Chapter 17 If the upper beam is crooked, the lower beam will be crooked too.
Perhaps to fulfill his wife's promise, or perhaps truly moved by Yu Mingshu's perseverance, Yang Congen finally agreed to let "Yu Erlang" enroll.
When Yu Mingshu returned home for dinner, a smile she couldn't hide still lingered on her lips.
Wu Qiuniang stared at her daughter, who seemed possessed, and said with a hint of reproach, "What is it that makes you so happy? I saw Zhu Liulang being very attentive to you today, but you didn't even give him a smile."
Upon hearing this, Yu Mingshu remained unmoved, absorbed in his own joyous occasion, while Yu Dan loosened his grip, causing his chopsticks to fall to the ground.
Wu Qiuniang glanced at him and said, "Don't pick them up anymore. Tell Xia Man to get you a clean pair again."
Yu Dan stopped bending over and muttered with his head down, "The Zhu family is in high spirits right now. Their eldest son passed the imperial examination and became the son-in-law of the Zhang family. The entire Zhu family has risen in status. What kind of noble lady can't Zhu Yishan marry? Why is he so attentive to my elder sister?"
Wu Qiuniang seemed stumped by the question, but Qingque behind her smiled and answered for her, "Of course, Madam Zhu gave the instructions."
Xia Man quickly brought out a pair of clean chopsticks and handed them to Yu Dan.
Yu Dan silently gripped his chopsticks, the discussions he had overheard that afternoon echoing in his ears.
…
After the Zhu family's banquet ended, Yu Mingshu went to stop the Yang family's carriage and told his mother and younger brother to wait at the door. Yu Dan had drunk too much tea during the banquet, so he took the opportunity to go to the latrine.
Perhaps not expecting that guests would linger in the mansion after the banquet, the Zhu family's servants chatted idly in the corridor without restraint.
"Did you see that just now? Liu Lang was being very attentive to that orphan girl from the Yu family. Sister Mei saw it and is throwing a tantrum now!" The maid in green ran over from the east and excitedly took her sister's arm.
The woman in blue, who was being held by her arm, sneered, "This Mei Xiang is really something. How much effort did Madam and Sixth Master put into finding such an easy-going in-law family like the Yu family, and she's still not satisfied. Does she even dream that Sixth Master will marry her as his principal wife?"
The woman in green raised her chin towards the east, "Let her make a fuss. If she angers the madam too much one day, we'll marry Liu Lang a daughter from a wealthy and noble family, and then she'll know how good the Yu family is."
As she spoke, she suddenly remembered the girl who had stolen the show at the banquet, and sighed with some regret, "This Miss Yu is also pitiful. Her family seems to be officials, but in reality, she has no one who can speak for her. If she really marries into the family, I'm afraid Sister Mei will ride roughshod over her!"
The woman in blue frowned and said, "Doesn't the Yu family have a son? Don't underestimate a young man's potential; who knows, he might rise to prominence one day..."
The woman in green curled her lip in disdain. "Stop joking! Who doesn't know that the young master of the Yu family is a fool? He's studied for many years, but his knowledge is not as good as our ninth young master who has just started his studies!"
…
Yu Dan was lost in his memories, deep wrinkles etched between his brows. Fortunately, no one in the room noticed him or his unusual behavior.
With the admission notice from Chang'an Academy in his hand, Yu Mingshu could no longer have any interest in Zhu Liulang.
She automatically ignored the second half of her mother's sentence and vaguely explained, "Previously, I went to the academy to ask to accompany Sanlang in his studies, but Master Yang did not agree. Today, because I saved the young master, Madam Yang promised to grant me one request, and Master Yang finally relented."
"Are you really going to the academy to accompany your child to study?" Wu Qiuniang was so surprised that she put down her chopsticks, her brows furrowing suddenly.
She glanced at Yu Dan, who seemed lost in thought, preoccupied with something else entirely.
Wu Qiuniang had no choice but to turn her attention back to her daughter, anxiously saying, "That place is full of men. It might be bad for your reputation if a young woman like you were to mingle there!"
"Don't worry, I only wear men's clothing at the academy and use the false identity of 'Yu Erlang.' Apart from Master Yang, no one knows that I am a woman." Yu Mingshu told the lie very naturally.
“We don’t have any Erlang in our family!” Wu Qiuniang’s tone suddenly turned somber.
The atmosphere turned cold, and the air in the hall seemed to freeze. Yu Mingshu realized that she had touched a sore spot for her mother, and her voice unconsciously weakened.
"The people at the academy don't know about our family situation."
Not only do the people at the academy not know, but you probably can't find a single person in the entire city of Chang'an who knows the truth.
Back then, Yu Zhui was focused on his official career, and his relationship with Wu Qiuniang could only be described as respectful but not intimate.
The couple, one managing the household and the other handling external affairs, didn't see anything wrong with it. However, their grandmother, Mrs. Yu, was anxious, eager to have a grandson.
The old lady sent countless letters urging her to have a child. Later, when she realized that writing letters was ineffective, she even moved to the capital to live with her son and daughter-in-law. Yu Zhui and Wu Qiuniang, unable to bear the pressure any longer, finally had their eldest daughter, Yu Mingshu.
Upon seeing her daughter-in-law give birth to a baby girl, the old lady disregarded the fact that Wu Qiuniang was still in danger and began to berate her in front of all the servants, hurling the most nasty insults possible, wishing her daughter-in-law would get pregnant again as soon as she finished her postpartum confinement.
Wu Qiuniang had a small frame and developed health problems after giving birth to her first child. She preferred to let her husband take a concubine rather than have any more children.
Yu Zhui valued his reputation as a member of the "pure stream" (a term referring to officials of the Qing Dynasty who maintained integrity and upright conduct), and given the meager salary of a seventh-rank official, he couldn't afford to support so many people in his household, so he refused to take a concubine under any circumstances.
The old lady went back to complain to her second son's family. When she returned to Beijing, she had a baby boy who was just a month old in her arms. She said that he was the second son's newborn son and she was willing to give him to the eldest son's family to continue the family line.
Wu Qiuniang had no objection to this matter, and Yu Zhui also half-heartedly agreed. Who knew that after raising the adopted son for only half a year, Wu Qiuniang was diagnosed with pregnancy again... and gave birth to a son safely.
Now that the couple has their own son, how can they let their adopted nephew take the title of the eldest son?
So Yu Zhui wrote home, asking his younger brother to take the child back. However, his family back home said that the adoption had been formally approved and witnessed by relatives and the ancestral temple, and could not be changed. The old lady then became a hands-off manager, leaving her daughter-in-law to take care of the child.
Despite her illness, Wu Qiuniang cared for her three children until midsummer of the ninth year of the Fengle era. Yu Zhui was ordered to leave the capital on official business and died on the way in Yanghe. With her husband dead, she had no reason to raise her brother-in-law's children anymore, so she sent Erlang back to his hometown.
At that time, the old lady wanted to take Mingshu and Sanlang away. She brought several clan elders to the capital to snatch them away, forcing her to swear to the heavens that she would never remarry in this life, which scared the Yu family back.
Thinking of these troubling things, Wu Qiuniang stopped talking, staring intently at the bottom of the bowl, picking up her chopsticks and fiddling with the rice grains in the bowl, becoming more and more annoyed with each step.
"I think Yishan is a very good person. He's gentle, polite, and academically outstanding. He's bound to have a bright future. What's most remarkable is that he's interested in you..."
“Mother, the Zhu family may seem prosperous from the outside, but if I really marry into that family, I might not be able to live a good life.”
Knowing that his mother was still attached to the idea of a marriage alliance with the Zhu family, Yu Mingshu stopped beating around the bush and directly refuted her: "The Zhu family is large and has complicated relationships. Putting aside everything else, just take this eldest son, Zhu Yiliang, who just passed the imperial examination. Isn't he not the son of the mistress?"
Zhu Yiliang's mother was a village woman and also Zhu Yuanwai's first wife. She single-handedly managed the Zhu family while her husband studied diligently, but was divorced when he became successful. Fortunately, Zhu Yiliang was already old enough to understand when he went to Beijing with his father. He always thought of his hardworking mother and would send money back to support her from time to time.
Noticing the change in Wu Qiuniang's expression, Yu Mingshu continued, "Master Zhu has eleven children, born to eight different women. In the entire Zhu family, there are twenty-one masters whose names you can even name! Marrying into such a family means constantly bowing and scraping before elders and dealing with sisters-in-law, with endless calculations of human relationships. It can exhaust a person to death!"
Wu Qiuniang wasn't entirely unaware of these principles. After hearing her daughter's analysis, she vaguely considered giving up, but she still insisted: "Yishan is the legitimate son of the main wife, and he has the support of his maternal family. Sooner or later, he will establish his own household. Once he separates from the family, will you still need to worry about the trivial matters of Master Zhu's household?"
“He was born into such a family, some of his ideas and even habits are ingrained in him,” Yu Mingshu said dismissively. “Is Mother really willing to gamble with my entire life’s happiness?”
Yu Dan, just as he came to his senses, overheard this remark and quickly chimed in, "If the upper beam is crooked, the lower beam will be crooked too. Who knows, Zhu Yishan might have already gone astray!"
"Very well, you have a point." Wu Qiuniang was completely defeated, slumped her back in dejection, and looked into the distance through the courtyard gate. "Chang'an Academy has many talented people. I hope you will be fortunate enough to choose a good husband from among them."
"Pfft...cough cough cough." Yu Dan had just taken a sip of tea when he heard this and coughed a few times, almost choking to death.
"I'm done eating, I'm going to study now." Caught between the gazes of the two people on either side, he quickly put down his chopsticks, got up, and fled.
“That’s not why I went to the academy.”
Yu Mingshu said seriously, "I don't want to get married. It has nothing to do with whether the matchmaker is from the Zhou family or the Zhu family, or whether he is an official or a commoner. I'm just unwilling to be a caged beast in the inner quarters for the rest of my life at the age of seventeen."
"Why do you think that?" Wu Qiuniang asked uneasily.
She thought that Ming Shu lost her father when she was very young and witnessed her arguing with the Yu family relatives, struggling to support the family, and dealing with various parties, finally managing to settle down in Chang'an... Ming Shu must have a deep understanding of the hardships she endured.
Is Ming Shu's reluctance to marry due to her?
"I'm not used to handing my fate over to others."
This answer surprised Wu Qiuniang.
She was stunned for a long while before hesitantly asking, "But if you don't get married, how will you support yourself for the rest of your life?"
Yu Mingshu tilted her head slightly and looked out the door. In the distance, a faint crescent moon was hidden among the clouds.
She had been thinking about this question ever since she arrived in Daliang. She didn't want to marry just any man and live the life of a feudal woman, nor did she want to rely on her beauty to fight in palace intrigues and domestic dramas. She just wanted to earn herself a space to live independently.
She considered going into business, but faced two problems: first, she lacked business knowledge and starting a business rashly could easily lead to financial ruin; second, going into business would affect her family's chances of passing the civil service exam.
As a pure liberal arts student, Yu Mingshu couldn't make soap, gunpowder, or firearms, let alone draw blueprints for technological products. After much thought, it seemed that she could only develop in her old profession—either take the civil service exam or become a teacher.
Actually, she should be thankful that at least the feudal ethics of this era had not gone to extremes. If she had transmigrated to an era after the rise of Neo-Confucianism, she would have truly been doomed.
Yu Mingshu sorted out his jumbled thoughts and said, "As long as there is any hope, I would naturally want to take the imperial examination and enter officialdom like men. Even if I cannot be granted an official position, it would be good if I could become a lecturer at an academy or a tutor under a nobleman with my academic degree."
Wu Qiuniang then asked, "What if you're not even allowed to enter the examination hall in this world?"
“I have checked the ‘Law of the Great Liang’ and also found the regulations for the imperial examinations in my father’s study. There is no provision in it that prohibits women from taking the imperial examinations,” Yu Mingshu said.
“Rules are made by people. Even if you are exceptionally talented, a single word from those in power can remove your name from the list,” Wu Qiuniang said helplessly. “There is a Mr. Yuan at Chang’an Academy who should have a deep understanding of this matter.”
Mr. Yuan, Yuan Yi?
Yu Mingshu vaguely sensed the gossip in the air. If the timing weren't so bad, she would have loved to ask: What's the juicy gossip?
Suppressing her chaotic thoughts, Yu Mingshu brushed aside the stray hairs falling across her forehead and said with a wry smile, "If all else fails, I'll use the reputation of Chang'an Academy as a stepping stone to enter the palace as a female official."
"Without connections, how easy is it to enter the palace as a lady-in-waiting? There's a perfect example right before our eyes: Zhou Changchun pushed her own daughter into the fire pit just to get her son a position in the Imperial Medical Bureau..."
Wu Qiuniang's eyes were complicated as she murmured with a bitter smile, "If your father were still alive, at least our family would still have someone who could speak up for us."
Yu Mingshu stubbornly said, "If all these paths are blocked, then I will go into hiding and write some stories and leisure books to sell to bookstores. That way I can support myself."
Having read so many novels and dramas from ancient and modern times, both Chinese and foreign, and mastered the essence of many literary schools, if she were to engage in popular literature creation, she could at least earn a considerable sum of money, if not become a sensation in the Liang Dynasty.
After a long silence, Wu Qiuniang's expression softened, and she reached out to grasp Yu Mingshu's hand: "I was most worried about you. Your father passed away early, and Sanlang is useless. In the future, when you get married, your family will have no one to support you, and your husband's family will inevitably look down on you. Now I realize that you have such foresight, thinking so clearly about the future..."
Her voice grew gentler and gentler until she finally spoke in the softest tone, her voice strong and firm: "If you've thought it through, then do it. At worst, I'll take care of you."
Yu Mingshu was stunned for a moment, then suddenly felt a little guilty.
These past two days, she had harbored resentment towards her mother for pressuring her to get married, and in her mind, she had labeled Wu Qiuniang as a decadent, ancient woman, silently distancing herself from this mother-daughter relationship...
After hearing her unconventional ideas, Wu Qiuniang was still able to support her in sticking to her own opinions and say things like "I will take care of you." She was clearly an enlightened mother.
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