Chapter 1013: The First Essay Contest of the Han Tribe
Luo Chong was not in a hurry to build the palace. The Han Tribe was developing very well in all aspects. He could not disturb the stable life of the people of the tribe just because he was building a house for his family.
Fortunately, there was nothing major during this period, so Luo Chong focused on cultural construction.
The Han Tribe did not have much cultural heritage. There were only a few books in the entire tribe, which could not be counted with two hands, but they were enough with two feet.
The "Han Law" which mainly talked about law, the "Han Li" which mainly talked about etiquette, morality and class, plus the "Selected Poems" used for literacy in school, and then there were "Elementary Arithmetic" and "Intermediate Arithmetic", as well as "Nature" which taught popular physics knowledge. All of the above were popular books in school and the most printed books in the Han Tribe.
There are also many books being compiled, such as the seven major textbooks of the medical school, covering anatomy, herbal medicine, maternal and child health care, trauma, orthopedics, etc., and there is no final volume yet.
This thing must be learned and improved at the same time, because science and technology are always developing, so there is no need to blindly seek perfection and innovation. The compilation of textbooks at the medical school has been going on for more than two years. It is time to finalize the textbooks and start printing in batches.
When this batch of medical books is printed, the Han tribe can officially register the medical school and train a large number of medical talents. Don’t worry about the medical skills first. At least Luo Chong can make a good start and formulate a good development path. Even if he dies in the future, he can’t let the medicine of this world mess up.
However, even with these medical books that are about to be completed, the books of the Han tribe are still pitiful. Such a large tribe, a tribe that is about to transition to an empire, actually has only so few books, and most of them are written by Luo Chong. How can this be justified?
This is definitely not possible. In order to enrich the books of the Han tribe, to supplement the heritage of the Han tribe, and to leave more classics, especially classics that belong to this world, Luo Chong finally made a decision.
What is a classic that belongs to this world?
Of course, it is something written by the natives of this world themselves.
So in order to achieve this goal, Luo Chong organized the first essay contest of the Han tribe.
In mid-November of the first year of Da Ming, Luo Chong issued an order to the entire Han tribe, an order to collect articles, but it was not mandatory, but to encourage literate people to write books themselves.
Writing a book is a big deal. There are not many literate people in the entire Han tribe now, and even fewer people who can write. And those who can write and think of writing books are almost non-existent.
And Luo Chong can't memorize all the books he read in his previous life, so this requires the whole tribe to work together.
In order to encourage people to write books, Luo Chong organized this essay collection activity that can be said to have no threshold. Of course, the premise is that you can write.
The official documents issued to various places said:
In order to enrich the books, knowledge and cultural heritage of the Han tribe, now all articles, letters, and books are collected within the tribe. There is no limit on the style, content, or subject matter. People can write whatever they want. The manuscripts participating in the activity will be reviewed by the leader himself. Those who are selected can receive a minimum of five yuan in royalties. Those who are included in the Han tribe library can be awarded a title and have the opportunity to be granted an official position.
Tips on essay topics.
1. Travel notes: You can write about your travels (migration) and what you have seen and heard when you were on a mission, including the local customs and practices of different places, the different climates in different places, the strange tribes you have seen, or any wonderful landscapes and strange wild animals. The content can be in the form of a diary, a navigation log, or an adventure story, with no limit on the style and format.
2. Observation reports: You must have noticed something in your daily life. It may be the stars in the sky, or a strangely shaped cloud, or a big tree, or an inconspicuous grass, or perhaps an insect, or even a livestock raised at home.
The sun, the moon, the stars, animals, plants, minerals, and even water, you must have noticed and observed these things. When you see them, what do you think of, or what are the characteristics and rules of these things? You are welcome to record them in the form of text or picture albums and share your experiences with the leader.
3. Work experience: You may be a farmer, a herdsman, a miner, a carpenter, a blacksmith, or even a minor official, a coachman, or a sailor. In these daily work, what troubles have you encountered and what solutions have you summarized to solve them? These are all valuable experiences.
These experiences may be technical, personal work experience, or work experience. You can write down and share with the leader what you think is interesting and meaningful. Maybe your experience will be selected and widely spread in the tribe, making contributions to the entire tribe.
4. Personal suggestions: In your daily work, study and labor, have you encountered things that you cannot understand, or feel difficult, or even things that you think are unreasonable? Or what are your dissatisfactions with your current life and what methods do you hope to solve? If you have any good suggestions, you can write them down and share them with the leader. The leader will know your difficulties and will definitely consider adopting your suggestions.
5. Thoughts: As a human being, you must have your own life goals, dreams, or ambitions.
You may have thought that you can become a doctor, save the dying and the wounded, and save the lives of your loved ones; you may have thought that you can become an official, govern the people, and let the people live and work in peace and contentment; or you may become a captain, drive a big ship and set sail to explore this unknown world; you may also become a teacher, teach and educate people, and make the people wise and reasonable; you may even think about growing wings, soaring in the blue sky like a bird, and seeing the vastness of the world.
For these unrestrained ideals and ambitions, what ideas have you had, what have you done, and what plans have you made? You can write them down and share them with the leader.
6. Social Thought, academic studies are strange and have different purposes. In your mind, what kind of person should a person be and how the tribe should develop, there are a hundred ideas for a hundred people.
Soldiers think about how to defeat their opponents, farmers think about how to harvest, and skilled workers build palaces and houses and manufacture mechanical ships. If you have unique insights into a certain thing, why not record it in a book, spread it widely, and find like-minded people?
Luo Chong wrote a long and densely packed notice, and gave suggestions on almost everything he could think of, just to encourage everyone to create.
When this notice was issued, some officials in Hanyang County felt that Luo Chong's suggestion was not very reliable. If it was to enrich the knowledge reserve of the Han tribe and better pass on technical ideas, then why even travel notes were collected? They were useless.
However, Luo Chong had a different idea. Who said that travel notes were useless? Who said that personal experiences could not become classics? Isn't Confucius' Analects a travel note written by his students about Confucius's travels around the countries to give lectures? Who dares to say that Analects is not a classic?
Whether a classic is a classic is not defined by individuals, but depends on whether the book is useful. Anyone who is able to summarize the above things in words definitely has his own personal ideas about things. What Luo Chong has to do now is to let the people speak out these ideas, remove the dross, select useful wise sayings, and then compile them into a book to make them widely circulated.
Before seeing the real thing, no one can say who is a talent and who is a mediocre person.
Moreover, if the ideological tips and suggestions he gave could be deeply rooted in people's hearts, they might even promote the development of the world's hundreds of schools of thought, and maybe they could really produce a group of thinkers.
Having ideas is a good thing, and having wrong ideas is also a good thing. When you encounter good ideas, you can spread them widely. When you encounter crooked ways that are not conducive to your rule and the development of the Han tribe, Luo Chong can just take this opportunity to nip them in the bud, so that he can't even think about it.
The documents about the essay solicitation were quickly distributed to the government offices in various parts of the Han tribe, and the officials of the counties and prefectures spread it widely and told every citizen of the Han tribe.
At first, these officials were somewhat disapproving, thinking that there were not many literate people in the Han tribe now, and they were basically concentrated in the industrial and official groups. Such essay solicitation activities could not be popularized among the people at all. However, the facts slapped them in the face.
The essay solicitation proposed by Luo Chong actually caused a great discussion among the people.
The reasons for this are not difficult to summarize as follows.
First, it is winter now, the slack season for farming, and the people have nothing to do, so they love to think about random things. Therefore, this season is also the season when the people love to think the most.
Second, there is a fee for writing. As long as you write something, you may be valued by the leader and then get a fee. Moreover, this thing is easy to write. You can write anything you want. There is almost no threshold.
Third, what you write can be seen by the leader. If you are appreciated by the leader, you can change the status quo, and maybe you can be promoted to a higher rank or even become an official.
Fourth, it is to express your own thoughts and emotions. With a population base of hundreds of thousands, there will always be some people who will have some inexplicable ideas. Usually, these ideas may not be recognized by the people around them, and no one is willing to listen to their nagging, but now it is different. Not only will someone read it, but it will be read by the leader himself. Then, won’t these people participate enthusiastically?
Fifth, they came purely for Luo Chong. The territory of the Han tribe was very large, and there were so many people. Few people had seen the leader Luo Chong, and Luo Chong's image basically remained in hearsay. Now that the people had the opportunity to talk directly with the leader, they would definitely have something to say to the leader. Not to mention writing a book or biography, even if it was just to say hello to the leader, sending a letter would be good.
Besides, the notice also said that the leader asked them if they had any difficulties in life or any suggestions. Look, even the leader asked them for advice. If the leader adopted their opinions, it would be a face-saving thing!
In summary, as soon as Luo Chong's notice came out, it immediately caused a huge response among the people.
People who can write have some ideas after reading the prompts on the notice, and people who can't write also have something to say after listening to the content of the notice. It doesn't matter if they can't write, they can find someone to write for them. There are schools in every county of the Han tribe, and education is also popularized. The students in those schools may not have much work experience or much knowledge, but they can write for others.
Thus, in this cold and long winter, a wave of creativity suddenly surged in the Han tribe. Some ghostwriters even appeared on the streets of various counties. Some students who were on holiday set up pens, ink, paper and inkstones on the street to earn extra money.
Never underestimate the smart people in this world. Moreover, whenever such a thing appears, someone will immediately follow suit.
For a time, people who can write became popular. You can make money by ghostwriting letters on the street. Some ghostwriters even gave various opinions and screened out those obviously useless nonsense in advance for Luo Chong. After all
, people who have been to school are different. If you know that the leader will not pay for some things after reading them, then don't spend that money to ask someone to write for you. It's a pure loss-making business.
The essay solicitation activity started in mid-November, but at the end of the month, Luo Chong received a large number of manuscripts sent by government offices from all over the country. This immediately surprised Luo Chong. Every day he sat in his study room to read the manuscripts sent from all over the country, and he could see all kinds of strange things at home every day.
For example, there is a book written by Yu Guang, a native of the fishing tribe of Zhudao Island, who has been hunting and fishing since childhood. He is very interested in marine fish and has a talent for painting.
Since he joined the Han tribe last year, he got four fishing boats from the Han tribe and got in touch with the culture and Chinese characters of the Han tribe. He has become interested in recording fishing trips and he always records his trips.
There is no structure to what he wrote. You can regard it as a work log for fishing trips, a travelogue for adventure trips, or even a marine life observation report.
This is not a book, but it records a lot of content. There are a lot of pictures and introductions of various marine life. For each kind of sea fish he caught, he would draw a detailed picture and make a text introduction. The content is wide-ranging, from sea beasts (Luo Chong suspected large mammal marine life, such as seals, fur seals, dolphins and even whales), to various marine fish, shrimps, crabs, shellfish, corals, etc., and the names given to these things by this person named Yu Guang.
Let's not talk about other contents, just this part of the description of marine life can be compiled into a single volume as a book to be passed down.
In the past, there was Bole who selected horses, and now there is Yu Guang who selected the sea. As for this person's description of marine life, if it is summarized and written into a book, Luo Chong believes that its value is definitely not less than a masterpiece like "Compendium of Materia Medica" or "Insect Records".
(End of this chapter)
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