Chapter 98 Lecture Begins
As soon as the voice came out, everyone fell silent. They all looked towards the person who had made the voice.
Gu Jiayue pulled out a makeshift loudspeaker made of cardboard. "Everyone, be quiet. I've gathered you all here today mainly to announce something important that will affect your children's future. So, parents, please step back and give the front row seats to your children."
"Then everyone should try to find a place to sit, avoid crowding and pushing."
Seeing that it was Gu Jiayue, everyone calmed down out of respect.
After all, they had just received a few taels of silver as wages from someone a few days ago, and they also remembered the rice seedlings from before.
Although they didn't understand what she was going to do, no one made trouble. They quickly grabbed the child who was running around, gave him a small stool, and asked them to sit in the front.
If there was a disobedient child, I would take off my shoes and spank him on the buttocks. Usually, it only took a few spanks and he would behave.
The children walked to the front and sat down, either crying or laughing, and the adults in the back also found people they knew and sat together.
After about a quarter of an hour, the village chief looked around and saw that most people had arrived. He signaled Gu Jiayue that they could begin.
Gu Jiayue struck the gong. After the room quieted down, she began to speak. "Dear fellow villagers, uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters-in-law, sisters, good afternoon!" She began with a greeting.
"My name is Gu Jiayue. I believe everyone knows me. After all, I built a weird courtyard at the foot of Nanshan Mountain last month." She knew that the villagers complained about the strangeness of her courtyard.
But she didn't tell anyone that she was building a school. She just wanted to take people by surprise.
Gu Jiayue spoke in a loud and clear voice, neither too slow nor too slow, and almost everyone present could hear her clearly.
Hearing his words, everyone laughed in good faith.
Someone even answered the call.
"Yes, Jiayue girl, why are your houses built here and there?"
"There's still so much empty space in the middle, but they're still planting trees and digging ponds. What a waste. If they were to grow crops, it would definitely be better within three years."
"That's right."
......
Gu Jiayue watched the villagers talking with a smile, and did not interrupt them immediately. Instead, she asked Hu Zi to stick his design drawing on a wooden board that had been prepared nearby.
After the design drawing was posted, Gu Jiayue struck the gong again.
Everyone has gotten used to it and becomes quiet when they hear the gong.
"Since everyone is confused, I will explain it to you now!"
She held out a bamboo stick, about a meter long and as thick as her pinky finger, and pointed at the blueprint. "Those strange buildings I built on Nanshan Mountain aren't my home, nor are they the Gu family's houses. They're Taohua Village's first school!"
boom.
Gu Jiayue's words were like water accidentally poured into a frying pan, instantly making the villagers boil over.
"School? School? Is that what I'm thinking of?"
"Buffalo, what did your sister Jiayue just say? Grandpa is old and didn't hear clearly. Can you say it again?"
"School? Is it a place where children can go to study?"
"Hey, boss, did I just hear something? Can you check if my ears are not cleaned properly?"
......
"Yes, that's right. It's the school you heard about, the one where you can send your children to school. Now let me show you the layout of the school. Although the school was built by you uncles and aunts, you certainly can't imagine what they are used for, right?"
Then, Gu Jiayue explained the layout of the entire academy, starting from the main gate, detailing the purpose of each building and each room and why they were designed that way.
This caused everyone to exclaim in surprise, realizing that there is so much knowledge in one school.
"Alright everyone, now that I've introduced the layout of the school, let's move on to the teaching staff."
"We are mules or horses, so we need to be taken out for a walk first. Whether we have taught well or not is not for me to say, but for you to judge!"
After these words were spoken, everyone's already high enthusiasm became even more uncontrollable.
Oh my God, I never thought that these illiterate country folk would one day be able to judge scholars.
It's really strange.
"Well, first of all, I will teach you the first lesson."
Gu Jiayue took out the teaching aids she had used for her first formal class with Gu Yuhe and the others. "Let's learn something simple for our first lesson. Before we begin, let me tell you a story."
As soon as they heard there was a story, the children who had not been interested at first suddenly became interested. Countless pairs of eyes stared at Gu Jiayue, waiting for her story.
Gu Jiayue smiled confidently, then turned around and sat behind the table that had just been served.
He first cleared his throat, then took a sip of tea, and then picked up the wake-up stick on the table with his slender right hand and slammed it hard.
“Bang!”
Wow, Gu Jiayue was already like a storyteller. He spoke slowly. "A long, long time ago, during the reign of Emperor Huang, people kept track of events by tying knots on ropes: big knots for big events, small knots for small ones."
As she spoke, she pulled out two ropes and tied them into a large knot, then a small one. She muttered to herself as she did so. "Three children were born in the village today, so I'll tie a large knot. We encountered a lion while hunting today, so I'll tie a large knot. Two women in the tribe had a quarrel today, so it's just a small matter, so I'll tie a small knot..."
The villagers laughed along.
"But as time goes by and things become more complicated, the knots on the rope become so dense that no one can tell which knot is which."
Gu Jiayue held the rope with a frown on her face. "Hey, what does this knot represent?"
The children also scratched their heads. They had clearly followed Sister Jiayue when she was tying the knot, so why did they forget it now?
"This made people worried. After an unknown amount of time, one day Cangjie went out hunting with a hunter.
As they walked, the hunter stopped and stared at the footprints on the ground. After a while, he said, "Hey, these are rabbit footprints. They ran to the east!" After a while, he said, "Look, these are wolf footprints. They just passed by here. Be careful!"
Cang Jie was puzzled and asked, "How can you tell what kind of animal it is and where it went just by looking at its footprints?" The hunter laughed and said, "These footprints are different for each animal. Once you get used to them, you will naturally understand them!"
Good boy! These words were like a ray of light, "whoosh", lighting up Cangjie's head.
He pondered, "Since each animal's footprint can represent itself, why can't I use different symbols to represent different things?"
From then on, Cangjie was like a possessed man.
He ran around every day, staring at the stars in the sky, and pondering their distribution;
Stare at the mountains and rivers on the ground, and study the direction of the veins;
Stare at birds, beasts, insects, and fish, and trace their shapes;
Stare at the plants and tools, and wonder what they look like.
Then, he drew everything he saw into simple symbols.
Look, he drew a crescent moon to represent the moon; he drew three wavy lines to represent water; he drew a circle with a dot in the middle to represent the sun."
Gu Jiayue was drawing on the wooden board behind her as she spoke.
The combination of language and text made the villagers in the audience nod their heads continuously, and the children in the front row even stretched their necks to look forward.
Some short children were blocked from seeing by the taller ones in front of them, so they had to lie on the backs of the people in front of them to see, almost crushing the children in front of them.
Gu Jiayue had to stop and change the seats for the children first.
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