Transmigrated into a female county magistrate during a famine, leading her country to prosperity

Chapter 481 Young People Should No Longer Be Underestimated

Everyone in the county school was supposed to have a day off today, but they all appeared in Yu Shizhang's courtyard together.

It is clear what is going on.

Shen Zheng didn't know when the students knew about the printing house. Now thinking back, it seemed that the details had already been revealed.

Some time ago, whenever she met them in the county school, their eyes would first light up and they would want to come forward to talk to her, but then they would lower their heads as if they remembered something and avoid her.

It turns out that they had been planning to give her a "surprise" as early as that time.

"This group of guys..." Yu Shizhang thought about the day when they came to his house together. To be honest, he was almost scared.

As soon as the gate opened, a group of boys looked at him eagerly. If he didn't ask, they wouldn't say anything and would wait for him to speak.

——"What are you doing guarding Benbo's door? Do you have any grievances to cry out?"

——"Uncle, the students volunteered to join the Tongan Printing House and print and typeset for it."

The young man's voice was as clear as a mountain stream, and as the stream flowed, there was a unique vitality like the dawn.

——"You know, you are just students of Tongan County School when you study there. If you can really become an official in the future, you will only have the title of a student of 'Tongan County School'. But if you are typeset and print for a printing house, your position..."

——"The students all know it, Master. The students are willing. Please fulfill it, Master."

Mountain streams converge, their vigorous momentum is unstoppable, young people should no longer be underestimated.

And then...what did they say?

On that day, Yu Shizhang completely changed his view of them.

They said that as people from Tongan County, they had received a lot of help from Lord Shen. It could even be said that if Lord Shen had not come to Tongan County to take up the post, they would not be where they are today.

If they fail an exam, they may drop out of school sadly.

Or they may be stopped by the high tuition and expensive travel expenses. In the end, no matter how reluctant you are, you can only put that pen and a few books at the bottom of a box that never sees the light of day, and then be sad alone.

One drunken night, while looking at the dark sky, they might think...

Is the moon in Shangjing City really bigger and rounder than the moon in Tongan County?

Is the mud in Shangjing City really softer than that in Tongan County? Can we really produce one more pound of grain by burying the same seeds in the mud in Shangjing?

Did the farmers in Shangjing City really use silver hoes or even golden hoes to plow the fields?

They haven't seen it and have no way to make a comparison.

But things are different now.

Now they dare to think and naturally dare to do.

The printing house was opened in the county for the benefit of thousands of students all over the world. They are from Tongan County and are one of the thousands of students.

Since it is for your own sake, why hesitate?

They have studied for several years, or even more than ten years, and they feel they have the right to be "selfish".

"Since they are willing, let them do it freely. They are just young people. If the sky falls, you, Shen Zheng, will support it. If worst comes to worst, there is still Ben." Yu Shizhang said.

"Of course I have no objection." Shen Zheng said with a smile.

From top to bottom, from the oldest to the youngest, there is not a single bad person in Tongan County.

"It's just that you've suffered a lot," she added.

"Is this uncle tired?" Yu Shizhang was slightly stunned, then understood. "It's not that I'm tired. These guys are like quails when they see me. They are a little stupid, but at least they are obedient."

When they were told to go east, they dared not go west.

Ask them to beat a dog, they dare not chase a chicken.

"The ones who really suffered were Bai Song and Niu Chu." Yu Shizhang pointed to a corner of the courtyard and said, "When there are too many people available, one set of movable type is not enough, especially for those commonly used characters. In recent days, their hands are almost worn out from carving."

Shen Zheng looked in the direction of his finger and saw that one bamboo rack after another was filled with sieves as big as basins. Each sieve was filled with small clay embryos, and words could be vaguely seen engraved on them.

"So many..." Even Shen Zheng was a little shocked.

When Bai Song and Niu Chu were carving the characters, she told them that they should carve more frequently used characters to cope with the situation where several identical movable type were needed on one page of paper.

Bai Song and Niu Chu knew the reason behind it, so they engraved every word that needed to be engraved.

But no one told them that the students from the county school would also join the cloth workshop...

"Those guys still think it's not enough." Yu Shizhang curled his lips, "They just want to show off their skills and wish they could have a set of movable type. It's not their fault. At their age, it's time to be competitive."

"Competitive..." Shen Zheng murmured.

Diwu Tanwei was a woman with lively eyes. Seeing that the two were absorbed in the discussion, she spontaneously started to busy herself on the side.

Wash the teapot, boil water, brew tea leaves, and then pour a cup of fragrant tea for each person.

"The little girl is pretty good." Yu Shizhang showed no expression on his face, but was secretly happy in his heart.

The old man Diwu Nazheng probably didn't expect that he would send his granddaughter to serve tea and water to Yu Shizhang, right?

I don't know what the old man's expression would be if he knew about this. I'm afraid he would be so angry that he would die.

He took a sip of the fragrant tea and asked Shen Zheng: "What's wrong with being competitive? What do you think?"

"My Lord, you have a good eye." Shen Zheng said, "What you just said is true. It is the nature of young people to be competitive, and positive competition can also train their abilities and increase their cohesion. So I think... why don't we hold a movable type typesetting competition, one for training, and two for motivation."

"Competition?" Yu Shizhang looked at her. "How do we compete?"

"Comparing printing and typesetting..." Shen Zheng thought for a while, "Of course it's the speed and accuracy of finding words. Being able to accurately find those dozens of words among thousands of movable type is a kind of ability. And the movable type should also be arranged in a certain order, so that it is easier to find."

Nowadays, there are no pinyin annotations for the characters of the Great Zhou Dynasty, and the recognition of characters mostly uses the phono-semantic method and the direct phonetic method.

The phono-semantic method is easy to understand. Pictographic characters, indicative characters, and ideographic characters are all collectively called phono-semantic characters. For example, in the character "材", the "木" on the left is the radical, indicating that this character is related to trees, while the "才" on the right is the phonetic component, indicating the pronunciation.

The direct phonetic rule means that characters with the same pronunciation can be interchanged when annotating their pronunciations, such as the characters “地”, “交”, “弟” and “第” can be interchanged in pronunciation.

To put it simply, the direct phonetic method means that if you can write a word with a certain pronunciation, it is equivalent to knowing several other words with the same pronunciation by rounding off.

It's that simple and crude.

But the disadvantages of these two methods are also obvious - when there are too many words, it will become messy.