Chapter 12 (1/2)

With such a thought, Zhao’er suddenly got it through and said, “Then you are well prepared, you can win if you can win, don’t be afraid if you can’t win, at worst your sister, I, earn money for you to read.”

Zhao’er had never been a person with a character of over-care. She turned and see that the cow shit in the house had not been cleaned, so she went to find a brush to clean the bed first, after that she went out to sweep the floor with the broom and the dustpan.

There was a clucking of chickens outside, but it was Mrs. Sun who killed the chicken and let the chicken run away.

Xue Tingxiang looked out of the window and saw that the chicken was running around the yard with its neck bleeding, and Mrs. Sun was chasing after the chicken with an uncollected expression on her face.

Seeing that it was awkward, Mrs. Zhao came out of the house and said something. Mrs. Sun was more anxious and she knew that she had lost face in front of the clan leader, but the chicken had wings and she had no wings. It was not until the chicken was out of strength that Mrs. Sun grabbed it and scolded it, “Even you keep on running, you are still destined to be a dish in the pot, where are you going to?”

Xue Tingxiang stopped watching withdrew his gaze.

He knew why his eldest uncle was so generous to propose the competition between Xue Juncai and him, because if there was no accident, Xue Juncai would win this game.

In that dream, he had suffered such a loss, but instead of competing with Xue Juncai, it was Zhao’er who managed to get the money and sent him to Qinghe School. At that time, he was too stupid to blame his unsuccessful blame on fate, thinking that it was not because he was not good, but because everyone did not give him a chance.

When he first entered Qinghe School, he was full of ambitions. He thought he would be better than Xue Juncai and proved that he was the most outstanding person in the Xue family, but he was hit bitterly by reality. He was so naive that it was also at that time he realized the eldest uncle’s sinister intentions. He did teach him to read, and he did ‘read’ a lot of books, but he just read and did not understand the meaning of scripture.

He knew later that after being taught to read and write as a schoolchildren, reading would be regarded as the basis.

Start learning books such as “Three-Character Classic”, “Chinese Surnames”, “The Thousand-Character Classic”, then “Thousand Poets”, “Instructions for Preschool Education”, “Actient Book” and so on. After reading these, you could enter the university and began to read The Four Books.

And in this stage, the teacher would not teach the scripture, which meant children just need rote memory with understanding the meaning of the words instead of the scriptures. Because people at that time used to the thought that when children learned something, it didn’t matter if they could understand, they just need to remember, and they would understand the meaning the more and the longer they read.

This was the so-called reading a thousand times, and its meaning was self-explanatory.

When you could recite all of these books, and you could learn to explain the classics and make an essay, then it would be twice the result with half the effort for you. This time-saving, labor-saving and effective teaching model was popular in the whole Daxi, it involved from highborn to low-level social studies and village studies. It was especially popular in the private schools because it was not realistic for one teacher to teach a few or even dozens of people to explain the scriptures.

But some family with a profound foundation would never teach their children like this. Because this teaching model emphasized rote memorization blindly by ignoring the truth of the natural principle.

This was an overall analysis of the pros and cons later when ‘He’ saw from the position of the first Grand Secretary.

But at that time, he entered the school, he did not know about exegesis because the eldest uncle procrastinated to explain the meaning of the scriptures for him. Therefore, when he first entered the school, the teacher asked him whether he had read about interpreting classics, he said yes, but interpreted the classics into a mess. Therefore, he was scolded by the teacher as stupid as a goose and was squeezed out and ridiculed by his classmates.

But now, it seemed that the eldest uncle also knew about his shortcomings, and he deliberately proposed this competition. Uncle was confident and he was expected to lose.

Unfortunately, something happened.

Because there was a visitor at home, Grandpa Xue and Xue Qingshan were accompanying the guest. Everyone was busy.

After the main hall was served, the kitchen here started to cook lunch for others.

During the period, Xue Tao’er was asked to prepare the wine. There were wine and meat on the seats in the hall, men drank with each other and no one could see what was happening between them at all in usual time. In particular, clan leader Xue and village head Zheng, the two of them drank very intimately and both drank too much in the end.

“Okay, that’s okay, we’ll arrive home soon.” Clan leader Xue waved his hand.

They started to tidy up the table after all the people were sent out of the courtyard. Mrs. Zhao was trying to take away the leftover meat dishes but was stopped by Grandpa Xue, saying that he was going to give extra food to everyone. It was normal for those countrymen who were not rich to take the leftovers by the noble guests.

The adults were okay, Shuangzi and Maodan enjoyed the leftovers very much.

Zhao’er planned to eat back to the house, but she was stopped by Xue Tingxiang. They two didn’t say anything as before but just bowing their heads and eating.

Xue Juncai looked at Xue Tingxiang disdainfully.

Just now he was eating together with Xue Qingshan and enjoyed the delicious food. Now he felt sarcastic when he saw Xue Tingxiang could only eat some leftovers.

He remembered everything his father had told him before. Xue Gouzi couldn’t win him.

Thinking in his heart, he withdrew his gaze and said to Grandpa Xue, who was lying on Bed, “Grandpa, I went back to the house to read.”

Grandpa Xue nodded, and he had drunk too much before, and now he was smoking on the bed.

“Have some more, Gou’er. Your elder brother is still waiting for you to win me in five days.” Xue Juncai suddenly said when he passed by Xue Tingxiang.

Zhao’er stood up immediately and stared at him, “Can you speak? You’ve been reading blindly for years.”

Xue Juncai didn’t expect that Zhao’er wouldn’t give him face. He held back with his gentle face flushed by no reason when he glanced at Zhao’er.

Grandpa Xue shouted, “Go back to your house, Juncai!”

Mrs. Zhou also stood up to persuade Zhao’er, and it came to an end finally.