Flowers in full bloom

Chapter 789 Their Names

Because the items that can be replaced are very extensive or easy to obtain. Therefore, more and more girls in the nearby villages have become Yun Siwan's students. There are also more and more female students in the school.

Hua Lei also wanted to set up a girls' school in Xichang, following the example of her own primary school in Beijing, so that girls in Xichang would also have the opportunity to go to school and learn to read.

Even if women do not take the imperial examinations in the future, it is good for them to learn simple literacy and arithmetic. Or, learning some weaving and embroidery so that women have a skill to rely on is also a good choice.

After Hua Lei's suggestion was put forward, Gui Jijiu and several others discussed it and decided to set up two teaching buildings in the two academies of Changlanzhou and Changxingzhou to try to establish a girls' school.

The scope of enrollment, at the beginning, must be the local wealthy merchants, these people who are not short of money. They must have daughters in their families, and they don't care about the constraints of a few taels of silver.

Moreover, many people would invite female teachers to their homes to teach the women in their families some knowledge. However, in Xichang, there were very few male teachers, let alone female teachers.

Therefore, when the academy issued a notice to recruit female students, in order to support the decree of Hua Lei, the female prefect, many wealthy people who were not short of money sent their daughters.

Thus, the academy had its first batch of female students. In the folk, the separation between men and women was not as strict as that between the aristocratic families in the capital.

In many cases, adult women, like men, go out to work for the livelihood of their families. Especially in the work in the fields, women hold up half the sky.

Therefore, in the academy, there was no problem for many female students to sit in the same classroom and be taught by male teachers.

Although the number of female students who signed up in the first batch was not large, and most of them were daughters of wealthy merchants, Hualei was not discouraged. With the first one, there would be a second one.

Soon after, the academy issued an enrollment notice for work-for-funding, similar to the model of Hualei's own primary school. So some girls near the academy also came to sign up.

The girls' school had more students. So the teachers started teaching normally. Although they taught the simplest things at the beginning, they could gradually improve their skills later.

Now, the girls' school has been established for more than half a year. Hualei is ready to go and take a look.

When we arrived at the academy, it was class time, so the academy was relatively quiet. Occasionally, the sound of teachers teaching could be heard from a few classrooms.

Hua Lei did not disturb anyone, but went straight to the girls' dormitory. The girls' dormitory was located at the innermost edge of the academy, and there was a three-meter-high bamboo fence between it and the men's dormitory.

Hualei stood behind the window and listened quietly for a while, feeling very satisfied. Although, there were only eighteen female students in the school building.

However, it can be seen that most of the female students still cherish this learning opportunity. When the teacher was teaching, many female students were listening attentively.

Perhaps, they have just started to learn, and they don’t know yet that they will be the first to set a precedent, because they are the first group of female students to enter a formal academy as women.

Moreover, because of this step they took, more girls followed suit and entered the school by working to earn their living, and learned the first word the teacher taught them, which was their names.

After standing behind the classroom for a full twenty minutes, Hua Lei quietly left the academy and returned to the government office when the get out of class was about to end.

Before we knew it, more than a month had passed and the corn in the fields had begun to mature slowly. People in all counties and states also began to prepare to pick corn.

Because Changtong Prefecture issued a notice that 10 kilograms of corn husks could be exchanged for 1 kilogram of brown sugar, many people changed their previous habit of throwing away corn husks when threshing corn.

Instead, they kept the corn husks well, waiting for the sugar factory to expand so that they could exchange them for precious brown sugar.

As for the golden corn kernels, they treated them with great care, because they represented whether they had a chance to win a big prize.

If you can get into the top three in the village, you can represent the village to participate in the competition in the county and meet the county magistrate. That is such an honorable thing.

If we can get into the top three in the county, we might even meet a higher official. I heard that the prefect Hua who asked us to plant corn is a girl. I really want to meet her.

I don’t know whether the prefect has three heads and six arms or is a fairy who has descended to the earth. How can she be so powerful that she can be recognized by the emperor and be appointed as the prefect?

Moreover, the prefect is really a good official. Since he arrived in Xichang, the lives of the people have obviously become better.

In addition to having enough food to eat, many families also have workshops where they can hire people to work. They receive a considerable amount of monthly wages and can buy high-quality salt.

In addition, you can also buy brown sugar, snowflake candy, and comfortable and cool fabrics. The men in the family can even buy a pot of wine.

Some time ago, my family bought a watermelon for the first time, which we had never eaten before. Although each person could only get a small piece, it tasted really good.

The people were very excited and their hands were working very quickly. Soon, the ripe corn cobs turned into golden corn kernels.

Then, the village chief brought officials from the county household office to weigh and record the grain from house to house and collect tax grain.

After two weeks, the per-acre corn yield of each village had basically come out, and then the detailed data began to be reported upwards one level at a time.

At the government office, officials from Hualei and the Hufanglifang have made all the preparations and are just waiting to see who will be the top corn-growing village.

Hualei had already prepared the prizes for the top three prizes. The prizes offered voluntarily by the local wealthy merchants, of all kinds, had also been piled up in the government storehouse.

The more eye-catching prizes were the ten cans of brown sugar donated by the Changtongzhou Sugar Factory and the ten jars of liquor donated by Peng Dongjia from the liquor factory.

There were also ten rolls of soft cotton cloth and ten rolls of brightly colored linen cloth that Liang Xiangyi brought out, and ten jars of salted duck eggs and one hundred kilograms of salted pork that Hua Lei brought out.

However, because there are too many prizes, the officials in the ceremony room have been sorting them out over the past few days, hoping to distribute them reasonably and make everyone involved happy.

Therefore, Hua Lei, Rong Jin and Wan Tongpan discussed carefully and decided that the awards for the top three top villages and champion villages would remain unchanged.

In addition, an encouragement award has been added. Anyone who can get into the top ten in the final competition in the government office will receive rich prizes.