Chapter 31 (1/2)

With the guidance of Lin Miao, students showed their respects to the ancient Wises through rituals, and then saluted to their teachers. That was the end of the ceremony.

Then they returned to the lecture room, while the teachers hadn’t returned yet. Hence, students could not but reading by themselves in silences. It was the sound caused by turning pages that could ever be heard in the lecture room.

Different from the others, Xue had been accustomed to reading the books through transcribing with his hand, while the others with their eyes.

He wiped the dust on desk, and then took writing brushes, ink sticks, paper and ink stones out from a basket. He lay the ink stones on the desk, and took the ink sticks and a bamboo tube with clean water out step by step. It was after filling the ink stones with water that Xue started to grind the inks with the ink sticks.

After the inks were ground over, Xue finally began his work with whole heart and whole mind.

It was not very fast for him to transcribe. On the one hand, he had to transcribe with his hand, which was slower than reading with eyes. On the other hand, he was trying to remember the contents.

That was amazing and really rewarding. In general, the core abilities highlighted in the imperial examination was the writing skill of the eight-part essay. Nearly all of the topics released in the imperial examination were drawn from the Four Books, and the annotating chapters of the Four Books composed by Zhu Zi. Therefore, the first step to succeed in the imperial examination was to remember the whole pages of the Four Books, as well as the annotation chapters.

Xue didn’t have a good memory. It might take him some time to remember an essay with but one thousand words. However, since he had experienced so much in the dream, he found that he could remember faster than before.

Perhaps that was because he had learned those books in the dream already and now he merely needed to recall his memories.

Of course, these were far from enough to perform well in the imperial examination. However, since the time had been wasted and the courses had been missed, he had no way but to restart again.

Soon, one hour had passed away, and it was at this time that Teacher Meng Wenbo came to the Lecture room.

Teacher Meng was just the elder who had shown up yesterday when the students claimed their books. He was responsible for the teaching of class be as well.

As said by Badou, Teacher Meng was extremely strict and rigid, “You see, there are many students old enough, and should have been treated with more tolerance and respects. Even so, if you break the rules set by him, he would really punish you no matter how old you are.”

Teacher Meng was just an old scholar, rather than a Ju Ren, the successful candidate in the imperial examinations at the provincial level.

Just as the old saying goes, the poor scholar, and the rich Ju Ren. If the scholar was also the Lin Sheng, things might be better since he could claim the subsidies from government. If not, the scholar even had to earning a living by himself.

Except for some tax reduction and exemption, the scholar enjoyed no more special favors.

Teacher Meng was a good example. He could merely rely on his wages to support himself and his whole family. It was really tough to make the end meets, which could be seen from his faded blue long gown.

Xue knew so much owing to well-in-formed Badou.

The courses of Teacher Meng was rigid and strict as well. He taught the Great Learning of the Four Books firstly.

He always recited the context by himself, and then annotate and elaborate each word and sentence on by one. In this process, he sometimes might pick someone to recite what he had said.

It was ok if the picked one had recited well. But if not, the one would clearly know what would happen. Usually, this student would went to the rostrum by himself without the order from Teacher Meng. And Teacher Meng would whip the left hand of the student with teacher’s ruler, since the student could not calligraphy with a painful right hand.

When Xue heard about the ruler whipping at the first time, he just took it as a joke. After all, it was unusual for the teachers to implement ruler whipping since the elementary school. He was surprised to have such a chance to view the ruler whipping in such a higher educational school.

However, this way indeed had worked. There was a student once had mistakenly recited the content and therefore suffered from five ruler whips. Since then, no one even dare to be absent-minded in Meng’s courses.

In fact, many senior students had been frequently absent-minded before, since some of them had attended the same courses of Meng for even several times. It was no wonder why they would get even more bored of Meng’s courses.

“Never take it for granted that learning from the beginning again is bad. This is for your sake. Since you haven’t passed the imperial examination, there must be something in the Four Books remain to be fully understood by you. The Four Books are classical that deserve to be studied over and over again. Each time you learn it, you can get something new from it. However, among the Four Books, the Great Learning is the most important one and serves as the overall outline, which will benefit you a lot in the future.” Teacher Meng lectured to students.

He continued, “Just as Zhu Zi once said, the learning in university is the study for great man. Only those who understand the meaning and methods of university will be able to learn well. But if one wants to govern, he has to discipline himself first. Only after one can be self-discipline, can he manage his family, govern the country, and help the nation thrive. As for…”

Teacher Meng started to lecture by himself, while the lectured parts were not merely about the Four Books, but also his personal dissatisfactions with the students.

In effect, since the Neo-Confucianism got more and more popular in the last dynasty, it had acquired its authority and had been recognized officially as well. Every student had to learn it, and every student who wanted to pass the imperial examination also had to take the tests about it.

However, even in the last dynasty, Neo-Confucianism had once suffered great impacts from Lu-Wang’s Theory of Heart.

Neo-Confucianism was mainly about exploring of the world through the experimenting, for which the humanity was discouraged. However, Lu-Wang’s Theory of Heart was mainly about the exploring of the heart though meditating.

In accordance with Neo-Confucianism, the ‘principle’ was the basis of the whole world, and nothing could ever function without following the ‘principle’. Compared with that, the heart was the emphasized part and regarded as the basic rule in Lu-Wang’s Theory of Heart.

Under that condition, Neo-Confucianism declined and Lu-Wang’s Theory of Heart became more and more popular.

However, that was the peak of Lu-Wang’s Theory of Heart, and then the prosperity could not be seen anymore.

On the one hand, the over emphasis of the personal enjoyment had led to the declination of social morality. On the other hand, the trend of Lu-Wang’s Theory of Heart had caused the laziness in studies, since many entitled that they were learning through not learning.

Under this condition, Neo-Confucianism regained its dominant position in the society.

However, the impacts caused by Lu-Wang’s Theory of Heart on Neo-Confucianism were mainly imposed through challenging the theories brought up in The Great Learning.

To be more accurate, this version Teacher Meng was teaching was revised and annotated by Zhu Zi, rather than the original version.

However, Meng’s ignorance of the truth indeed made sense. Since the wars at the late period of last dynasty, the founders and successors of this new dynasty had banned and changed the original version out of the concerns of governance and development.

Therefore, few of the people even knew that there was the original version of The Great Learning, nor had no clue about the existence of Lu-Wang’s Theory of Heart. At least, it was understandable that Meng didn’t know with his social status taken into consideration.

As for Xue Tingxiang, he knew all of these owing to his adventures in the dream. And it was at that time that he started to realize that the governors and the scholars had started to battle with each other already.