1848 Great Qing Charcoal Burners

Call me "Mr." from Chapter 78 onwards.

Inside the classroom, Peng Gang wrote the name of each group member on each sewn notebook and stacked the notebooks according to their group.

I glanced at the young men who had washed away the sweat and grime, changed into clean new clothes, and were heading to the canteen next door to cook and eat.

Peng Gang then prepared the red scarves that he had prepared for them in advance.

He merely took advantage of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's power and never intended to integrate into it. He hoped that his troops would have clear markings to distinguish them from other Taiping Heavenly Kingdom troops.

After the young men finished eating in the cafeteria and cleaned up their dishes, the group leaders and deputy group leaders habitually organized the group and led their members into the classroom in an orderly fashion, where they took their seats in the places designated by Peng Gang.

This was the first time so many people had gathered in a large classroom for a class. On Peng Gang's podium were several thick stacks of books and red scarves.

The young people found it all very novel. Young people are naturally lively and curious, and they couldn't help but chatter and whisper among themselves.

Before Peng Gang could speak, the team leader and deputy team leader took the initiative to maintain order and keep the team members quiet.

Those who felt the same sense of novelty and curiosity included the children of artisans who had settled in Honglian Village and the children of visitors from Guixian County.

They also crowded outside the classroom to look inside, gazing enviously at their peers who usually carried guns and were very imposing, ate better than them, and were even wearing new clothes today.

Peng Gang witnessed this scene and realized that those children were a promising future force.

Unfortunately, his equipment and energy are limited. Eight out of ten groups were only added three months ago, and there are no plans to expand the army this year.

"Wear this red scarf, and from now on you will all be my students. When you see me in the future, you don't need to call me 'Master Dong' anymore, you have to call me 'Teacher,' understand?" Peng Gang's calm and powerful voice echoed in the classroom.

"Now, those whose names are called, come to me and get your notebooks and red scarves."

He bought his position as head of the local militia from the government, a position he disliked. The title of "boss" stemmed from an employment relationship, lacking a strong sense of belonging and unlikely to effectively unite people.

As for recognizing them as godchildren and godfathers...

The loyalty of adopted sons is based on feudal ethics of "repaying kindness" and "father-son relationship", lacking ideological packaging.

Once the adoptive father loses power or is unable to provide sufficient benefits, it is common for the adopted son to be unwilling to remain subservient for long, and to rebel or even kill his adoptive father.

Throughout history, there have been countless instances of adopted sons killing their adoptive fathers.

Furthermore, he and these young men are the same age, and some of them are a year or two older than him, so it would be inappropriate for him to recognize them as his godsons.

Once they become teachers, these younger students all have a unified student identity, which helps to enhance their sense of belonging and unified identity.

Traditional ethics also have the saying that a teacher is like a father, and teachers are not distinguished by age; the title "sir" is the most appropriate.

"Lu Qin!"

"To!"

Peng Gang first called out the name of Lu Qin, the group leader, and solemnly put a red scarf on Lu Qin's neck and distributed notebooks.

Finally, Lu Qin was asked to bow and shout "Hello, sir!"

The other young men, like Lu Qin, went through the process one by one, giving them a strong sense of ceremony.

After the teacher-student ceremony was completed, Peng Gang, as usual, called for everyone to stand up.

The 120 young men stood up in unison, bowed to Peng Gang, and greeted him with "Hello, sir."

"sit!"

Peng Gang's gaze swept over the group of young men, whose appearances had been completely transformed, clean and tidy, and who showed no signs of being refugees. He nodded in satisfaction.

The only downside is that the braid on their heads is really an eyesore, but unfortunately they can't cut it off yet.

Since we can't cut the braids on their heads for the time being, let's slowly start by cutting off the braids in their hearts.

The group of young men in the audience were not all illiterate.

After more than half a year of study, most of the group leaders and deputy group leaders from the second group have mastered between three and four hundred commonly used characters.

Having mastered only three or four hundred words in more than six months is a rather slow pace.

The reason is that Peng Gang spent two and a half months patiently teaching them pinyin and strokes, laying a foundation for them, without directly teaching them to recognize and write characters.

Of course, there are exceptions. Students like Li Qi and Lu Qin, who have the best foundation and are diligent and eager to learn, have long since pulled ahead of the other students.

Li Qi has a basic understanding of commonly used characters and rarely encounters difficulties in normal reading and writing.

Lu Qin also knows eight or nine hundred commonly used characters.

In their spare time, Li Qi and Lu Qin would teach their team members how to earn work points. Therefore, although the first and second teams underwent a major reshuffle and had many new members added, the team was still able to survive.

Groups 1 and 2 still have the highest level of education among all groups.

Among the students from disaster-stricken families accepted by Guiping Prefecture, twenty-six had a basic understanding of literature. Most of them were as literate as Lu Qin, but they did not know pinyin.

One of the students, Huang Bingxian, had attended a private school for seven years and was far more literate than Li Qi.

Faced with the uneven skill levels of the students, Peng Gang decided to continue teaching the most basic pinyin tones and stroke order in his afternoon classes every day to solidify everyone's foundation.

Those with a strong academic background were placed in a separate class and received a private tutoring session for an hour each evening.

As for the mornings, they are used for military training, not for cultural studies.

"Wang Si!" After scanning the room, Peng Gang's gaze settled on Wang Si from Group Three, and he called out his name. He called him by name because Wang Si was illiterate.

Before formally beginning the lessons, Peng Gang needed to make them understand why they needed to learn to read.

"Here!" Wang Si, whose name was called, jumped up from the stool as if he had been electrocuted.

"You've performed very well in training these past few days, so I'm awarding you five work points."

Peng Gang took out a work point card that he had made the night before. Considering the expanding scope of use of work point cards, Peng Gang added a date-protected anti-counterfeiting code composed of English letters and Arabic numerals to the new work point card.

Meanwhile, slogans promoting the guarantee of project quality and the improvement of work efficiency are written on both sides of the work point card, indicating that the work point card was issued during the construction of Honglian Village.

"Thank you for the reward, Mr. Xie!"

Wang Si walked to the podium in a daze, took the work point card (which was actually worth two work points) from Peng Gang, and excitedly returned to his seat to show off his work point card.

Group leader Zhang Ze noticed that the work point card Peng Gang gave this time was different from the previous ones. He couldn't help but glance at it and couldn't help but laugh when he saw the "2" and the word "贰" on the work point card.

This is not five work points, it's clearly two work points.

The owner changed the way he wrote it. In the past, the characters "2" and "贰" were written very neatly, but this time they were written too freely and elegantly. The tail of "2" and the hook of "贰" were almost pointing upwards. Only Wang Si, who was blind with his eyes open, didn't notice.

"Zhang Ze, what are you laughing at? Stand up, tell us what's so funny." Peng Gang asked, pointing at Zhang Ze who was covering his mouth and laughing.

"I...I dare not say."

"Say what you mean."

"Mr. Dong just gave Wang Si a work point card with two work points, not five."

"Sit down." Peng Gang gestured for Zhang Ze to sit down, and then said to Wang Si, "Wang Si, show your work point card to the other students who are literate, and see how many work points it is."

The students who were literate gathered around to look at the work point card. Most of them recognized the characters and said it was two work points. Only a few students thought that this was Peng Gang's test of their obedience. They did what Zhao Gao did by pointing at a deer and calling it a horse, lying through their teeth and insisting that it was five centimeters.

Peng Gang frowned and made the two students who were lying through their teeth stand on the platform as punishment.

"This is a work point card worth two work points! It's also the lesson I'm going to teach you in this class. I'm not teaching you to read so you can become scholars, but so you can see through the clutches of the King of Hell's ledger and not be sold out without even realizing it! Only by reading can you understand the Yin-Yang contract and the Yin-Yang ledger!" As he spoke, Peng Gang turned around and glared at the two students who were being punished to stand beside him.

"My students, you must be honest and upright in your conduct and actions, and never act against your conscience! Do you understand?!"

Finally, Peng Gang asked Wang Si to come up on stage and gave him a work point card with one work point and two work points: "I always keep my word. Wang Si, this is the five work points I promised to reward you, not a single one less."

In the second lesson, Peng Gang officially began teaching them the basics of pinyin tones and stroke order.

The incantation that Zhang Zhao's boat bandits heard was actually the pinyin that Peng Gang was teaching the members of the second group.

The phonetic methods used in this era were mainly the direct pronunciation method and the fanqie method.

The direct pronunciation method uses one character to annotate another, for example, 肇 is pronounced as 兆; 帝 is pronounced as 地; 东 is pronounced as 冬.

The fanqie method involves combining two Chinese characters: the initial consonant of the first character is used, and the final vowel plus tone of the second character is used. The two are then quickly read together to obtain the pronunciation of the target character.

For example, in the character 东 (dōng), the initial consonant d is taken from 德 (dé), and the final vowel + tone óng is taken from 红 (hóng). Combining these, we get d + óng → dóng.

The Kangxi Dictionary uses both direct pronunciation and fanqie (a method of indicating pronunciation by reverse spelling).

However, both methods have very obvious drawbacks. The prerequisite for mastering the direct pronunciation method is that you must know 1,200 to 1,300 characters. In addition to needing to master more than 1,000 characters, you are also easily affected by accent.

If these students all knew 1,200 or 1,300 characters, then there would be no point in having literacy classes; we could start teaching them simple arithmetic or even algebra and geometry directly.

As for the phonetic spelling system used during the Republic of China era, Peng Gang himself didn't know it, let alone teach it.

For Peng Gang, Pinyin, this great invention of phonetic notation that has stood the test of time, is the best way to notate phonetic symbols and the most efficient tool for literacy.

With a foundation in Pinyin, it will be easier to select promising students who are good at learning Western Latin alphabet languages ​​in the future.

For the next month or so, in addition to handling the trivial matters of Honglian Village, Peng Gang taught pinyin tones and stroke order during the day, and taught his younger siblings and more than twenty students with good cultural backgrounds addition, subtraction, multiplication and division at night. Before going to bed, he would also spend an hour compiling elementary Chinese and math textbooks.

Although the high-intensity work left me physically and mentally exhausted, I still gritted my teeth and persevered.

Once this group of students is taught and they have mastered their own ways of thinking and teaching, they can become teachers in my place, making my future teaching work much easier.

In mid-October, the fields near Dachong were gradually harvested.

Wang Dalei led the mountain people near Dachong to transport this year's rent to Honglian Village. The total amount of various grains was 780 shi. With this grain, Peng Gang's stored grain could last until next spring.

“Well done. After the autumn harvest, it’s the off-season for farming. There’s nothing much going on in Dachong for the time being. Go back and pack your things, then take your family to the charcoal shop in Jiangkou Market.” Peng Gang closed the ledger and said to Wang Dalei.

Having managed Wang Dazuo's business before, she handled things very well.

Peng Gang was very satisfied with Wang Dalei's work. He was in need of such a business-oriented talent and had the idea of ​​transferring Wang Dalei to the Jiangkouwei Coal Shop.

"Does the group leader still not trust me?" Wang Dalei thought that Peng Gang did not trust him and deliberately wanted to send him away from the familiar Dachong to Jiangkouwei.

“It’s precisely because I trust you that I transferred you to the charcoal shop in Jiangkouwei,” Peng Gang said. “Have you forgotten what my primary job is?”

"A charcoal burner?" Wang Dalei thought for a moment before remembering that the owner was a charcoal burner.

“That settles it.” Peng Gang smiled. “You go and take over the charcoal business first, and I will send people to help you manage the charcoal business in Jiangkou Market.”

　Two chapters were reviewed in a row, which caused some damage. I had to delete and repost them. I apologize for keeping you all waiting.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)