Speaking of agriculture and sericulture, the first thing that came to Mu Erpang's mind was a line of poetry written by Emperor Xuanzong of Tang Dynasty, which he had memorized while doing his poetry homework, titled "Proclaiming the tradition and asking the elders about farming and sericulture, and encouraging them to cultivate the land and sericulture."
After agriculture and sericulture flourish, people's lives will surely be prosperous.
There is a saying in "The Analects of Confucius": After the people are prosperous, make them well-educated. "Chun Qiu Fan Lu" also said: Those who govern the people should first enrich them and then educate them.
After sorting out the order of priority, Mu Erpang picked up his pen and wrote: Agriculture is the foundation of the world. The way to govern a country is to enrich the people first...
After clarifying the importance of agriculture and sericulture, it is time to propose countermeasures.
Mu Erpang put down his pen, scratched his head, and began to think carefully.
The most direct way to promote agriculture and sericulture is, of course, to reduce taxes.
However, taxes are the direct income of the imperial court, and he, a tribute scholar from a small place, really has no idea what the current situation of the national treasury is.
What if the national treasury is empty and the emperor is worried about this matter? If he comes up and proposes to cut the court's taxes, it will definitely not be to his liking!
He thought that he had not changed his habit of scratching his head, but after all, he was in the presence of the emperor and could not mess up his hair, so he rubbed the hairline on his forehead instead.
Just as he was thinking about it, that vague gaze fell on him again.
Mu Erpang still ignored it and just kept thinking about his own things.
Of course, the only person who could sit in this hall and look around leisurely at this moment was Emperor Xihe, who was sitting at the very top.
He is the chief examiner of the last imperial examination. Although he is the emperor, it is actually okay for him to do his own things or be in a daze for a while, or just leave when he has sat for enough time. There will be people under him to supervise the exam on his behalf.
But he did attach great importance to this second imperial examination since he ascended the throne, and had already begun to look at the candidates taking the exam.
In particular, he still remembered the four people who ranked in the top four in the imperial examination, who came from the same prefecture, so he couldn't help but look at them a few more times.
After seeing them, Emperor Xihe was quite satisfied. It's not that as an emperor he was obsessed with looks and wanted his subjects to be good-looking, but he was satisfied with their ages - they all looked like energetic young men, and the oldest was only in his early twenties.
Only by selecting such talents can they serve the court for a long time. And he will not be as conservative as the old ministers in the court.
Thinking of this, Emperor Xihe looked at the youngest tribute scholar among them and felt that he looked familiar for some reason.
He was so busy with his daily affairs that he could not remember it all at once. After looking at it for a while, he continued to review memorials.
Later, when he reviewed the memorial submitted by Mu Yunchuan, which reported on the disaster, Emperor Xihe suddenly remembered who this young scholar looked like.
Thinking of it, he recalled the list of candidates he had seen before and remembered that there was indeed a man named Mu among those candidates.
That’s Mu Yunchuan’s younger brother?
Thinking of this, Xihedi looked up at Mu Erpang again, just in time to see him put down his pen.
He thought with admiration, "This young scholar is so well-mannered..." Then he saw Mu Erpang frowning and scratching his forehead.
How do you say this? Anyway, he had a lot of contact with Mu Yunchuan, but he had never seen such a lively expression on his face.
It was no wonder that he did not connect the two brothers at first. To be fair, their facial features were indeed 40% similar, but although Mu Yunchuan had a smile on his face, he gave people a cold feeling. Although the young tribute scholar in front of him pretended to be serious, he gave people a warm feeling.
The two brothers have completely different temperaments, one is cold and the other is hot.
Emperor Xihe was still lost in thought when he suddenly heard a light cough.
The light cough came from Shangshu Wang, who was also helping to preside over the imperial examination in the palace.
This is a reminder to him not to keep staring at the same person. If that person becomes inappropriate, wouldn't it be a loss for the court?
Xihedi also coughed lightly, withdrew his gaze as if nothing had happened, and continued to do his own thing.
As for Mu Erpang, after thinking for a while, he still did not dare to make any major changes in taxation. He only mentioned briefly that if the court's finances permitted, the people's taxes should be appropriately reduced.
After writing this, he combined Fan Li's economic thoughts and continued to write "Encourage agriculture and sericulture, and work on storing grain."
After finishing this part, it’s time to write about education.
The importance of educating the people can be derived a lot from the Analects of Confucius.
What he focused on was how to build a college for teaching and educating people from scratch, adhering to Confucius' idea of "teaching without distinction".
Running a college seems to be a trivial matter, educating dozens or even hundreds of students.
However, it is said in the Tao Te Ching that "governing a large country is like cooking a small fish", which shows that some things can be seen from the small and the big.
He wrote this part very easily. After all, he was the young master of Cuiwei Academy and the second-in-command under his mother. He helped share many affairs of the academy.
Because he was so engrossed in writing, he didn't even eat the simple meals provided by the palace, nor did he notice that Emperor Xihe left Baohe Hall after lunch. He wrote down all his thoughts on the manuscript paper in one go.
Finally, he counted the numbers and found that he had exceeded the limit - he had written about a thousand words about agriculture and sericulture.
As for the later part about education, he has already written nearly three thousand words.
This required further deletions and reorganization. Mu Erpang spent another hour and finally copied his policy essay on the test paper, sticking to the standard of exactly 2,000 words.
By the time he finished transcribing and checked it again, it was already afternoon.
Mu Erpang glanced around and found that there were many fewer people in the same row and the second row.
Of course, Mei Ruochu, Shen Aoshuang, Wei Xi and others were still there, but they had also stopped writing long ago, obviously waiting for him.
Mu Erpang did not stop and raised his hand to indicate that he had handed in the paper.
The same went for Mei Ruochu and the others. Only after the four of them handed in their papers could they stand up from their seats.
As soon as he stood up, Mu Erpang realized that it was not just the first and second rows, there were quite a few other seats that were empty.
It turned out that he enjoyed writing too much and wrote two policy papers for one policy paper, which also took a lot of time to delete and revise.
Wei Shu and Cui Fei had finished writing long ago, and followed the palace maids out of the palace and waited outside.
When they saw the four of them coming out, they came forward and asked, "Is the writing going badly? Why is it taking so long?"
This is like two students with poor grades who, after looking at the test questions, found them not difficult and finished writing the answers and handed in the paper in no time.
Wouldn't it make them anxious to find out that the top students who performed better than them actually took several times longer to write the answers? I was afraid that I had read the question incorrectly and did not understand the deeper meaning of the question.
Mu Erpang immediately said no, and explained, "I was too excited when writing, and I didn't control the length well. I wrote nearly 4,000 words. I deleted and revised half of it, which took a lot of time. They were all waiting for me."
Fortunately, Chen Aoshuang and Wei Xi were waiting for him, otherwise, when he finished deleting and revising, he would have been the one to panic when he saw that there was no one around him.
Wei Shu and Cui Fei then let out a long breath, and sandwiched Mu Erpang in the middle, one on the left and one on the right, and said with a smile: "I've only seen people who can't finish the questions, but I've never seen people who can't stop doing the questions. I was scared to death just now."
As they were talking, everyone returned to the academy before dusk.
Chen Cui has already prepared dinner.
Because they didn't feel very tired, they went to the toilet after dinner, washed up, sat in the classroom, and started to recite the test paper.
In just half an hour, everyone had recited it word for word.
Lao Buyu looked at them one by one, and Mei Ruochu's was still the most flawless and close to perfect. His level was far beyond that of him as a teacher.
The several state governance policies proposed by Shen Aoshuang in the field of agricultural and sericulture reforms were both conservative and innovative, and were both novel and not too aggressive.
Mu Erpang's performance in agriculture and farming was mediocre among the four leaders. After all, although he was born in a farming family, he was in a muddle for the first ten years. It was difficult for him to speak from his own situation like other farming families and make meaningful statements. He could only be regarded as using what he had learned in his life and quoting from classics. In comparison, his performance in education was really outstanding. Just talking about this part, it is even better than what Mei Ruochu wrote. It is obvious that his thoughts on this are very profound.
As for Wei Xi, he was not particularly outstanding. Just like Wei Shu and Cui Fei, he took a steady and cautious approach. It's just that the basic levels of the three of them are different, so even if they all play steadily, Wei Xi is still the most outstanding, followed by Wei Shu, and Cui Fei is last.
Lao Buyu and Mei Ruochu didn't comment any more afterwards. At this point, it didn't matter what they thought. The final ranking would be determined entirely by the emperor's preference.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
