Not to mention anything else, the more than one million Han people under Xiao Ruxun are definitely well-fed and can live a good life, and they have nothing else to ask for, just to live in peace, and it would be better if they could send their children to study.

Xiao Ruxun also wanted to, but there were not many people under his command who could read and hyphenate, and even fewer could understand Confucian scriptures, and he only had three orthodox scholars under him, the father and son of the Yuan family and Chen Longzheng, all of whom had their own things to do, and they would never find time to teach the children of these people.

Moreover, now their days are to eat a full stomach and not go hungry, but there is still some distance from the two parents to support a scholar, the Ming Dynasty attaches more importance to the imperial examination than the Song Dynasty, but it only supports 300,000 students.

Scholars need the state to contribute money and food to support, and if you take the entrance examination, you can get the country's rice, although it is small, but multiplied by 300,000, it is an astronomical amount.

This is the investment of the state, and the private scholars themselves also need to invest, and the government-run schools can only enter the study after you take the student examination, but before you take the student examination, you need to enter the private school to study and enlighten, called Mengxue, the government does not care about your Mengxue, and the Mongolian school is mostly donated by the gentry in the locality, or the clansmen pay to hire students as teachers to teach the disciples in the clan to read.

Without exception, these people are all rich people, no money, they can't afford to read at all, a peasant family, a family of three, a father is counted as a laborer, a wife is counted as half, and the children are also counted as half before they grow up, that is, two laborers, more than a dozen acres of land is necessary to feed a family of three after paying harsh taxes and miscellaneous taxes, but a laborer cannot complete so much farm work.

When the child grows to about seven or eight years old, he will start to work in the field, and at the age of eleven or twelve he is a whole labor force.

So now, with the cultivation of potatoes and corn, plus the benefits of three crops a year and six years of no taxes, the life of the farmer is indeed much better, and after a stable life, a baby boom will follow.

Census officials sent by Xiao Ruxun a few years ago reported that the number of new births in recent years has increased year by year, and many families have three or four children, so that the increase in production has been offset by the soaring number of people.

In addition to the problems of the peasants themselves, Xiao Ruxun's own small amount of money is not very enough, if you want the peasants to accept their children to study, at least you have to take care of the children's lunch, have a school building, have a pen, ink, paper and inkstone, have a teacher, have a cook, this sum of money is calculated, without hundreds of thousands of taels of silver, it is impossible to do things.

The silver in the Ming Dynasty is indeed valuable, but running education itself is a money-burning thing, and it does not mean that there can be any economic returns, so I hope that there will be more scholars to serve the country.

But then again, Myanmar Town is a military town, and the imperial court has never mentioned the establishment of school officials in Myanmar Town, allowing Myanmar Town residents to participate in the imperial examination.

The plan was proposed, but due to economic and political considerations, Xiao Ruxun felt that it was better for Burma Town to continue to pretend to be small and transparent over the years, his wings were not yet full, and no scholars were willing to take refuge in him to help him build Myanmar Town, and Yuan Huang's name in his hometown also attracted a Chen Longzheng, you can imagine how much those scholars despise Xiao Ruxun.

Maybe there are also people who are willing to come, that is, those old sour Confucians, the kind that can't be tested in a lifetime, the kind of old sour Confucians have no hope for themselves, so they become a Mongolian teacher in social studies and ethnology, teaching to get by, this kind of people are estimated to be willing to come to Myanmar to teach, Xiao Ruxun must be paid more, where to teach is not teaching? The problem is that these people can only teach, not do anything.

But then Xiao Ruxun also figured it out, not to mention cultivating scholars, so that the people under his command are literate, it is a very important and very meaningful thing, so Xiao Ruxun sent people to some imperial examination strong mansions a few months ago to find those frustrated old talents and old students who could not pass the examination in their lifetime, and asked them if they would like to go to Myanmar Town to teach literacy to the children, and the salary must be more than they are now.

At present, there is no news, if there is news, Xiao Ruxun feels that he can start to arrange the construction of Mongolian school in the villages around Bago City, step by step, the purpose is not to train students to show their talents and lift people, but to cultivate literate people who can read and write, the literacy rate of the people is a very important indicator, and the level of literacy rate represents the strength of the country's infrastructure.

This kind of school-running and education stall, I let you Catholics come here to preach and deceive people, why am I? Am I sick? The literati who finally got rid of Confucianism are now going to invite a Christian master to find themselves unhappy? What do I think?

Of course, Xiao Ruxun was not happy.

Matteo Ricci probably knew the reason, but he thought that General Xiao, who was educated by Confucianism, did not like the teachings of Christianity out of Confucian influence, which was a religious confrontation of consciousness, so he kept trying to change Xiao Ruxun, but instead of succeeding, he almost put himself on the hook.

So Matteo Ricci had nothing to say, so he could only translate the original words to the bishop, and when the bishop heard it, his face was not good, and he obviously remembered the Chinese who lived and worked in peace.

These people who are very satisfied with their lives, people who have no gaps in their hearts, are the least likely to be seduced by religious thoughts, and a person can only be seduced by religion when he is most vulnerable, so religion is always deeply rooted in war-torn areas, and religious power in peaceful areas is always inferior to government power.

For peaceful China, the bishop doesn't know how to persuade Xiao Ruxun, he only knows that if Xiao Ruxun does not allow Christianity to preach here, then let alone China, he can't enter other small countries.

However, the reason why he was sent by the Pope was that he knew that he should use the means of negotiation of worldly interests to achieve his ends, provided that he could not fool people with religious reasons.

The Pope's price is that as long as the Holy See can afford it, then promise the Chinese general, the Holy See needs a Chinese base and a group of Chinese believers!

"In that case, then I won't say anything else, General Xiao, what do you need us to do to allow us to preach here? As long as we can do it, we will do our best to do it. ”