nucmednet Chapter 314 Bai Family Banquet 1
Chapter 314 Bai Family Banquet 1
The prefectural, state and county schools in Dayan were managed by local officials such as the prefect, state governor and county magistrate. At the same time, teaching staff such as professors, school principals and school supervisors were set up to be responsible for teaching.
Since the teachers in prefecture, state and county schools were mainly concurrent officials, and were also staffed by some professional scholars and Confucian scholars, the teaching staff was far beyond that of ordinary schools.
The teachers in the prefecture, state and county schools usually mainly teach students the classics, poetry, policy essays, calligraphy, etc. Occasionally, they will also take time to teach students some knowledge of history, law, mathematics, music, and medicine, in order to help students broaden their horizons and expand their knowledge.
Students were divided into three categories: students on government stipends, additional students, and attached students. Students on government stipends were students on government stipends, and each student was given six dou of government stipend rice per month. Additional students were additional students, and they were not eligible to receive government stipend rice. In addition to students on government stipends and additional students, there were additional students who were attached to the end of the list of students, and they were called "attached students", or simply "attached students".
Among the attached students, those with high scores in the annual and imperial examinations can be promoted to additional students or students on government stipend. Of course, it is still very difficult to achieve this, especially for those who are promoted to government stipend students, they must be among the top students in the annual and imperial examinations.
The so-called annual examination and imperial examination examination, the annual examination is the "entrance" examination held every year in prefecture, state and county schools, and the imperial examination is an examination for students who have already enrolled.
Only those who performed well in the imperial examination could participate in the provincial examination for the next level of candidates, while those who performed poorly would be punished or even disqualified as students. Therefore, the imperial examination was also called the entrance examination.
This is also why it is said in the previous article that scholars cannot be satisfied once they pass the examination. After all, if a scholar's examination results are too poor, the government will not only not give him benefits, but will even directly cancel his qualification as a scholar.
After leaving the county town and returning to the village, Bai Jingzhou and Bai Yaoheng were warmly welcomed by the villagers.
Ning Cuizhi privately told Gu Wenxuan that the yamen runners and idle people who made a living from this had come to Baijia Village early to report the good news from the county town, and they even gave them money as a reward according to the rules.
Taking into account the market conditions and their own family circumstances, Bai Chong and Bai Lizheng both chose a moderate amount to give to those who came to report the good news.
The first group of yamen runners who arrived received the most wedding money, two taels of silver each. The idle people who came after them received a handful of copper coins each, so about ten coins per person.
Of course, in addition to silver and money, the two families also treated each other to tea and snacks.
As they talked about these trivial matters, Bai Jingzhou and the others were surrounded by the Gu family and the Bai family and returned to the Bai family's house at the end of the village.
Bai Jingshan, Bai Yaoheng and others went back to their homes halfway through the trip. Only Gu Wenhai and other members of the Gu family came to the Bai family.
They were warmly invited by Bai Chong and Ning Cuizhi. Gu Wenxuan had been away for so long, Ning Cuizhi felt that the Gu family must miss her, and Bai Chong wanted to celebrate with the Gu family first.
By the way, he also wanted to ask whether the Gu family could spare time to attend the dinner party on the date they had tentatively set.
Bai Chong didn't care whether others came or not. He hoped that Gu Wenxuan's family, his elder brother's family, and his brother-in-law's family could all come to the wedding and share the joy with his family.
Bai Chong was especially grateful to Gu Wenxuan's family. In his opinion, Gu Wenxuan's family had made great contributions to Bai Jingzhou's current success.
After the new house of the Bai family was built, the old couple Mr. and Mrs. Bai moved to the end of the village to live with Bai Chong's family. They were also very enthusiastic towards the Gu family.
Ever since they moved here, the Gu family has been sending them all kinds of delicious food from time to time. Basically, whatever delicious food the old couple Gu eats, the Gu family will prepare an extra portion for Mr. Bai and his wife.
Although the Bai Chong family also did the same thing, and would send some of the delicious food at home to the Gu family, Mr. and Mrs. Bai were still very happy that the Gu family cared about them so much.
According to their long-standing principles of life, their grandson married the daughter of the Gu family, and giving gifts to them was a way of showing filial piety to the elders of the in-laws' family. But they were marrying their daughter to their family. They had lived for most of their lives, but had never heard of any family helping their daughter to show filial piety to her in-laws' elders.
Both families were trying their best to get along with each other, so their relationship naturally became closer.
Ning Cuizhi ordered the kitchen to prepare a table of delicious food, and then took out snacks, candied fruits and other things, for Bai Jingzhou and his friends who had just arrived home to have a bite to eat.
In order to finish the dishes as quickly as possible, the kitchen prepared quick dishes such as stir-fries, cold dishes, and steamed dishes. Because Gu Wenxuan liked noodles more than rice, the cook also made rice and noodles as the two staple foods for them.
As the old saying goes, "Eat dumplings when you go out and noodles when you come home", Gu Wenxuan and others who had just returned to the village from Daming Prefecture chose the noodles with soybean paste made by the cook.
The two families had a happy lunch together, and then agreed that when the Bai family hosted a banquet to entertain the villagers who had sent gifts, the Gu family would also come to the Bai family to help.
That afternoon, Jia Guizhi and Gu Yongming went to Jiajia Village. It was not until the evening of the next day that they drove the ox cart back to Baijia Village.
They went to invite Jia's father and mother, Jia Yuelan and other members of the Jia family who had sent gifts to the banquet. They also bought two sheep from the Jia family members and went into the mountains to hunt two big wild boars and several rabbits and pheasants.
They sent these things directly to Bai Jingzhou's house. With these, Bai Jingzhou's family only needed to kill some ducks, catch some fish, shrimps and crabs from the pond, dig some fresh lotus roots, and then order some soy products from Bai Erbo's family. The dishes for the banquet would be rich enough.
During this period, gentry and merchants in the town and county who had heard the news came to the Bai family to give gifts. Although the Bai family rejected all the generous gifts that were obviously for ulterior motives, they still had quite a few normal guests to entertain this time.
Bai Jingzhou personally wrote invitations to these people and had them delivered to them. They all said they would definitely come to the Bai family for the banquet.
In particular, County Magistrate Peng admired Bai Jingzhou very much. Not only did he give Bai Jingzhou a gift when Bai Jingzhou came to pay him a visit, but he also gave Bai Jingzhou face by promising to come to the banquet.
If he were to come, his two legal advisers, the county magistrate and county lieutenant of the yamen, as well as the yamen runners and petty clerks who were not on duty, would naturally have to give face to the Bai family and send a small gift and ask for a glass of wedding wine.
Considering that the villagers and these people would inevitably feel uncomfortable if they sat together, Bai Jingzhou simply suggested setting aside a separate courtyard to entertain these guests from the town and the county.
Bai Jingzhou planned to arrange the county magistrate, county assistant county lieutenant and other officials in the same room, the county magistrate's two advisers, the old steward of the Mu Mansion who attended on behalf of Mu Hanzhi, Mu Hanzhi's uncle Mu Jinyang, and the clan members sent by Peng Xuan'an's uncle to give gifts.
In addition to himself, his father Bai Chong, his father-in-law Gu Yongming, his grandfather and Gu Wenxuan's grandfather, he also arranged for Bai Jingshan, Gu Wenhai, Gu Wenche, several village elders and Bai Lizheng and his grandson to accompany the guests.