Chapter 796: The Greatest Golden Finger

The flintlock, known in China as the self-igniting musket, had already appeared as early as the Illustrated Treatise on Military Equipment printed in the eighth year of Chongzhen. By the time Zhu Cilang held supreme power, Foshan in Guangdong and Anping in Fujian were already able to produce self-igniting muskets and wheel-lock muskets in small quantities.

However, the self-igniting muskets and wheel-lock muskets produced by the Great Ming were not yet mature equipment — the flintlock had been invented at the end of the 16th century by the French craftsman Marin, and it was only when the Thirty Years' War ended that the age of the flintlock had just begun.

In other words, from invention to perfection to widespread adoption, it took nearly half a century!

And Zhu Cilang did not have half a century of patience, nor did he know how to design and manufacture a truly good flintlock, so he decided to take the route of purchasing and copying.

Because Li Shaoyou had brought samples and craftsmen back from Europe, progress in copying the flintlock was extremely smooth. Now the Royal Trading Company's Nanjing Arsenal, Shen Steel in Shanghai, Zheng Iron in Anping, Fujian, and two ironworks in Foshan had all produced samples of reliable quality.

But the Zhu Emperor did not immediately hand them large orders. Instead, he issued a "design order" — what he wanted was a standard-issue flintlock that was rugged in quality, powerful, and easy to manufacture and use!

He did this, on the one hand, to give these factories a little time to train more skilled workers and purchase more equipment.

On the other hand, it was also to cultivate the design capabilities of these factories — only by truly being able to design a standard-issue flintlock could they be considered to have really "copied" it successfully.

Copying technology was no disgrace in this age. In fact, the Europeans were copying Zhu Cilang's "golden finger" too!

For example, the Prince of Condé had copied the ideas of the socket bayonet and the paper cartridge, and he had not the slightest intention of paying any patent fees!

These were all "understand at a glance" technologies, and the Zhu Emperor had no way to keep them secret!

Moreover, the Zilun Gewu Pian "unearthed at Qufu" had already been taken to Europe by Johann Adam Schall von Bell! It was estimated that quite a few European philosophers were already studying it — the scholars of the Great Ming all had a copy each for the examinations, so there was no way to prevent its spread!

And the Advanced Mathematics that Zhu Cilang had just finished compiling would also flow to the West before long.

Both the Zilun Gewu Pian and the Advanced Mathematics contained good things! The philosophical and mathematical knowledge Zhu Cilang possessed surpassed the European academic world of the 17th century in many respects — Zhu Cilang did not know to what degree European natural philosophy had developed in this era, so much of what he produced could be given to Western academia for study.

Science and technology, in fact, know no national boundaries; what has national boundaries are scientists! Even if science had national boundaries, the one who suffers is not the party doing the copying, but the party being copied from!

The greatest adverse effect caused by the Ming dynasty's closed-door policy was that it hindered technological exchange between East and West.

And after Zhu Cilang came to power, he had been constantly working to promote such exchange — of course, with learning from others' technology as the main focus. On the question of technological exchange, being eager to teach others was unacceptable.

Therefore Zhu Cilang would not promote the outflow of science and technology; he could only accelerate the process of learning and importing.

And under his impetus, the Great Ming's science and technology had already begun to show a state of rapid advancement, and had reached the point where results were beginning to appear.

Just while the Northern Qing was busy with civil war, the Great Ming's first "Imperial Academy Examination" had been completed — this was in fact an examination to pick out intelligent people. One had to be self-taught without teachers and without much in the way of reference books, and also had to expand upon and deeply analyze certain simplified and condensed philosophical principles in the Zilun Gewu Pian.

In order to make this examination look more like the civil service examinations, the Zhu Emperor also adopted a two-step examination process of "metropolitan examination" and "palace examination."

The metropolitan examination tested the "Classic," "Mathematics," and "Discourse." The "Classic" meant writing out the Zilun Gewu Pian from memory. "Mathematics" meant doing math problems — Zhu Cilang personally set the questions, and he had been a math ace back in the day, so he still remembered plenty of tricky problems! And the "Discourse" was the hardest part: one had to write out one's analysis and understanding of a "discourse on the investigation of things."

This kind of examination could be said to be the fairest, and also the most unfair. The fairest aspect was that it was a contest of raw intelligence!

Who could not recite the Zilun Gewu Pian? If one could not even remember that, why sit the Imperial Academy examination at all? As for the mathematics test and the essay, those were a contest of pure, hard intelligence.

But those whose intelligence was not hard enough, no matter how hard they tried, could not even get into the metropolitan examination hall!

Because before the metropolitan examination there was also a preliminary examination, administered by each prefecture itself. The preliminary examination had no essay, but it did rely on mathematics! Also set by the Zhu Emperor. After the examination was over, outside the examination hall there was weeping everywhere!

Those with slightly duller brains, or those advanced in age whose minds were no longer nimble, or those too biased toward the humanities, were all stumped to tears!

The civil service examinations had actually become this difficult — it seemed everyone was hopeless of ever entering the Imperial Academy in their lifetime.

Those who were not stumped to tears came to Nanjing to sit the metropolitan examination, and the metropolitan examination was of course also difficult — so much so that later on, the scholars of the Ming dynasty all called Nanjing "Hard Capital." Too difficult!

The quota for those selected in the metropolitan examination was 400 people, and they were further divided according to their scores into First Class, Second Class, Third Class, and Fourth Class.

Among them, the top fifty could participate in the palace examination, that is, an oral defense of their essays presided over by Zhu Cilang himself. From among them were selected First Class Grand Secretaries and Second Class Doctors. Needless to say, these were all geniuses with IQs above 150!

And among these geniuses, the Zhu Emperor finally selected seven Grand Secretary-level geniuses!

The top scorer was Fang Yizhi from Anqing Prefecture, the most intelligent of the Four Young Masters of the Restoration Society, who at the advanced age of 41 achieved a perfect score on his essay — his essay was "On the Zilun Gewu Pian," which systematically organized the Zilun Gewu Pian by categories, grouping it into several branches such as "Argumentation," "Dialectics," "Inquiry into the Dao," and "Nature."

The second-place scorer was Zhu Yongchun from Jiangnan, who conducted a deep analysis of the content concerning "Heaven" in the Zilun Gewu Pian, proposing two research methods: "Observing Heaven" and "Discussing Heaven."

The third-place scorer was named Mei Wending, very young, only 19 years old, from Ningguo Prefecture in Jiangnan Province. His essay was average, but his attainment in mathematics was extremely high — he was the only genius to achieve a perfect score in mathematics.

In addition, there were four others in the First Class: He Tianran from Hunan, Liu Hao from Jiangbei, Wu Xiang from Zhejiang, and Sun Yucheng from Guangdong.

Now these seven genius Grand Secretaries were sitting in the garden of the Western Building in the Forbidden City, keeping the Zhu Emperor company while eating mooncakes and gazing at the moon.

The mooncakes were flaky-crust mooncakes, with pork filling, lamb filling, beef filling, ham filling, and five-kernel filling, all freshly baked "hot mooncakes," and the flavor was quite excellent.

But everyone's attention was not on the mooncakes, but on the moon!

Today's moon looked different from the moons of the past — especially large, especially clear — because the Zhu Emperor had set up several Keplerian telescopes in the rear garden of the Western Building.

Seeing that the "Seven Scholars" were all somewhat entranced, the Zhu Emperor, who had been eating mooncakes alone for a while, finally cleared his throat with an "ahem," interrupting the seven men's astronomical observations.

The seven Grand Secretaries knew the Zhu Emperor had something to say, and all turned back to look at him.

Zhu Cilang waved at them. "Sit, all of you sit!"

Seeing that the men had all settled firmly into their respective chairs, the Zhu Emperor continued: "All of you are the foremost talents of our Great Ming, and all of you ought to be pursuing scholarship! Now, with the Zilun Gewu Pian having appeared within our borders and Western learning flowing in from without, this is precisely a time when scholars can accomplish great things. However, throughout the dynasties, 'excel in learning and enter officialdom' has become the established practice, and We do not intend to change it greatly, so We have appointed the seven of you as Grand Secretaries. But these Grand Secretaries are not cabinet ministers — rather, they are officials who truly pursue scholarship. Yet their official rank and salary are the same as those of cabinet ministers!

The Imperial Academy shall also honor the seven of you above all. The top scorer's method of organizing the Zilun Gewu Pian is excellent. Discuss it among yourselves later and see whether it can be divided into seven subjects, with each of you heading one subject, and then select Doctors for the seven subjects from among the Second Class jinshi to serve as your assistants in scholarship."

(End of Chapter)