Chapter 726: The Commoner Girl Dongzhu

"Principal Cao, this is Jin Dongzhu. She has quite a talent for mathematics. I am entrusting her to you. You must teach her well."

In the principal's office of the Jinling Girls' School, Zhu Cilang handed over Princess Dong'e — oh, she was no longer a princess now, but the commoner girl Jin Dongzhu — to the school's principal.

Princess Dong'e was a Heshuo Princess of the Great Qing. That status meant nothing now, but if war ever broke out between Ming and Qing, it would bring enormous trouble. So the Zhu Emperor had used a substitution scheme, publicly announcing that Princess Dong'e had taken up residence in the Old Mountain Detached Palace. At the same time, he had the real Dong'e brought to Nanjing, where she would study at the Jinling Girls' School under the name of the commoner girl Jin Dongzhu.

When she reached the age of sixteen, she would be selected to enter the palace and become a chosen attendant of Zhu Cilang, starting at the same rank in the Zhu Emperor's harem as Wu Sanmei, Zheng Chagu, Ning Xiangyu, and Fei Zhen'e.

Moreover, Zhu Cilang would not let Dongzhu rise to the top in a single leap. Instead, he would have her advance rank by rank, one rank each year, spending eight years to rise to the position of Imperial Noble Consort.

Meanwhile, the Dong'e who "resided" in the Old Mountain traveling palace would "die of illness" before entering the palace.

In this way, there would no longer be an Aisin Gioro Dong'e in the world, only the Imperial Noble Consort Jin Dongzhu of commoner origin. Henceforth, the wars and conflicts between Ming and Qing would have nothing whatsoever to do with Jin Dongzhu.

"Rest assured, Imperial Lord, this old subject will certainly teach Miss Jin well." Principal Cao — that is, Principal Cao Huachun — did not know that Jin Dongzhu was Princess Dong'e.

But why would a little girl of twelve or thirteen be personally escorted to the Jinling Girls' School by the Emperor? This Jinling Girls' School was not a place any commoner girl could attend! The girls studying here were either princesses and commandery princesses of the Zhu clan, or daughters of dukes, marquises, generals, and ministers! Zhu Cilang's eldest daughter Zhu Tianfeng and his sister Zhu Meiyu were both studying here now. Zhu Tianfeng had entered the first grade of primary school, while Princess Zhaoren, Zhu Meiyu, was older (eleven years old) and had already received some schooling, so she was in a preparatory course, making up Primary Mathematics and Primary French, after which she would go directly into the fifth grade.

And this Jin Dongzhu should be like Princess Zhaoren — take a preparatory course, then go directly into the fifth grade. That way, she could graduate from primary school in three years and be just about ready to enter the palace.

Cao Huachun's old face was wreathed in kindly smiles as he looked with smiling eyes at the commoner girl Jin Dongzhu seated beside the Zhu Emperor.

He had risen in the world now, calling himself "this old subject" rather than "this old slave," because he was no longer a palace attendant but a meritorious official of the national salvation, enfeoffed as the Tianjin Marquis of National Salvation!

He had been able to receive a marquisate because many of the Cao family's sons and retainers had followed him in escorting the Emperor south. In the Zhu Emperor's original power base, Cao Huachun's faction had been one component. Now many of the Cao family's sons had grown into backbone officers of the New Army or pillars of the court, while Cao Huachun himself enjoyed his retirement in Nanjing. It was only when Zhu Cilang was establishing the Noble Children's Primary School that he had been invited out to serve as principal of its girls' school.

The teachers at the girls' school were all eunuchs. The earliest recipients of Western-style instruction from Zhu Cilang had been his guards and eunuchs. Some of those eunuchs had genuinely absorbed the learning. Their level could not be called high, but it was sufficient for the work of primary school teachers.

Now the Zhu Emperor was cultivating new-style talent on two tracks. The children of the nobility attended primary school, middle school, and university (the Capital Academy), advancing step by step to become accomplished.

Commoners, on the other hand, studied the "Zilun on the Investigation of Things" and the "New Mathematics" on their own, then sat the examinations for the Imperial Academy.

This arrangement was not discrimination against commoners, but rather because educational resources were truly limited and could only give priority to the successors of the ruling group. At the same time, geniuses with strong self-study ability would be selected from the entire population by examination, then allowed to achieve success through self-directed study.

The probability of success through self-study was of course low, but those who did succeed were certain to be high-IQ geniuses, more than capable of handling seventeenth-century scientific exploration.

And China had a large population. A huge population base also meant a large number of geniuses. Through self-study examinations, quite a few should be discoverable.

Oh, today the Zhu Emperor had discovered a little genius — Jin Dongzhu. She was smarter than all four of Wu Sanmei, Zheng Chagu, Ning Xiangyu, and Fei Zhen'e. Those four women were no fools either. Among them, Zheng Chagu could be called dazzlingly intelligent, and she was extremely good at mathematics problems (probably inherited from Zheng Zhilong). Wu Sanmei was a bit weaker and not very fond of studying, but she was also an extremely clever woman. Yet even the two of them were not as good as Dongzhu.

Dongzhu's self-study of "Primary Mathematics" had produced excellent results! And her comprehension was very strong — she could understand part of the content in the "Zilun on the Investigation of Things."

That brain was probably inherited from Dorgon, wasn't it?

Having arranged Jin Dongzhu's enrollment, the Zhu Emperor returned to the palace, going first to the Empress's Palace of Earthly Tranquility to visit Wu Sanmei, who was in her month of confinement after childbirth.

Wu Sanmei had once again been blessed with a daughter. She really did have the fate of bearing girls!

But it didn't matter. Sanmei was still young. After resting for a while, she could go back into battle. Still, the Zhu Emperor had to show her more concern, because just as Wu Sanmei was about to give birth, Zheng Chagu had become pregnant once again!

If Zheng Chagu's belly proved worthy and bore Zhu Cilang another son, then Wu Sanmei's position in the harem would begin to totter. The Zhu Emperor was anxious on behalf of his primary wife, so during this period he had adopted a posture of firmly backing Wu Sanmei.

When he arrived at the Palace of Earthly Tranquility, he heard a burst of giggling laughter from within. He quickly quickened his pace to the door of the bedchamber, then pushed it open and entered. The Empress's bedchamber was very large, but with the warmth sent through the underfloor heating, it had become very cozy.

The moment the Zhu Emperor entered, he saw Wu Sanmei, that sweet simpleton, sitting on the sleeping couch in her nightclothes, surrounded by two little girls, one older and one younger, all gathered around a swaddled infant, playing with the baby!

She had not the slightest sense of crisis about failing to bear a son!

The older little girl was the Zhu Emperor's eldest daughter, Tianfeng. She had grown especially large — at six years old, at first glance she looked about the same height as a child of seven or eight. There was no need to say it: she would certainly be a tall girl in the future. As for her looks and temperament, she took more after her mother, also a little sweet simpleton. When she saw the Zhu Emperor enter, she jumped down from the bed and came bouncing over to pay her respects, grinning as she handed an exam paper to the Zhu Emperor.

"Daddy, your daughter scored a 10 on mathematics."

A 10? Out of how many points total?

The Zhu Emperor took the exam paper and looked at it. There were ten questions on it, simple addition and subtraction, and all the answers were correct — so that was a perfect score.

"Good, good, well done on the exam!" Zhu Cilang nodded with satisfaction, then patted the little sweet simpleton on the head. "You must keep working hard. You're only in first grade — it's still a long way to university!"

Hearing the Zhu Emperor's words, Wu Sanmei let out a puff of laughter. "Imperial Lord, does a child of our family even need to take exams to get into university?"

"Of course she must take exams!" Zhu Cilang took his daughter's hand and walked to the bedside, plopped himself down, and then looked at the pink-faced infant in the swaddling clothes. "If the imperial family's children don't need to take exams, then do the children of ducal and marquis households need to? Do the children of the hundred officials need to? If none of them take exams, then what point is there in studying hard? How will they become accomplished in the future? If the sons of us northerners are all worthless, won't the realm of the future belong to the southerners?"

These words could not be spoken openly, but in front of Wu Sanmei, the Zhu Emperor had no reservations.

He paused, then continued: "Children of the nobility can be given preferential treatment in examinations — for example, an extra 10 to 20 points added. But in the end, they must sit in the same examination hall as the scholars of Jiangnan. Otherwise, the talent among the noble children will never emerge."

And the purpose of the Zhu Emperor's elite education was, of course, to maintain the balance between the northern meritorious nobility and the southern scholar-officials. If either the meritorious nobles or the scholars completely overwhelmed the other, the Ming realm would run into trouble. And to maintain that balance, the best method was to start with talent cultivation and design an education and examination system that was not entirely fair. If it were completely fair, the northern meritorious nobles were so few in number that, from the standpoint of probability, they could not possibly compete with the southern gentry.

"But Tianfeng is a girl!" Wu Sanmei pouted, looking as though she disliked studying.

The Zhu Emperor merely smiled and shook his head. "The women of noble households need to study even more. In the future, they will be the ones raising the next generation of Ming's meritorious noble families. The reason the meritorious noble families of the past became corrupt was, first, that their wealth and rank were fixed at birth, so there was no need to strive; and second, that their upbringing was deficient — they knew only endless indulgence and did not know how to urge their children to cultivate both civil and martial arts. In just two or three generations they rotted away completely. That was the root cause of the Tumu Crisis, and the ultimate reason our dynasty turned from prosperity to decline!"

(End of Chapter)