Li He asked puzzledly, "Mr. Ning, what is a primary school?"

Ning Qi explained: "This primary school is the same as Mengxue, mainly to teach children to read. Of course, in addition to literacy, we will also teach them some other knowledge, such as simple mathematics, nature, general knowledge, and so on. ”

Li Nai nodded again and again, although he himself is a beneficiary of the imperial examination system, he is not a nerd who studies hard, his own business and he has a lot of experience in traveling north and south at a young age, so that he knows very well the importance of mathematics, common sense and other knowledge in life. And these things, in the Ming Dynasty's Mongolian studies, there are often very few teachers to teach, because in the eyes of the reader, these are not the orthodoxy of cultural learning, of course, it does not rule out that many of the gentlemen themselves have not learned the relevant knowledge at all.

The militia on duty at the gate immediately gave a military salute when he saw Ning Qi coming, which reminded Li Nai of the scene when he came to Shengli Port to visit the militia station on the first day. In Li Nai's view, these militia soldiers are almost the same professional soldiers as the army, even if they are not on duty when they are not training, they are already a standing army.

After entering the academy, the first thing that caught Li Nai's eyes was a flat playground, although it was not as big as the playground seen in the militia barracks, but the setting was exactly the same. The whole playground is flattened with loess, and the periphery is marked with lime to draw several oval circles, Li Nai heard Tao Donglai introduce when he visited the new barracks, this circle is used for training running, I didn't think that there are such facilities in the primary school.

Around the playground are rows of wooden houses, from which the sound of students chanting can be heard. Ning Qi took Li He and the others to the classroom, and introduced as they walked: "Our primary school is divided into two stages, two years of junior primary school and two years of senior primary school. This is the elementary school, and now it should be in literacy class. ”

The first thing Li Nai noticed was that the classrooms here were all glass-inlaid windows, and when you looked through the windows, you could see that there were also skylights made of glass on the ceiling. It seems that in order to have good lighting conditions in the interior, Haihan people have indeed invested a lot of money.

There are about 30 children in the classroom, each with a table and a chair, although the tables and chairs made of logs with only one layer of varnish look a little clumsy, but the neat and uniform shape reflects the rules that the Haihan people have always paid attention to.

There was a blackboard hanging in front of the classroom, and Li Nai saw a Haihan man pointing to the content on it and teaching the students to read it word by word, and the content being taught to the students made Li Nai feel very cordial, and it was actually the "Thousand Character Text" that was often used in Daming Mengxue.

The Thousand Characters Essay was written by Zhou Xingsi during the Southern Dynasties, and is said to have been compiled with a thousand different characters from Wang Xizhi's works. This article is cleverly conceived and is most suitable for literacy schoolchildren to memorize, and even in the 21st century, hundreds of years later, the "Thousand Character Text" has been reprinted and published again and again, and has a very long cultural heritage.

However, there is one thing that Li Nai cares about very much, above the few thousand-character words on the blackboard, there is a symbol that turns in a curve, which seems to be some kind of marking, but Li Nai doesn't understand it at all.

Li Nai looked at it for a while, and couldn't help but be curious, so he gently touched Ning Qi's arm, signaling that he had something to say. After the three of them left the classroom window for a distance, Li Nai asked, "Looking down at the thousand-character text, there is a strange symbol above it, I don't know how to explain it?"

"That symbol is called pinyin, so that these students can develop a uniform pronunciation habit from the beginning," Ning Qi explains. ”

Li Nai frowned and said, "Unified pronunciation habits, what's the use of this?"

Ning Qi smiled, the consciousness of the ancients of Xindao was indeed a big difference, and patiently continued to explain to Li Nai: "My Chinese territory is vast, and the accents vary greatly from place to place, such as Qiongzhou Island, where there are several dialects, and even people born and raised here may not be able to understand them, so there are many inconveniences in communication. If you can let your child develop the same pronunciation habit from the time of enlightenment education, it will be much more convenient for learning and life in the future. The true unification of language and writing is also of great benefit to the country, don't you think that's the truth?"

Li Nai suddenly said: "I see. Using this northern accent as a standard, it must also be a Haihan tradition?"

Li Nai himself speaks Cantonese Mandarin, so it is not too troublesome to communicate with Mandarin-speaking people. After getting along in the past few days, of course, he can hear that most of these Haihan people have a certain northern accent, so there is such a speculation.

Ning Qi nodded and said, "That's right, in our country, this kind of accent is a standard official dialect, and everyone has to learn it." ”

"Very good, very good, when these dolls grow up, they can also have a lot of peace of mind when they go to the north to catch the exam. He Qiang also twisted his beard and exclaimed.

Ning Qi smiled and said nothing, the educational institutions of the crossing group are not for the Ming Dynasty to cultivate talents, and the graduates who go out here will definitely not participate in the imperial examination of the Ming Dynasty in the future, He Qiang's relief is only afraid that it will be in vain.

However, what Li Nai said next surprised Ning Qi: "A few years ago, I saw a book written by a Western missionary, "The Miracle of Western Characters", which contains both Chinese character articles and Western annotations, which is very similar to the pinyin symbols you use. ”

The author of "The Miracle of Western Characters" is the famous Italian missionary Matteo Ricci, which was published in Beijing about 20 years ago, and contains Chinese characters with Latin alphabet phonetics. Of course, Matteo Ricci's phonetic method of the Latin alphabet is completely different from Hanyu Pinyin, except that it looks similar because of the alphabet. However, Li Nai actually even read this kind of book, which was indeed unexpected by Ning Qi.

Historically, after Matteo Ricci and before the traveler came to this world, the French missionary Kinnige once published a book similar to "The Miracle of Western Characters" in Hangzhou, the book is called "Western Confucian Ears and Eyes", the phonetic scheme in this book is based on Matteo Ricci's scheme to make more scientific changes, and it is completely designed according to the Beijing accent, and there are many similarities with the later generations of Chinese pinyin.

The Chinese pinyin scheme used by the crossing group has been precipitated and continuously revised for hundreds of years in modern times, and has rich practical experience as a reference, and it is not difficult to promote it in enlightenment education. And when the local residents found out that their children had begun to learn the accents of the Haihan chiefs in a short period of time, most of them were overjoyed, and the doubts they had about the Mengxue Academy run by the Haihan people were gone.

Then Ning Qi took them to another classroom, this class belongs to the upper primary school, and the content taught is not as simple as pinyin literacy. On the blackboard hangs a large map of the world, one of the items that the Crossing Group has brought from the afterlife. The teacher was pointing to a point on the map with his whip and explaining to the students: "This is the port of Victory where we are now, and from a global point of view, this is just a point the size of a needle......

Li Nai was really shocked this time, grabbed Ning Qi's arm and said, "Mr. Ning, this is ...... It's ......"

"This is a map of the whole world, including the Ming Dynasty. Ning Qi replied very calmly: "When they get out of class, let's go in and have a look." ”

"Okay, okay!" Li Nai realized that he was a little out of shape, and quickly let go of the hand that grabbed Ning Qi.

The three of them waited outside the classroom for a moment, finally waiting for the bell to ring for the end of class. Children flocked out of the classroom and ran around the playground. Li Nai impatiently followed Ning Qi into the classroom, and Ning Qi greeted his colleague who was about to pack up the map: "Let's hang it first, our guests want to see this map." ”

Li Nai walked quickly to the map, and saw that this map was different from all the maps he had seen before, and it was beautifully printed, and various place names were densely marked with small characters the size of mung beans. Li Nai is also a little knowledgeable, it didn't take long to find the location of "Guangzhou" on it, but there is no text marking, in fact, Li Nai is also through guò, this area has the Yangtze River, the Yellow River mark, in order to determine the coastline of the Ming Dynasty, and finally find the Pearl River estuary in the south.

Li Nai looked at it for a while and then asked: "Mr. Ning, why are there many place names on this map that are not the same as those known below?"

Ning Qi had already prepared for this: "This is just the name of our Haihan, Mr. Li doesn't have to care too much about this kind of detail." ”

"But this clearly says the People's Republic of China, not me...... And there are two aliases in just seven words...... "Li Nai was so angry that he couldn't even speak well.

Of course, there are no other characters on the map, they are just simplified characters for later generations. However, in the face of Li Nai, who felt deeply "humiliated", Ning Qi could only explain it as an omission in the process of map making. In order to make up for this mistake, Ning Qi found a pencil and sketched the approximate location of the territory at the end of the Ming Dynasty on the map.

Although Li Nai was a literati of the Ming Dynasty, this was the first time he could see it intuitively from a map how big the territory of the Ming Dynasty was and which areas it covered. What worries Li Nai the most is that a large area in the northeast is under the oppression of the Tatars, and only a thin passage in the western Liaoning corridor is connected to Shuntianfu, where the capital is located.

"If this passage is cut off, won't the great rivers and mountains outside the pass be lost?" Although Li Nai didn't know anything about marching and fighting, he could still understand such an intuitive shape. In recent years, the imperial court has fought with the Tatars and Jurchens in the north, and although they have won and lost each other, it seems that they have not been able to eliminate the momentum of the northern captives and the southern invasion.