I am the prince of the Ming Dynasty, I don't give up

Chapter 25: School Opening and New Play
It was the first time that the palace servants in Cunxin Palace saw the young prince lose his temper so much, and they were all silent.

Yu Liu walked away in disgrace, but couldn't figure out what he had done wrong to make the young prince so angry.

After some thought, Yu Liu no longer dared to use the name Chengze, so he changed it back to Yu Liu.

Zhu Houxun spent three days to produce the elementary school textbooks, and then had hundreds of copies printed.

He planned to have the children complete the primary school curriculum in one to two years, with only Chinese and mathematics as the subjects, and all other subjects were cut out.

If the study time is converted into a 24-hour system, you have to study for twelve hours every day and only have one day off a week.

It can be described as rote learning.

However, this is truly a blessing in the Ming Dynasty. Compared with most children in the Ming Dynasty, their quality of life can definitely be called a blessing, and they also have the opportunity to receive education.

In this way, the first modern primary school in the Ming Dynasty opened in a very hasty manner.

There was no opening ceremony, everything was very low-key, and this primary school didn’t even have an official name.

The one hundred and twenty-three children were divided into three classes, one class for those over ten years old, one class for those under ten years old, and a separate class for girls.

After all, the Ming Dynasty was still a feudal society, and it was too shocking for men and women to study together.

Looking at the hundreds of children crowded together in the room, Zhu Houxuan's heart was filled with joy. After a few days of rest, these children were in much better condition, and Zhu Houxuan also became familiar with them.

Zhu Houxuan was very satisfied with these children. Most of them had experienced hard wandering, and after a period of natural selection, most of those who survived had outstanding qualities.

"Everyone should cherish this learning opportunity and study hard. Only by studying hard can you change your destiny." Zhu Houxuan said earnestly.

"If you study hard, can you stop being a eunuch?" Someone in the crowd shouted.

The relaxed atmosphere in the room disappeared in an instant, and it became filled with gloom. A few days of rest made them no longer numb and they became much more lively, but there was always a dark cloud lingering in their hearts.

They entered the palace as eunuchs in preparation, and sooner or later they would be stabbed, but no one wanted to be stabbed like that.

Zhu Houxuan was stunned when he heard this, and then he realized that he had only talked about the future plans for these children with Yu Zhizhou and the senior officials in the palace, and these children thought they would be castrated.

He wanted to explain to the children, but the words stopped at his lips.

It seems like this matter can be used to some advantage! Zhu Houxuan thought, stroking his chin.

"Yes!" Zhu Houxuan said loudly, and all the children stared at him.

"There are limited vacancies for eunuchs in the palace, but there are many industries outside the palace, and they are also very short of people, so the 20 boys with the worst grades will be kept in the palace as eunuchs, and the other boys will be sent to the industries outside the palace as shop assistants after graduation, and they will all receive a monthly salary."

Zhu Houxuan decided not to be a human being anymore and used this lie to motivate the boys to study hard.

As soon as Zhu Houxuan finished speaking, all the boys in the room became excited.

Survival and reproduction are the instincts of all animals. Now that their survival problem has been solved, if they can still maintain their ability to reproduce, they will burst out with tremendous strength for this.

Moreover, the mortality rate of castration was relatively high. It was less than 20% in the Ming Dynasty, but it suddenly rose to 40% in the Qing Dynasty.

This is because the eunuchs of the Ming Dynasty did not remove the roots, but only the testicles, similar to the sterilization of kittens and puppies today. The requirements of the Qing Dynasty were even more perverted, requiring the roots to be removed as well, which caused a larger wound, a greater chance of infection, and a higher mortality rate.

Zhu Houxuan started today's class with a smile. He believed that under his encouragement, his students would make rapid progress.
He actually didn't schedule many classes for himself, and they were all concentrated on math classes.

He had selected some literate eunuchs from the accounting office and the Ministry of Revenue a few days in advance and trained them. At least now they have no problem teaching some elementary school courses.

Because Zhu Houxuan was really too busy, he was needed everywhere.

Half a month passed in the blink of an eye, and Master Luo had already produced more than ten tons of coke using the traditional coking method given by Zhu Houxuan.

He also transported the coke to Daye Iron Mine and used the blast furnace and coke at the mine to smelt a furnace of iron.

It turned out that it was indeed as Zhu Houxuan said. Although the quality was slightly worse than the iron smelted from charcoal (because charcoal is purer and has fewer impurities than coke smelted under existing conditions), the price of coke was much cheaper than charcoal and its source was more stable.

Overall, switching to coke can reduce the cost of iron smelting by 10%. For a bulk commodity like iron, a 10% reduction in smelting costs will result in a huge increase in profits.

In fact, the Ming Dynasty was the peak of ancient Chinese smelting, reaching the highest peak in terms of output, quality and technology. The blast furnace iron smelting was mastered early on, but the ancients had never found a way to increase the furnace temperature again, and could only use the frying steel method and the pouring steel method to produce steel.

Therefore, Zhu Houxuan’s future technical direction is to continue to improve coking technology, increase the coking rate, improve the quality of coke, and reduce the cost of coke.

Instead, they improved the steelmaking furnace and found ways to increase the furnace temperature to reach the melting point of iron, so that steel could be produced directly from one furnace.

The success of coke also made Luo Dajiang more convinced of Zhu Houxuan. He believed that Zhu Houxuan really had divine help, and he cooperated with Zhu Houxuan more.

Jin Tong and his team's Damascus forging plan did not make much progress. Although different steel sheets could be fused together, the patterns inside became messy.

Zhu Houxuan believed that this problem was caused by the use of a sledgehammer to strike during fusion and elongation, and it was difficult to achieve uniform force with each hammer. He thought that fusion and elongation had to be done by forging, so he designed a simple forging machine.

As for the carpenters, they were constantly building flying shuttle looms. There was no technical threshold for the flying shuttle loom, and it was a modification that could be learned at a glance. It was now slowly spreading in Qizhou City.

And in the midst of this busyness, Yu Chun came to pay a visit to Zhu Houxuan.

"Your Highness, I am here today on the orders of the Concubine Dowager to invite You to watch an opera." Yu Chunlai handed over a small booklet.

"Listen to opera?" Zhu Houxuan said in surprise, "No!" He refused very straightforwardly. He had listened to operas from the Ming Dynasty. They couldn't be said to be boring, but they were mediocre.

"Your Highness, this is a popular opera troupe that the Concubine Dowager specially sent people to Nanjing to invite. Today's performance is a new play rehearsed by this troupe. This new play is very popular in Nanjing. Your Highness should go and listen to it, just as if you were going to accompany the Concubine Dowager." Yu Chunlai handed the booklet to Zhu Houxuan.

Zhu Houxuan still didn't want to go as he was busy, but it was difficult for him to refuse, so he flipped through the booklet and tried to find a reason to refuse based on the new play.

"These are just the plays. They don't seem to be anything special looking at the titles." Zhu Houxun suddenly stopped, his eyes fixed on a line of words in the booklet.

"I'll go!" said Zhu Houxuan.

There was a line in the booklet that read:

Newly staged mythological play: Journey to the West: Kingdom of Women.

(End of this chapter)