

After the first wave of children burst from the teaching building, a short while later, a group of older junior high students walking steadily followed out from the building.

These people were the certified students and shop assistants just mentioned... they too had graduated properly from the schools and were the outstanding ones among their peers, only their schooling career had been very short.

For a shop assistant who could originally read and do accounts, memorizing simplified characters against a conversion table was effortless. As for learning mathematics, once these people understood how to convert Suzhou numerals into Arabic numerals, their learning speed was equally fast... after all, it was elementary school math, nothing difficult.

Thus, a common scene often appeared in the school classrooms: the little kids sitting in the front rows learning step-by-step, while those stubble-faced "classmates" in the back rows would skip grades continuously within a few months, or go straight to middle school.

The group now walking out of the teaching building were the "junior high students" selected from the vast pool of literate immigrants. These people could quickly adapt to the educational model of later generations, integrating their existing knowledge into the framework of new knowledge in a short time, and could be considered "talents needed by society."

The younger junior high students couldn't stand hunger; the moment the dismissal bell rang, they whooshed out in a rush.

The older ones, however, still retained a bit of reserve, and so the first tacit understanding since the founding of Chikan Middle School came into being: let the children go first.

Among the group of laughing and chatting older junior high students, Mao Zhong was one of the older ones. He was already approaching thirty, and had previously worked as an accountant for a shop in a town near Jiaxing, also running errands to collect rent on the side.

Who could have expected that this August, the sea tides would go mad, and the long-dilapidated dikes of Qiantang were breached. Accompanied by simultaneous torrential rain, along the line of Haiyan, Jiaxing, Shanyin, Kuaiji, Xiaoshan, Shangyu, and Yuyao, "countless people, livestock, and dwellings were swept away and drowned; the number of coastal and suburban residents who drowned was beyond counting; seawater flowed directly into the prefectural city, and boats could travel the streets. Those who drowned were each counted in the tens of thousands."

... It is no exaggeration to say that Chongzhen was the unluckiest emperor in history: from the year of his enthronement, 1628, the seven weapons of the Little Ice Age—drought, flood, locusts, tides, hail, gales, and frost—as if hearing a starting pistol, began to ravage China's wealthiest Jiangnan region in turn, brutally smashing the Ming Empire's money bag to smithereens.

The most uncanny part is: by the final years of Chongzhen's reign, these disasters gradually subsided again... and by the time Xuanye ascended the throne, the Little Ice Age had just ended... the praise of "obeying Heaven's mandate, favorable weather, and a prosperous nation at peace" thus fell upon the head of Kang Mazi, who was dining on dead chicken, and the grand hat of "Eternal Sage-Emperor" was conveniently brought out.

One can only say Chongzhen was too unlucky.

Mao Zhong was ruined in this tide disaster.

The several villages and mulberry gardens where he had collected rent for years were all struck by disaster; the crops were flooded, and entire farming households were left floating in the seawater. Not only did his employer's outstanding loans go down the drain, but the mulberry gardens and cotton fields he had invested in were also completely ruined—land scoured by the sea tide would become saline-alkaline, and its price would plummet. In the terms of later generations, these mulberry gardens and cotton fields had hit the floor limit.

Thus, at the same moment Mao Zhong saw the owner of the commercial firm hang himself, he too went bankrupt... the bit of silver he had scrimped and saved, including borrowed funds, had also been placed in the firm's accounts and invested together.

Next, the accountant who was owed money became the one being hounded for debts...

After losing his entire family fortune, the bankrupt Mao Zhong could only take his wife and child and flee. Fortunately, escaping was rather convenient nowadays—the fact that Tangzhuang outside Hangzhou City was "recruiting workers" year-round had long ceased to be a secret.

From the moment a certain someone ran to Fuzhou and received the Mobile Corps Commander General Seal, the originally barely sustainable "Hangzhou Station Underground Secret Population Transport Line" had simply hung up the signboard of "Cao's Grain Platform Agency" and begun semi-public "labor intermediary" activities.

Outside Tangzhuang, at Caishikou in Hangzhou City, and even outside Suzhou City, Hangzhou Station had set up "labor stalls," ready at any time to ship away the poor wretches they had "recruited."

So Mao Zhong, with his whole family and no way out, registered at Tangzhuang and boarded a ship. But after arriving in Dayuan, the family discovered they did not encounter the suffering they had imagined; instead, life became much easier.

Mao Zhong and his 8-year-old son first entered school together. Then, before long, Mao Zhong skipped grades to middle school.

By this point, the Mao family suddenly discovered they had money again!

Not to mention that Mao's son's food, drink, and tuition at school were all free; from the day Mao Zhong himself entered middle school, not only were his room, board, uniform, textbooks, and stationery free, but he also received a monthly scholarship of 2 taels of silver...

"Isn't this just like being a Stipend Student in the county school?" Poor Mao Zhong, a man of shop assistant origins, had, after going bankrupt at the end of his rope, actually ended up becoming the Stipend Student he had envied since childhood...

The women of the Mao family also had work to do: his wife, who could do accounts, soon became a warehouse manager at the street office, responsible for keeping ledgers and distributing pots, bowls, and pans to new immigrants, with a monthly wage of 3 taels of silver.

The Mao family's vitality was thus restored: they carefully calculated and found that, based on their current income, it would probably take no more than three or four years to pay off their housing loan.

Therefore, Mao Zhong's gratitude toward the Cao Clan's military regime grew with each passing day. Yes, in the eyes of the Ming people, the Cao Clan, like the historical Zheng Clan, was just a traditional military strongman, no different from the likes of Wu Sangui or Mao Wenlong.

After the group of short-haired "Stipend Students" arrived at the school mess hall, chatting and laughing, the younger junior high students were already eating heartily with their iron lunch boxes.

Today's lunch was ordinary: a large piece of fried tomato-sauce yellow-croaker was the main dish, with a side of stir-fried seasonal vegetables, and each person also received a bowl of yogurt. The staple was mashed potatoes, with unlimited roasted seaweed and purple seaweed flower soup.

Eating large mouthfuls of the sweet-and-sour fried fish chunks, drenched in red tomato sauce on top, Mao Zhong felt utterly content from the bottom of his heart.

It wasn't that the Ming side lacked fine cuisine or famous dishes, but those could only be eaten by great households or at merchant banquets. For an ordinary meal in a county school here to be this delicious was something Mao Zhong had seen for the first time in his life.

The mess hall was filled with the sound of chewing, a scene of harmonious contentment. When everyone was halfway through their meal, the teachers also filed in one after another.

As four or five teachers entered in single file, the students continued to bury their heads in their food, chewing away... there was no need to salute in the mess hall.

But when the teachers passed behind Mao Zhong, he suddenly felt a light tap on his shoulder, and then a quiet voice sounded by his ear: "Come to the principal's office after you finish eating. Someone wants to see you."

Mao Zhong turned his head in astonishment, only to find that the speaker was Teacher Jiang Shang—the youngest yet most profoundly learned teacher at Chikan Middle School.

After saying this, Jiang Shang, who had already put on a pair of imported myopia glasses, gently patted Mao Zhong's shoulder, smiled slightly, and then turned and walked away.

Mao Zhong, however, could not remain calm at this moment. Although he had never spoken with the principal, he knew the principal was a high official here, akin to the Imperial Academy Libationer concurrently serving as Vice Minister of Rites in the Ming Empire—an extraordinary figure.

So Mao Zhong wolfed down the remaining food in his box in a few bites, hurried out of the mess hall, and quickly ran toward the three-story administrative building.

Upon reaching the building lobby, after showing his student ID and explaining his reason for being there, Mao Zhong was directed by the guard to the innermost office on the third floor.

When he nervously knocked and opened the door, the first thing he saw were bookshelves and books occupying two entire walls. And in the office, Principal Bai Jiabao, dressed in a light yellow checkered suit, was gently gesturing for him to come over.

Beside the principal sat a chubby middle-aged man.