Chapter 1318: One Examination Determines a Lifetime (III) — Calling for Monthly Tickets

Just as Luo Dagong and his daughter boarded the most ordinary small four-wheeled carriage produced by the Shanghai Shen Carriage Works and drove off, next door to his house, from within a large and luxurious mansion, a whole convoy emerged — a uniform line of luxurious four-wheeled carriages, with even the horses pulling them looking tall and handsome, and on every carriage flew a gray flag bearing the character "Shen."

This was Shen Tingyang, Minister of Revenue and the Hard-Working Marquis of Chongming, sending his granddaughters off to take the examinations! The Shen family was second only to the Zheng family as a "great examination household," with a total of eight girls passing the second round. These eight girls were not all Shen Tingyang's own granddaughters; five of them were girls from collateral branches of the Chongming Shen clan.

Among them, Shen Tingyang's own granddaughters had all grown up in Yingtian Prefecture and were graduates of the Nanjing Girls' School, while the five girls from the Shen collateral branches were graduates of the Shanghai Women's Academy. The former emphasized mastery of both literary and martial arts, and all their graduates could ride horses and shoot arrows; the latter held a great advantage in Confucian studies and mathematics — the students of the Shanghai Women's Academy mostly came from merchant families living in Shanghai city, and all had passed entrance examinations, so their intelligence was certainly higher than that of the aristocratic girls of the Nanjing Girls' School, though their martial skills (physical fitness) were certainly inferior.

Nevertheless, Shen Tingyang had found among his own collateral branches a girl outstanding in every respect and of exceptional beauty, named Shen Xiulan, who now sat opposite old Shen.

Old Shen stroked his white beard, gazing at the girl before him, lost in thought. The Shen family's wealth was actually not much less than the Zheng family's, yet they conducted themselves very discreetly, had no military governorships or vassal states of their own, and few of their sons held high office. But this did not mean old Shen lacked the ambition to raise the family another rung. He simply knew that the greatest gap between the Shen and Zheng families lay in the fact that the Zhengs were imperial relatives by marriage, while the Shens had no kinship with the imperial house.

And "producing a Crown Princess through the examinations" was without doubt the best opportunity for the Shen family to overtake the others!

At present the Wu and Zheng families had no small amount of friction, and no matter which family the Crown Princess came from, it would intensify factional strife at court. The Shen family, however, was different — the Shens had quite good relations with both the Wus and the Zhengs. The Shen and Wu families were old friends — Shen Tingyang had once managed the supply route to Ningyuan, so how could his relations with Wu Sangui be anything but good? Later, when Zhu Cilang established the Maritime Merchant Bank and developed the Shanghai commercial market, he had again strung the imperial house, the Zhengs, and the Shens together.

Therefore, letting a Shen girl become Crown Princess ought to be acceptable to both sides.

Wei Zaode, Chief Grand Secretary of the Grand Secretariat, had already arrived with his youngest daughter Wei Qingxiu at the examination site for the Jinling Women's University entrance re-examination. The site was also on the shore of East Lake, on the south side of Mo Mountain where Princess Nisha's Red Fort stood, and was called Moshan Academy. It had originally been a college under Wuhan University and was now lent to Jinling Women's University for use. It served both as the examination site and as the university's campus while it was in Wuhan.

This daughter of Wei Zaode was also exceptionally outstanding and beautiful. Though only sixteen, she had already grown into a graceful, slender figure with features like a painting, and she possessed a cold, aloof beauty that seemed untouched by the mortal world, as if a celestial fairy had descended to the dust of the earth.

Arriving even earlier than the Wei father and daughter were the Rent-Collecting Prince Zhu Cixuan and the large flock of lovely young women he had brought with him — the girls the Rent-Collecting Prince had brought were all his sisters and nieces, every one of them either a Princess or a Commandery Princess. In any case, none of them were eligible to be chosen as Crown Princess, but they still had to take the women's university examination.

Because these Princesses and Commandery Princesses were, as a rule, destined to marry into the merit nobility, and had the responsibility of nurturing loyal subjects for the Great Ming dynasty — how could they themselves be uneducated?

The Rent-Collecting Prince, surrounded by twenty or thirty beautiful girls of fifteen or sixteen, felt not the slightest hint of romance, only a throbbing headache. These little girls were all pestering him about the examination questions!

The Rent-Collecting Prince was the chief examiner, so of course he now knew the questions for the first and second sessions — Emperor Zhu had personally handed them to him last night.

But could he reveal them? Had he grown tired of being the Rent-Collecting Prince or something? Besides, what were you Princesses and Commandery Princesses in such a hurry about? Your scores only needed to be above the admission line — it wasn't as if any of you could become Crown Princess anyway!

Seeing Wei Zaode and his daughter arrive at the examination site, the Rent-Collecting Prince hastily called out, "The time is about right; you may enter now. Hurry in, and make sure you have your examination permits. There are numbers on the permits — sit according to your number. Once the papers are handed out, you'll know what the examination is about!"

Hearing him raise his voice to shoo them in, the girls all pouted their little lips and grumbled at the Rent-Collecting Prince.

"You clearly know but won't tell us — you bad Prince Fu."

"You don't care for your little sisters — I'm going to tell the Retired Emperor!"

"I'm going to tell Imperial Father."

"I'm going to tell Mother Consort!"

"I'm going to tell—"

Zhu Cixuan could do nothing about these little sisters of his, so he simply let them go and tell on him. In any case, Emperor Zhu would not listen to the nonsense of these children, and the Retired Emperor had so many daughters he could hardly recognize them all — who would he care about? And once you all pass the examination, I will be your Dean, and you will have to respect your teacher and honor the Way!

After coaxing the flock of little girls into the examination hall, Zhu Cixuan went over to exchange greetings with Wei Zaode.

"The Chief Grand Secretary has arrived early indeed!" Prince Fu said with a smile.

"Better to come early," Wei Zaode said. "Later I must still go to the Grand Secretariat offices. Although the noon court sessions have been suspended these past few days, the work must still be done!"

"The Chief Grand Secretary truly works hard." Zhu Cixuan glanced at the fairy-like Wei Qingxiu and very nearly became entranced — was this not a Ming-dynasty version of Princess Nisha? Though she lacked a touch of exotic allure, she had an extra measure of ethereal grace.

The Rent-Collecting Prince thought to himself: how could such an otherworldly beauty be unsuited to be a Crown Princess or a Prince Consort's wife? Perhaps it would be better for her to marry a prince of vast learning who collected rent from a dozen streets.

With that thought, the Rent-Collecting Prince smiled and said to Wei Zaode, "Since the Chief Grand Secretary still has affairs of state to attend to, then entrust your beloved daughter to this prince. I shall escort her to the examination hall. You may simply send someone to fetch her this afternoon — nothing will go wrong."

The examination site was, of course, sealed off, watched over by matronly palace maids, with guards from the Guards Army posted around the perimeter — naturally nothing could go wrong. Moreover, the site had a dining hall and quiet rooms for rest. After the morning examination ended, the girls would dine in the dining hall, rest for a while, and prepare for the afternoon examination.

Besides, these girls were not the sort who never stepped beyond the inner gate and the second gate. They had all attended the new-style girls' schools and had taken many examinations, so they would not feel out of place.

These upper-class young women of the new era were already completely different women from their mothers' generation.

"Xing'er, I hear you have been spending a lot of time with A-Huan lately?"

"We do see each other quite often."

"What do you think of her?"

"She is very pretty, but a bit too fierce."

"Too fierce?"

"Yes, she has been fierce since she was little."

Inside the Hall of Diligent Governance at East Lake Palace, Emperor Zhu was at that moment speaking with his son Zhu Hexing. This Zhu Hexing was sixteen or seventeen years old, but had grown very tall and burly, with none of the frailty of his childhood — he had been born premature, with a weak constitution and small stature in his early years, but as he grew he began to take after his father and mother, growing larger and larger, until now he was a "little giant."

Yet although this "little giant" had grown quite large in stature, his mind was very simple, somewhat like a "silly sweetheart." His brain was decent enough — though no match for the Rich Overlord Prince, he had still managed to rank in the upper-middle range while studying at Laoshan Primary School and Laoshan Middle School. Later he had passed the entrance examination to the Military Academy on his own merits, and was now attending the academy's Wuchang East Lake branch with his unit, where he was achieving excellent results. By the look of it, he could become a fine general.

But this fellow's financial acumen was terrible. Not only did he not know how to manage money, he was even too lazy to keep accounts or handle funds, as if he found money dirty.

And let no one say that the imperial house is rich enough to possess the four seas and has no need to spend money — that is all nonsense used by civil officials to fool foolish emperors. The imperial house had a great many places where money was needed, at least in the present Great Ming dynasty. An emperor who could not manage finances and money would find it very difficult to become an enlightened ruler. Emperor Zhu intended to make Jinling Women's University into a school of finance and economics, precisely for the purpose of training future Ming monarchs' consorts — not only empresses for emperors, but also queens and ladies for kings and dukes of vassal states — to be skilled in managing wealth!

(End of Chapter)