In the vicinity of Liulichang in the west of the old Yanjing outer city, there is a cultural street, and there are many famous old shops in Yanjing gathered on the street, such as Rong Bao Zhai and Ji Gu Ge, which are still antique. Next to Wenhua Street is a famous alley of official residences, and the housing of officials in the Qing Dynasty adopted a system similar to that of "welfare housing", and in principle, official residences were allocated according to the rank of officials. Yuan Baoheng was the left waiter of the household department at that time, a cabinet bachelor, from the second rank, equivalent to the current deputy ministerial-level senior officials, allocated fifteen houses, is the kind of three-entry large quadrangle official residence.

That morning, a round of gray sun was listlessly suspended in the air, and Song Xiaofei was sitting in a green silk car, sweating profusely. His carriage followed his uncle Yuan Baoheng's eight-carried sedan chair into Yanjing City. It was very stuffy in the carriage along the way, and with curiosity, Song Xiaofei couldn't help but secretly lift the curtain and peek at the city tower and the crowd outside. Although in 1860 the British and French troops invaded Yanjing and burned the Old Summer Palace, Yanjing was the capital of the Ming and Qing dynasties after all. Silk antique shops are bustling inside and outside, and many customers are white-skinned, blonde foreigners.

About half an hour later, the carriage arrived at Wenhua Street, and the two rows of locust trees beside the road bloomed, and the strings of white flowers exuded a faint fragrance. Song Xiao flew out of the carriage and looked up to see that Yuan's mansion had arrived. It was an antique mansion with red pink walls and blue-glazed tiles that glistened in the sun. There is a tall and mighty stone lion on the left and right of the gate, the main entrance is painted with black paint, the copper ring of the head of the golden beast is polished brightly, there are two big characters of "Yuan Fu" in traditional regular script above the copper ring, there is a gold plaque hanging next to it, it is written that "Jinshidi" three big characters in Lishu, the style is vigorous, and it is a style of its own.

Yuan Baoheng called Song Xiaofei to his side, stroked his long beard, pointed to the "Jinshidi" on the gold plaque and said, "Weiting, you see these three words, as precious as a peerless pearl, it is Li Zhongtang's ink treasure, Daoguang thirty years I am a Jinshi, Master Li gave us a title to our house, and also sent someone to send a special trip to our house to congratulate our Yuan family on one door and two jinshi." Now in the descendants of the Yuan family, you are the smartest and smartest. After you come to Yanjing, I will invite you the best master, you study hard behind closed doors, win fame, if you can produce three Jinshi in one class in the future, it will be a good story for the ages, and the glory of the ancestors. ”

Song Xiaofei was deeply poisoned by exam-oriented education in his previous life, and when he heard that he let himself study behind closed doors, he was a little unhappy, he knew that Yuan Baoheng knew how to practice martial arts, and had been with Li Hongzhang's military curtain for many years, Li Hongzhang personally inscribed Yuan Fu, which also showed that Yuan Baoheng had an unusual relationship with him, Li Hongzhang is now the governor of Zhili and the minister of Beiyang Commerce, with a backer like him, maybe he doesn't have to waste time in the imperial examination, not to mention that Yuan Shikai also failed to pass the imperial examination twice, he decided to find another way to do a big career, so he scratched the back of his head and said, " When my uncle and nephew were in Nanjing, my father often taught, cultivated literature in prosperous times, and learned martial arts in troubled times, so I have always been quite fond of the art of war. Didn't you and your uncle also put pen to paper and made great achievements? ”

Yuan Baoheng said, I also thought like your father back then, and when I arrived in Yanjing, I learned that no fame will make people look down on people everywhere, according to the imperial court system, no fame can not go out of the cabinet and enter the prime minister, and after death, it will not be posthumously sealed, and it is difficult to glorify the ancestors. What's more, now that the long hair and twist thieves have been leveled, and the world is decided, you still have to study honestly to gain fame.

Yuan Baoheng hired three tutors for Song Xiaofei at the same time, one was Zhou Wenpu who explained poetry and songs, the other was Zhang Xingbing, who taught calligraphy, and the third was Xie Tingxuan, who taught the art of eight-share system.

Yuan Baoheng ordered someone to paste a seal of "idlers are not allowed to enter" on the door of Song Xiaofei's study, and specially arranged for his younger brother Yuan Baoling to accompany Song Xiaofei's bookcase to accompany him and supervise him to study hard. Yuan Baoheng also asked Qiu Yi to ask Song Xiaofei to fly up and read in the morning at the first sound of the rooster every day, send all the meals to the study, and only turn off the lights and go to bed in the middle of the night.

On the fourth day, Yuan Baoheng just returned home after going to the court, changed into a blue feather satin brocade robe, plus a blue satin horse coat, and a pair of black boots under his feet, ready to go to the study to see how Song Xiaofei was reading, Zhou Wenpu, Zhang Xingbing, and Xie Tingxuan The three teachers pushed the door one after another, all discouraged and ashamed, "Bachelor Yuan, you should ask Gao Ming to teach your nephew, I am afraid that I will not be able to handle this important task." ”

"You are all eight years old, how can you not teach him this yellow-haired boy? Is it that my nephew is stubborn and has offended a few people, I will compensate you, and I will teach him a good lesson later! When Yuan Baoheng heard this, he hurriedly said. He also asked the servants to give the three teachers the three salaries. He thought it was Song Xiaofei who was naughty and mischievous, and the young Yuan Shikai had a history of spoofing teachers, when Yuan Baoqing was the prefect of Jinan, he brought his family to his post and hired a person named Wang Zhiqing as Yuan Shikai's enlightenment teacher, Yuan Shikai felt that this pedantic gentleman had tasteless language and a hateful face. On a dark night, he caught fireflies and put them in a glass bottle, and ambushed Wang Zhiqing on the way to the next hall, waiting for the old master to approach, holding his throat and making a few ghost screams, so frightened that Wang Zhiqing thought that he had met a real ghost, and he was seriously ill, and after figuring out that it was Yuan Shikai's prank, Wang Zhiqing resigned angrily and no longer wanted to teach this naughty child.

The three teachers stopped and shook their heads one after another, "It's indeed an adult's nephew who is extremely talented, almost demonic, I'm afraid of misleading people's children, so you might as well ask for another master." Then, without even taking the money, he walked out the back door.

"Almost demonic?" Yuan Baoheng didn't believe in that evil, so he carried a ring ruler in his hand and broke into Song Xiaofei's study, ready to teach this stubborn nephew a hard lesson.

Before teaching Song Xiaofei a lesson, Yuan Baoheng decided to give him a dismount first, so as not to make the teacher famous. He picked up a book of Analects and asked Song Xiaofei to recite the "Persuasion of Learning" in it.

"Learn without getting tired, teach people tirelessly, review the old and learn the new, you can be a teacher. Learning and learning from time to time, it is not pleasant, there are friends from afar, it is not happy, people do not know and are not ashamed, and they are not gentlemen......" Song Xiaofei flicked his braids, shook his head, and memorized it word for word.

Yuan Baoheng was taken aback, refused to stop there, and took out Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching, 5,000 words, which was a long essay at that time, and Song Xiaofei even memorized it word for word. After another inspection, Yuan Baoheng was taken aback, and Song Xiaofei could cope with the four books and five classics. He found that this nephew was not only unforgettable, but also fluent.

It turned out that Song Xiaofei, a military cadet, was particularly fond of history and laid a solid foundation in ancient literature in his previous life.

Yuan Baoheng sighed to himself, it seems that those teachers are not modest, but they really have no ability to teach him, so Yuan Baoheng asked friends everywhere in the capital to find a better tutor for Song Xiaofei. He changed seven or eight teachers in a row, none of whom could teach Song Xiaofei, and finding a teacher for Song Xiaofei gradually became a headache for Yuan Baoheng. This problem was later solved by Rong Hong.

After graduating in 1850, Rong Hong was admitted to Yale College, which is now Yale University, and was the first Chinese to study at Yale College. It was only after Prince Gong and Li Hongzhang and other Westernists proposed the self-improvement movement of "mastering the skills of the master to control the country", and he was given the opportunity to become an official. After the outbreak of the Taiping Rebellion, he sympathized with the poor peasants who revolted, so he was attacked by the old ministers of the imperial court.

At the end of that morning, Rong Hong invited his friend Yuan Baoheng to his home for a drink, both of whom had served under Li Hongzhang's disciple and had a good personal relationship. After three rounds of drinking, Rong Hong heard that Yuan Baoheng was having a headache for Song Xiaofei to hire a tutor, so he patted his chest and recommended one person: his baby daughter Rong Rong, seventeen years old, has lived abroad for many years, is a foreign female student, studied history and linguistics at Columbia University in the United States, and then transferred to Europe, roaming the places of interest in mainland Europe, fluent in English, French, German and other Chinese;