Reborn as King of South America

Chapter 218 Education Development
In the backyard garden of the Songkhla Palace, a girl about sixteen or seventeen years old was curiously watching a cabinet camera.

The girl was wearing a pink narrow shirt on the upper body and a white embroidered jacket and skirt on the lower body.

She had a Ming-style bun hairstyle, with her hair hanging down naturally on her shoulders. Her pair of pure black eyes were focused on the Chinese woman fiddling with the camera, and her cheerful face showed the girl's cuteness.

"Sixth Miss, please get ready on the balcony! They are going to take pictures!" the maid beside her reminded her.

"Well, it will be ready soon." The girl was as happy as if she had developed an interesting new toy. After being reminded several times by the maid, she reluctantly sat up on the balcony, her eyes fixed on the lens of the cabinet camera.

After a few "humming" sounds, the Chinese woman took five or six photos of the girl in succession, and then left the backyard under the guidance of the guards of the City Lord's Mansion.

"Miss, Miss." After seeing off a few Chinese women, the maid came back trotting and shouted anxiously.

"I heard it, I heard it." The girl glanced at the maid who had hurried back in a hurry and asked, "Xiao Lan, have you heard any news about those women?"

"I found out." The maid Xiaolan paused to catch her breath and continued, "Those three Chinese women are not from Songkhla. They seem to be from some South American Han country."

"Nanmei Han Kingdom? Is it the country that my father invited to station troops in Kelantan?"

"Yes, yes, that's them." The maid paused for a moment, then said with a serious expression on her face, "Miss, I heard from several guards that the Han people asked the city lord about your situation, and they seem to intend to choose you as the Queen of Han. The photos taken of you by those three women just now are to be sent to the Han Kingdom in South America for the King of Han to see."

"What, are you telling the truth?" The girl's face changed, and her face was full of surprise.

"I dare not make fun of the young lady. Xiaohong, a maid under the Second Young Master, was serving a general of the Han Kingdom in the hall at that time. What I said just now was heard from Xiaohong. There is not a single word of falsehood." The maid Xiaolan assured.

"It's my parents' orders and the matchmaker's words. My father has agreed to let the three Han women take photos and send them back to South American Han. I think my father has agreed to their request. What can a little girl like me do?"

After hearing what the maid Xiaolan said, the girl felt that her future marriage was decided by her father in just half a day. She felt helpless in her heart, and the youthful and lively expression on her face was quickly replaced by loss and worry.

"Miss, there is no need to be sad. If you marry the King of Han, you will be the Queen of a kingdom, which is better than being betrothed by the Lord of the City to a Thai or a Malay from Taogong, Pattani or other places."

Songkhla was weak. In order to maintain the rule of the Wu family, the city lord of the Wu family often married his daughters to members of the Thai royal family as wives or concubines, or to pagan Malays, using marriage to exchange for political stability in Songkhla.

Born in the Wu family, Wu Lingxuan spent 16 years of her girlhood carefree under the protection of her family. Although she had beautiful fantasies of a future husband in her heart, under the severe situation facing Songkhla, she still needed to sacrifice her personal happiness for the stability of her family and obey the fate arranged for her by her father.

“Yes, marrying the king of Han is better than marrying the uncivilized Malay natives.” The girl thought of the fate of her two aunts who married Malay kings, and she couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief, glad that her marriage partner was not a Malay.

"Miss, Chinese merchants doing business in Songkhla all say that the King of Han is a great hero and a good man. I heard that in South America, the King of Han defeated many foreign countries and established a country that is dozens of times the size of Songkhla. Moreover, the King of Han treats ordinary Chinese people very well. The soldiers and people in South America love him very much."

After saying a lot of good things about Li Mingyuan that she had heard from others, the maid Xiaolan saw that there was no one around, so she sat down in front of her young lady and said with a smile, "Young lady, you are naturally beautiful. The King of Han will definitely like you very much when he sees you. He will definitely not disrespect you like the King of Beidanian. Young lady, don't worry. If you marry the King of Han, you will definitely not be wronged." "You silly girl, you speak so well of the King of Han. Do you want me to report to my father and give you to the King of Han as a dowry maid?"

After the maid Xiaolan's persuasion, the girl felt much better and took the initiative to make jokes with the other party.

"Xiaolan will be young lady's for life. Wherever young lady marries, Xiaolan will follow her." The maid Xiaolan said righteously.

"Are you not ashamed? I'll beat you to death, you little girl in love?" Seeing the maid's cute serious expression, the girl couldn't help laughing and started to play with her. ...

Tens of thousands of miles away, after nearly ten years of development since its founding, many changes have taken place in the South American Han Kingdom.

In terms of land area, after two wars against Brazil and Argentina, the land area expanded to 111.7 million square kilometers. Five provincial administrative regions were replanned on the basis of the original one capital and five counties:
1 Jujuy and Salta provinces merged into Sanyo Province (the combined area is 20.79 square kilometers)

2 Chaco, Formosa and Santiago del Estero provinces merged into Anfon Province (30.8 square kilometers.)
3. Corrientes Province and the northern part of Santa Fe Province occupied by the Han Kingdom merged into a new province (with an area of ​​13.82 square kilometers.)
4 Rio Grande do Sul and the areas seized from Uruguay were merged into Yangzhou Province (area 34 square kilometers.)
5 Santa Catarina State was renamed Jiangdong Province (area 9.54 square kilometers.)
Each province has five to ten prefectures under its jurisdiction, with a population ranging from 700,000 to 1.5 million.

In terms of education, three universities and two professional military academies were established in Xinjing.

Among the three higher universities, one is a comprehensive university that focuses on both liberal arts and science, such as economics, business management, diplomacy, politics, and mechanical manufacturing - Xinjing University; one is the Hanguo Royal Institute of Technology that is more inclined towards science and engineering; and the other is the Hanguo Medical University that specializes in drug development.

Of the two military academies, one is the Han Army Officers School and the other is the Han Naval Military School.

The population of Han State exceeded five million, which was not much different from that of the Netherlands, Sweden, Portugal and other European countries. However, although Han State vigorously introduced Chinese scholars in the ten years after its founding, the country's talent pool was still not as good as that of Western countries. Therefore, after gathering most of the domestic talents, Li Mingyuan only established three universities and two military academies. As for the five newly established provinces, each province only established two secondary vocational and technical colleges to train intermediate technical talents.

Compared with universities and secondary technical colleges, primary education in the Han Dynasty developed rapidly.

The five provinces and one capital of the Han Kingdom had more than 30 prefectures and more than 140 counties. Each county had four elementary schools and each prefecture had two secondary schools. The total number of elementary and secondary schools exceeded 500. The total number of Chinese children and teenagers of school age exceeded 100,000.

Primary and intermediate schools teach students basic knowledge. Most of the teachers are ordinary scholars recruited from mainland China, Southeast Asia and other places. The gap in numbers has been made up after ten years of development.

Most of the professional teachers needed by colleges and universities and secondary technical colleges are foreign teachers hired from the West, and a small number are overseas students returning from abroad.

In February 1870, four years after Japan issued a government decree openly encouraging its citizens to study in the West, Li Mingyuan realized the importance and urgency of sending students abroad, and withdrew part of the funds from the tight war preparation finances to support Chinese students to study in the West. Due to the small population in the country and hasty preparations, only students were selected to study in Prussia in the first overseas student program.

After the formal implementation of the study abroad plan, due to the impact of the war with Argentina, no students were sent abroad in 1871. After the war ended and the country's political and economic conditions returned to normal, China gradually expanded the number of students at a frequency of one batch per year. By 1878, China had sent a total of 3278 students to study in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, the United Kingdom, and France. Through cooperation with Western universities, China introduced and translated more than ten basic subject textbooks such as steel metallurgy, mechanical manufacturing, chemical engineering, physics, and mathematics, providing a teaching foundation for the implementation of domestic higher education.

(End of this chapter)