When Zhang Weizhao was thirty years old, Chen Youcong asked Lu Ji, the most famous painter in Dayan, to paint a picture of "Plum Blossom Swan" and give it to his wife as a birthday gift. He thinks that his wife is as noble and beautiful as a swan, and as graceful as a plum blossom, so this picture is the best portrayal of Zhang Weizhao.

Zhang Weizhao's "birthday" is actually the day she met Zhang Rongkun. She celebrated this day as her birthday to honor Master.

Zhang Weizhao liked this "Plum Blossom Swan Picture" very much and hung it in his own study in Yixian Palace.

Later, this painting became a treasure of the Great Yan Inner Palace. Despite the changes in history, the painting remained intact until the 21st century and was preserved in the Fujian Museum.

Thirty years old is a memorable year for Zhang Weizhao. This year, after years of preparation, Dayan's fleet finally began to sail.

From the first time Zhang Weizhao proposed to Chen Youcong to reopen the route, to the fleet finally set sail to sea, nine years have passed.

The reason why it took so long to make preparations was because both Chen Youcong and Zhang Weizhao wanted to minimize the risks of the voyage: not to make unnecessary sacrifices for the crew and not to waste money.

In the past nine years, Zhang Weizhao has focused his work on the following points:

First, transfer a new level of geography to fleet leaders. The earth is round, and this common sense must be needed. But how easy is it to get a group of people who believe that the land is flat and the sky is like a cauldron on the land, and realize that the earth is a sphere suspended in the universe? Zhang Weizhao personally presided over a number of seminars, and let his students lead a series of investigations and experiments to convince those fleet elites.

Secondly, solve the problem of HNA positioning. Believing that the earth is round, and understanding the problem of longitude and latitude, can we judge the direction more accurately and understand what time difference is. On this point, Zhang Weizhao can only explain his own point of view, and try to draw a more accurate map of the world for the fleet's reference. As for what tools and techniques to use to solve this problem during navigation, it is up to someone with sailing experience to solve it.

Thirdly, equip the fleet with sophisticated weapons to ensure safety. Zhang Weizhao didn't know much about weapons and was not familiar with the principle of gun work. However, she is a good painter, and she draws her impression of guns as realistically and meticulously as possible, and can even draw dynamic renderings. At the same time, as a medical student, she had basic knowledge of chemistry and knew how to conduct chemical experiments to improve the production of explosives, which greatly inspired the craftsmen. Therefore, in this time and space where cold weapons still dominate, the weapons and equipment of the Great Yan fleet can be said to be unprecedentedly advanced.

Finally, Zhang Weizhao's most concerned question is, how to protect the health of the crew during this unprecedented ocean voyage?

According to Zhang Weizhao's understanding of medical history, in the early days of the Great Voyage, European voyage fleets generally suffered from a disease, that is, scurvy. Columbus's fleet was not spared.

Scurvy is caused by a lack of vitamin C. In the early stages of the disease, patients may feel weak, depressed, anorexic, malnourished, bluish complexion, and bleeding gums. If vitamin C supplementation is not taken at this time, symptoms will gradually worsen, teeth will fall out, limbs will ulcerate, and even death.

In the early days of the Great Voyage, European sailors mainly ate bread and cured meats on long voyages, and fresh fruits and vegetables were rare, so it led to a serious deficiency of vitamin C intake and scurvy.

However, after Zhang Weizhao checked the logbook, he found that the voyage fleet of the eunuch Sanbao had never shown symptoms of scurvy.

Why is there such a difference? Zhang Weizhao studied the route of the Three Treasure Eunuchs to the sea, and found that the main reason for the lack of scurvy was that the Three Treasure Eunuchs' voyages were mainly carried out along the coastline of the Asian and African continents, using the routes that Arab merchants were familiar with, and they were able to find suitable places for supplies every once in a while. European expedition fleets have to sail across the ocean for a long time, and it is difficult to see land along the way, and occasionally there are no supplies for desert islands, so it is difficult to eat fresh fruits and vegetables.

And this time, Da Yan's fleet will not stop at the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean, but will cross the Pacific Ocean to explore a completely unfamiliar world. How to maintain an adequate supply of vitamin C during this long journey has become an unavoidable problem.

Zhang Weizhao spent a long time, considered various possibilities, and chose the best solution.

The first thing that came to her mind was green tea. Green tea is rich in vitamin C, which can prevent scurvy. The crew of Dayan had the habit of drinking tea, and in the past, the fleet of the Three Treasure Eunuchs would bring a lot of green tea every time they sailed. These green teas provide health for the crew.

However, I'm afraid that on long-haul routes, green tea alone is not enough. Zhang Weizhao thought of another fruit that was exceptionally rich in vitamins, lemons. Is there a lemon in this era? Zhang Weizhao is not sure. She drew colorful pictures of lemons, had her students copy many copies, and then offered a large reward to find them.

Within a month, a merchant from Guangdong reported that there should be this wild fruit on the mountains of his hometown, but it tasted bad, and people never picked it to eat it, and no one bothered to cultivate it.

It's early autumn, and it's time for lemons to ripen. Zhang Weizhao immediately sent someone to follow the merchant back to his hometown, picked the fruit, and transported it to the capital with Pegasus. Zhang Weizhao examined it carefully, although this fruit was much smaller than what Zhang Weizhao was used to in his previous life, it was indeed a lemon!

The next step is to encourage farmers to grow lemons in places such as Liangguang and Fujian. So by the time the fleet was ready to set off, each ship carried a large amount of candied lemons, pickled lemons, and dried lemons. These lemons made by different methods have different shelf lives, and they can be eaten in order of length.

In addition to the departure of the fleet, another turning point also happened when Zhang Weizhao was thirty years old. That is, the prefectures of Nanzhili, Zhejiang, Fujian, and Guangdong officially began to set up government-run women's schools. Unlike the traditional county schools, which were only for men and prepared for the imperial examinations, the main content of women's studies was not the Four Books and the Five Classics, but medical and health care, arithmetic, and drawing.

The main way out for female students is, first, to take the women's college examination in Beijing and become a female official under the queen's mother. Second, work in government hospitals, shipyards, and machine factories in state capitals. Third, become a teacher of women's studies. Finally, there are also those who have been hired by wealthy families to be teachers, private nurses, or become workshop owners themselves.

It's not easy to get this far.

At the beginning, Zhang Weizhao began to run a women's school and recruit female officials in Beijing, but there were not many people who applauded it, and the voice of doubt was very loud. Later, when these female doctors and female mechanics came up with their results one after another, there were more people who praised them, and the voices of doubt became louder.

The suspicion mainly stems from the fear of "hen Si Chen", believing that this will subvert the order of the couple, father and son, and monarch and minister on which the Great Yan relied to establish the country.

Despite the voices of skepticism, the vitality and creativity of women, who have been suppressed for many years, begin to grow persistently once they find a breakthrough.

The first to echo Beijing, the establishment of a government-run women's school was the Suzhou Mansion in Nanzhili. The founder is Zhou Rong, the prefect of Suzhou. It is no accident that local women's studies first appeared in Suzhou. Compared with the north, the folk customs in the south of the Yangtze River are more open and active. At a time when the rich and noble families in the north still insisted that women were virtuous if they were not talented, the scholarly families in the south had realized the importance of women's education, and believed that whether a family had real materials should not only depend on whether the men were motivated to read, but also whether the women had received enough education.

After some women are educated, they begin to realize that they can live without being dependent on others. Therefore, in the middle of the Great Yan Dynasty, some women in Jiangnan began to choose not to marry for life, or were unwilling to remarry after being widowed. (The boudoir teacher refers to the teacher who teaches female students, and some scholars have specialized in women's education in the Jiangnan of the Ming and Qing dynasties, see Gao Yanyi's "Boudoir Teacher", Hu Xiaozhen's "Talented Girls Never Sleep All Night")

Suzhou, on the other hand, is the place where women in the south of the Yangtze River have the highest level of education and attach the most importance to women's education. Therefore, when Zhou Rong proposed to establish a women's official school, although it was also opposed by some corrupt Confucians, there were also some enlightened gentry who clearly expressed their support.

In addition, Zhou Rong "has someone in the court", unlike the son of the Hanmen, after becoming an official, because of the lack of family support, he always had to constantly compromise with the local squire, so his proposal was quickly implemented.

Zhou Rong's move was strongly praised and commended by the emperor. Other local officials saw it and followed suit, so in the Jiangnan area, women's studies gradually spread and extended to Fujian and Guangdong.

Since then, the number of projects set up by women's schools has gradually increased, and in addition to the original medical and health care, arithmetic and drawing, agriculture, water conservancy and weaving have also been added. These subjects seldom talk about big truths, and they talk about the most practical things. Gradually, some men were reluctant to spend their lives in the study, and called on men to increase practical subjects in their county schools. The imperial court did not want to act too violently to cause disputes, so it was also implemented in Jiangsu and Zhejiang in a pilot way at the beginning. When these pilot projects were implemented, Zhou Rong had already been promoted to the political envoy of Zhejiang, so he was naturally very attentive to the implementation of the new policy.

In the early years of the new policy, Zhang Weizhao had a concern. She worries that while she and Chen Youcong are alive, their new initiatives will be pushed forward and implemented bit by bit, and after their deaths, the great inertia of history will crush the spark they ignited and return to their original path. And when she saw that more and more young people were coming forward to ignite new fires and relay them, her worries gradually alleviated.

The first students taught by Zhang Weizhao, Zhang Weizhao's sons and daughters, became the backbone of passing on this fire.

In Feixian Palace and Songzhu Girls' School, among the girls who first studied with Zhang Weizhao, some of them became famous doctors who saved countless people, and some of them became scholars with equal works.

Zhang Weizhao's son, Chen Houzhao, after succeeding to the throne, spared no effort to promote his parents' unfinished reform plan. Obsessed with sailing, Chen Houwei led the voyage as a prince, covering all continents. And Princess Taikang became a famous inventor in the history of Great Yan, and the steam engine was one of her main inventions.

However, these deeds do not belong to Zhang Weizhao, but the story of another era.