dognovel Chapter 645 Xinhua Dictionary
Chapter 645 Xinhua Dictionary
After months of effort, Xinghan University, which had led to the assassination attempts on Liu Shan and Guan Xing, finally opened for business.
Heunghan University currently has only four colleges and eight hundred students. Fortunately, these students were selected from the military, aristocratic families, or poor families, and all of them have a certain cultural foundation, so they do not have to start from scratch.
However, in order to rapidly expand the school's scale and strive to establish more schools so that more children can afford to go to school, Vice Principal Guan Xing decided to train all eight hundred students as teachers. Therefore, after applying to Zhuge Liang and receiving approval, Guan Xing began to promote the use of Pinyin in the academy.
Pinyin is a shortcut for illiterate people to quickly learn to read. With pinyin annotations, even if they encounter characters they have never seen before, they can easily read them. After copying them a few more times, they can write them. Once they can write and read them, they will naturally be able to recognize characters.
However, if the illiterate wanted to learn to read quickly, or even learn on their own without a teacher, they would need a Xinhua Dictionary. Without much thought, Guan Xing entrusted the important task of compiling the Xinhua Dictionary to Yuan Hui, the director of the Imperial Academy, to give the old man something to do and save him from bothering him with nothing to do all day.
Yuan Hui was, after all, a great Confucian scholar of his time. With his vast knowledge and wide experience, he learned everything quickly. Pinyin was not difficult; anyone willing could learn it in a day or two.
After Guan Xing promised to name the Xinhua Dictionary the Yuan Hui Dictionary, the old man Yuan readily agreed and got to work. This project couldn't be completed in three to five months, so Guan Xing got several months of peace and quiet as a result.
It was class time, and Guan Xing wrote all the phonetic letters on the blackboard with chalk. Holding a ruler, he said, "I've explained the principles and uses of pinyin to everyone. Now repeat after me, abcd..."
He is currently teaching at the Confucian Academy, where two hundred students are divided into four classes of fifty each. Each class has a pencil in hand, and the fifty students sit upright, obediently repeating after him: "abcd..."
Guan Xing listened quietly, patiently correcting the student's pronunciation after the student finished reading. Just as he was about to teach the student a second time, Jiang Wan suddenly rushed into the classroom and shouted, "Marquis Shence, the Prime Minister orders you to go to the Prime Minister's residence immediately for a meeting. It's extremely urgent, hurry up!"
Guan Xing dared not delay and hurriedly said to the students, "You all study on your own first, I'll be right back."
After saying that, he threw down the ruler and left with Jiang Wan, running out of the school and heading straight for the Prime Minister's residence.
It is worth mentioning that the prime minister has the power to establish his own government and staff. The prime minister's government has dozens of subordinate officials. Jiang Wan, Dong Yun and others are currently serving in the prime minister's government. As for Fei Yi, he was sent to Liangzhou as the deputy governor because of his meritorious service in the battle to recover Jiangling. If the Northern Expedition succeeds in the future, he will definitely become the governor of a prefecture. After a few years of training, he will be transferred back to the capital to serve as the minister of the six ministries and then be appointed as one of the three dukes. His path to promotion is very clear.
Guan Xing followed Jiang Wan to the Prime Minister's residence and found that, apart from Zhuge Liang, Dong Yun, Yang Hong, Zhang Yi and other officials of the Prime Minister's residence were all there. He quickly bowed and said, "This humble official greets the Prime Minister. Is there something urgent that the Prime Minister summoned me here in such a hurry?"
Zhuge Liang handed him a stack of letters he had retrieved from Liu Bei and said, "Take a look at them first."
Guan Xing took the article and immediately felt a pang of pain in his liver. These articles were all insults, cursing everyone in the Han Dynasty who was considered important, including himself, Guan Anguo.
The letter accused Guan Xing of abusing his father's authority to commit atrocities, including running over and killing a child with his horse, harming loyal officials like Gu Mu in Jiangdong, raping, plundering, and extorting money from the people, and more...
"Holy crap..." Guan Xing immediately broke down and said, "When did Gu Mu become a loyal subject? Does Cao Wei have such a low standard for loyalty?"
Zhuge Liang said, "That's not the point. The point is that if Cao Wei continues to slander us like this, Your Majesty and our reputation among the people of the Central Plains will be completely ruined, which will cause the people of the Central Plains to have strong resistance to Your Majesty and greatly increase the difficulty of the Northern Expedition."
In any era, the benefits of a good reputation are immeasurable. If Liu Bei had maintained his previous reputation, the people of the Central Plains would have welcomed him with food and drink when he launched his Northern Expedition. However, if he had been slandered as a tyrant like Jie or Zhou, the people of the Central Plains would not have welcomed him with food and drink, but would have whipped him with mops.
After all, the common people do not want to be ruled by a tyrant. If they really felt that Liu Bei was cruel and inhumane, they would definitely take the initiative to gather under Cao Wei's banner to resist Liu Bei.
More importantly, the common people are mostly conformist creatures who lack independent thinking ability. They believe whatever the government says. In other words, if the Han Dynasty does not retaliate, the public opinion front in the Central Plains will soon be completely occupied by Cao Wei.
Guan Xing asked with a gloomy face, "Then what does the Prime Minister mean?"
Zhuge Liang said, "His Majesty has ordered us to retaliate immediately. We must not allow Cao Wei to continue their wanton smear campaign. Do you have any good ideas on this?"
Guan Xing rolled his eyes a few times, then asked Zhuge Liang for all the intelligence recently sent back from Luoyang. After reading it, he exclaimed in surprise, "The Provisional Tax Law! What a talent! How could he come up with something like this?"
Isn't this "Provisional Tax Law" just the same tactic that the US used to deal with Russia during the Cold War? By using external pressure from Russia to impose heavy taxes on its own capitalists, it could then concentrate its resources on major projects and drag Russia down. Once Russia collapsed, the good days for US capitalists would instantly return.
Moreover, Cao Wei was more cunning than the US. The key to their cunning was the word "temporary." With this prefix, all the gentry would believe that the suffering was only temporary and would pass if they just endured it, thus uniting wholeheartedly around Cao Pi.
Zhuge Liang said, "In addition to the Temporary Tax Law, Cao Wei has also implemented a border blockade. Recently, caravans heading to Cao Wei have been turned back at the border, and caravans from Cao Wei to the Han Dynasty have also been turned back."
After considering all the information, Guan Xing said after a long period of thought, "Let's talk about the propaganda war first. There are two ways to counter Cao Wei's propaganda war. Which one would you like to hear first, Prime Minister?"
Zhuge Liang laughed and scolded, "Stop keeping me in suspense, tell me one by one."
Guan Xing said, "The most direct way is to argue with Cao Wei's so-called Xuan Shu. Cao Cao has more dirt on him than His Majesty does. Cao Pi's taking his father's concubine is also worth discussing. If we really want to argue, we have plenty of material."
"However, there are downsides to doing this. The downside is that if we start arguing with Cao Wei, the common people will naturally become spectators. Moreover, everyone knows what kind of people Cao Cao and Cao Pi are, and they don't have any expectations for their moral bottom line. Even if they hear it, they will only find it amusing. But it will be a big blow to His Majesty's and our reputation."
When a good person does a bad thing, it's called their true nature being exposed; when a bad person does a good thing, it's called a prodigal son returning home.
This kind of evaluation is extremely unfair, but it is also very difficult to change. The Cao family has been cursed for so many years that they are already immune to this kind of abuse.
Liu Bei was renowned for his benevolence, so any insult or abuse he received was a severe blow to him.
To give you the simplest example, imagine the Cao family father and son as a blackboard. If you pour a basin of ink on it, will it have any effect? No, it will have absolutely no effect.
Liu Bei, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, and Zhuge Liang were like blank sheets of paper; try splashing ink on them.
Mutual slander is a game where whoever is shameless wins; Liu Bei and Cao Pi were inherently at a disadvantage by slandering each other.
Zhuge Liang asked, "What about the second option?"
Guan Xing replied, "Shifting the focus, finding a new point of interest to divert the public's attention from the old one, and using a new hot topic to suppress the old one is the most common way to handle a public relations crisis."