Patches of peach blossoms, the whole park is decorated with extremely beautiful, and under the peach blossoms, there are people who enjoy the flowers, many of these people are pawns wearing coarse cloth, among which there are naturally scholars wearing Confucian robes, and there are also scholars sitting on coarse cloth mats and chanting poems and drinking on the grass. Of course, there are ordinary people.

It is the bright spring time, this peach blossom park is full of people from all over the Qinghe, and in this park, Chen Yonghua's expression seems a little trance, he has been walking in this park for more than an hour, in his opinion, the scenery in this garden is even the palace may not be compared with it, but partial, this is not the palace, but the so-called park.

How can such a place allow ordinary people to enter at will?

Chen Yonghua, who was in the park, involuntarily came up with such a thought in his mind, since he came to Qinghe, the city brought him too many impacts, even in this park, but also made him feel an unprecedented impact, he is no stranger to the garden, there are dozens of large and small Guogong mansions inside and outside Nanjing after more than 200 years of renovation, each of which is like a fairyland, but there is no area that can be compared with this riverside park in Qinghe.

And he naturally didn't know that this park planned according to the Western garden style was planned and designed by Zhu Mingzhong, and even personally participated in digging ditches, planting trees and flowers, perhaps Qingjiang Academy is like a college hidden in the garden, but this park is the first real park in China. Since its completion, I don't know how many people have been attracted, and naturally the people of Qinghe have a place to relax, after all, the flowers and plants in this park are pleasant, the scenery is beautiful, if it is a few years later, this park is naturally more beautiful than now, after all, many landscape trees have not been planted.

"Sir, if you can live in this place, you are dead, and it is worth ......"

Tian San muttered, pointing to a house in the middle of the park, and said with some sighs.

"The tower next to this building is so high, the person who lives in this city must be some kind of official! Sir, do you think it could be the one who is the master! ”

"Let's go, let's take a look!"

Chen Yonghua immediately walked towards this place, and when he reached the two-story brick and stone building in a style that was completely different from the buildings he had ever seen, he noticed a plaque hanging in the entrance of the building.

"Bungenkaku"

Wenyuan Pavilion?

In confusion, Chen Yonghua entered the Wenyuan Pavilion, and the moment he entered the Wenyuan Pavilion, he immediately understood what kind of place this Wenyuan Pavilion was.

It's a library building!

"This library can also be entered by outsiders?"

Standing in the "Wenyuan Pavilion", looking at the scholars reading books at the window with the library, and then looking at the rows of bookcases, Chen Yonghua even asked the bookkeeper on the side with some surprise.

"This gentleman is from out of town!"

The bookstore administrator looked at Chen Yonghua with a smile, pointed to the side with his hand, and said,

"Look, you see, after spending a lot of money to build this library, it is natural for everyone to borrow books here, but if you don't get a library card, you can't borrow it, so as not to lose it. However, if you want to get a library card, it's also very simple, you only need to spend two taels of silver to get a library card......"

In the administrator's words, Chen Yonghua only felt dizzy, he simply couldn't believe his ears, this, the books here can be borrowed at will.

As a scholar, Chen Yonghua, what is the biggest regret in his life? Even if there are occasional generous people, they only order people to copy a few books for local scholars to read. As for the library, people with foreign surnames were allowed to enter, not to mention people with foreign surnames, even if they were from their own tribe, it was probably rare to enter, and even the library buildings of each family had the rule of "books do not leave the pavilion".

"How many volumes are there in this Wenyuan Pavilion?"

"Thanks to the book collectors in Jiangbei and other places to present the mother book, there are more than 3,000 books and more than 50,000 volumes in the cabinet, and at present, new books are added every day......"

As one of the administrators of the Library, Wang Quan's tone was extremely smug when answering questions from outsiders.

"Mother book? What is a master book? ”

"This Wenyuan Pavilion book is different from the old books, in order to facilitate borrowing, they are printed on new paper, and all books are based on the mother book......

After some explanation, Wang Quan asked.

"This gentleman, if you want to live with Qinghe for a long time, you might as well get a library card to borrow books, of course, if you go to Qinghe Academy, you naturally don't need to borrow, there is also a library in the academy, as long as there is a library here, there will naturally be a library in the academy, and in the future, every prefecture and county will build a library for local scholars to borrow......"

Chen Yonghua, who spent two silver yuan to get a library card, didn't even know why he would get this library card, after all, he would leave Qinghe soon, maybe he wanted to use these two taels of silver to fund the Wenyuan Pavilion opened by this pair of ordinary scholars, maybe because of a moment of excitement.

But even if I had this library card, I had not yet sat in front of the bright window, which was all facing south and sunny, and the sunlight was reflected in the room through the window, which only made the room very bright, not the slightest dim, even in the palace court.

"This book ...... paper"

At the moment of unfolding the paper, Chen Yonghua found that the book paper was completely different from ordinary book paper, not the softness of ordinary paper, but extremely crisp and smooth.

"Seems different from normal paper?"

In confusion, Chen Yonghua took the book in his hand and found that the book was heavy, not as soft as ordinary books, and it was obviously a relationship between paper. When he looked further over at the shelves, he noticed that the books on the shelves were all placed upright on the shelves, which was very different from the books at home that were placed flat in the library.

"Is it the relationship between paper?"

Chen Yonghua pondered suspiciously.

However, he didn't know that in order to print books, Zhu Mingzhong spent a full eight months, and on the basis of borrowing gooseskin paper and Japanese paper, he finally chose the process of Western paper and "invented" a papermaking process suitable for printing books.

Zhu Mingzhong, who came from later generations, knew very well that one of the most fundamental reasons why the ancient Chinese people were reluctant to lend books was paper - in order to adapt to the calligraphy brush, China's paper was developed in the direction of "soft silk calligraphy" from the beginning, even if there was hard paper, it was only hated for packaging, and the cost was relatively high. Although soft rice paper can achieve calligraphy, but it is used as a printed book, and the soft paper is not resistant to reading, so private book collectors will cherish books like gold and not easily let outsiders borrow them.

In contrast, Western paper is oriented towards parchment, and even this is the reason why Japanese three-bark paper can now be exported to the West in large quantities - in the West, Japanese three-bark paper is regarded as "plant-based parchment". It's just that the kind of crisp, thick and smooth three-bark paper that was later used to print banknotes was relatively expensive, so it was naturally not suitable for batch printing, so in the end, on the basis of full comparison and full reference to the two processes, based on the traditional Chinese hard paper, this Qinghe paper mill made a new style of paper.

This kind of stiffer paper is similar to the book paper of later generations, and the price is relatively cheap, which is more suitable for printing books than traditional paper. It is even thanks to this kind of paper that Zhu Mingzhong was able to truly grasp the core of scholarship - to disseminate practical learning through printed textbooks, and then change the phenomenon of the monopoly of science since the Song and Ming dynasties.

Of course, it wasn't just paper that changed all this, but also metal movable type printing, also known as lead movable type printing, which allowed Qinghe's printing workshops to produce quickly and in large quantities. Of course, this is not Zhu Mingzhong's invention, after all, as early as two hundred years ago, Gutenberg had already invented all this, he also invented the casting box, stamping molds, lead alloys for casting movable type, wooden printing presses, printing inks and a whole set of printing processes, and all Zhu Mingzhong needed was to introduce it to China and promote it.

And the smooth promotion, far beyond Zhu Mingzhong's imagination, almost in the arsenal, just after the establishment of the casting bureau, lead type and printing press, it was immediately accepted by the printing workshop, after all, this kind of lead type, harder than woodcut, and copper engraving more economical. And most importantly – no engraving required!

Although printing and movable type printing were invented in China, the latter was not really popularized, and for thousands of years it has been dominated by woodblock statues, and movable type printing is not important to the Chinese publishing industry. Because the books published in this era can be mainly divided into four categories, the classics and histories have the largest circulation, but they are all things that have been handed down from history and rarely changed, and classics such as the Four Books and the Five Classics have been passed down for thousands of years. Publishing these books, painstakingly engraving a set of plates, as long as it is confirmed that there are no errors, can be used as it is for tens or even hundreds of years, and the use of movable type typesetting must often rehearse, for the typesetters who are not highly educated, the probability of error is greater than that of engraving, and the cost is not economical; And the sub, set and other miscellaneous books are small circulation, variety, originally suitable for the use of movable type, but write these are often not rich eunuchs or talented bachelors, for them, engraving printing can pay attention to the style characteristics of knife fonts, and movable type printing can only use rigid printing, after Hu Zhengyan invented color engraving color printing in the Ming Dynasty, the charm of engraving for these people is greater, and their financial resources can usually bear such expenses. As a result, this woodblock printing became more popular.

Of course, there is another reason, that is, because the movable type printing in the West is a letter, its movable type manufacturing method is to use a steel mold to punch the type, and then make movable type, which is used for printing, while China's movable type printing still uses engraved metal movable type, and the cost is naturally high.

The reason why the lead movable type in Qinghe was quickly accepted was precisely because the bookstore no longer needed to hire carvers to engrave copper characters as in the past, but only needed to buy movable type from the casting bureau. Of course, the more important reason is that because of the popular folk books, these books are naturally suitable for movable type printing.

However, the mainstream mode of publishing subsets of classics and histories, which has remained unchanged in the past thousand years, has made engraving, which is easy to preserve the original sample and suitable for repeated printing of the same text, become the dominant model in the Chinese printing industry. But now, with the prevalence of practical learning in Jiangbei and the printing of various professional books, it has become inevitable that flexible and convenient movable type will replace expensive and clumsy engraving.

Looking at the extremely beautifully printed books in his hands, Chen Yonghua naturally didn't know that this seemingly simple lead type and paper, of course, also had the "big conspiracy" hidden behind the librarian - the "big conspiracy" to spread practical learning through the promotion of books, to change Confucianism through the dissemination of practical learning, and then to change the whole society. He didn't even know that in Qinghe Academy, Zhu Zhiyu, who was the head of the mountain, had also told his students more than once that "education is the foundation of the country" in addition to tirelessly telling his students that "practicality is precious, and vain is a warning".

The easiest way to develop education, build schools, and print books is the easiest way, and in the end, these seemingly inconspicuous books and government libraries scattered all over the country will fundamentally change everything.

After all, in this era, books were originally monopolized by a small number of people, and when Zhu Mingzhong deliberately built the library and opened the library to the world, the thousands of books in the library that "value practicality and take hypocrisy as a warning" will subtly change people's mentality.

Even at this time, Chen Yonghua, who was in the seemingly ordinary library of "Wenyuan Pavilion", did not realize that he himself was also imperceptibly accepting changes, and what changed him was not anything else, but the "Outer Records of the Staff" in his hand, which was a European medieval geographical knowledge and the geographical knowledge of the world's maritime discoveries in the 16th and 17th centuries, you can see the size of the world from the book, so that most Chinese people sit in the well and watch the sky.

Chen Yonghua, who looked at this book, looked at it with a stunned mentality, although he had contact with Westerners when he was in Xiamen, he never thought that the world would be so big, and outside of China, there was such a vast world.

For a whole day, Chen Yonghua's whole person was immersed in this book, of course, not only a "Foreign Discipline", but also many books including "Western Questions and Answers", he also borrowed them to read them one by one, until the sun went down, in the supervision of management, some reluctantly left this "Wenyuan Pavilion", looked back at the "Wenyuan Pavilion" behind him, he sighed,

"Now we know what it means to sit in a well and watch the sky! What is tantamount to a well frog. ”

While sighing on his lips, Chen Yonghua saw Tian San on the side, who also looked pity,

"It's a pity that it's getting dark this day, if only I could watch it for a few more hours, it would be good......"

Only then did he remember that Tian San, who was familiar with literature and ink, was also reading in the library like him. It was only at this time that Chen Yonghua noticed that it was not only the students who left the library at this time, but even some of the peddlers and pawns in coarse cloth clothes......