important.

Liu Bei and Guan Yu couldn't defeat Li Mengxi, so they had no choice but to come up with questions.

It took about half an hour to finish the questions. Li Mengxi calculated the questions, checked them, deleted them, typed them out, and copied them on a large piece of paper.

Then, I used another piece of paper to design the board according to the format of the test paper in my mind, and then carefully copied the test paper stroke by stroke as small as possible.

Considering the writing habit of the late Han Dynasty, which was to write from top to bottom and from left to right, Li Mengxi could only copy awkwardly like this.

In the upper left corner of the paper, in the first column, first, [place of origin], then, state, county, township, village, and place of origin at all levels.

Then it is followed by, [name].

This part of the test paper is the place of birth and name of the candidates for the grade. Li Mengxi suddenly asked Liu Bei and Guan Yu, "How about we hand out a white paper pulp and let the candidates write their names and put their names on the lake, so as to eliminate favoritism."

Cheating, how about that?”

It was obvious that the only reviewers would be Li Mengxi, Guan Yu and Liu Bei. As a result, Li Mengxi was worried about malpractice for personal gain and had to guard himself. He was fair to the core.

It is certainly good to avoid malpractice for personal gain. How could Liu Bei and Guan Yu disagree with this?

For the formal test questions that follow, fill in the blanks, such as, "The Master said, learn and practice from time to time, (…………)"

"The Master said, three people walking together, (...)"

This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content! These fill-in-the-blank questions couldn't be simpler, they are all the most essential Analects of Confucius.

In order to fear that some scholars would not know how to answer, Li Mengxi also specially wrote an example question to remind the scholars to fill in the sentences in the brackets.

The second part is as many as one hundred and twenty empty brackets with numbers, 1, 2, 3, in the form.

This is a dictation question.

During the exam, Guan Yu or Liu Bei could ask questions, and the scholars would write down what they heard.

And the reason why I don’t write pinyin, what the hell, what the hell is the phonetic notation method of the late Han Dynasty? Han is the tangent and antiphone notation of Chinese characters, which is complicated and unclear. More importantly, Li Mengxi doesn’t understand.

Ah. And when it comes to writing phonetic symbols like aoe, the scholars don’t understand.

Therefore, in the late Han Dynasty, there was no way to use such a simple test question format in later generations, and people could only read the questions.

From here, we may be able to understand why most of the ancient imperial examinations had to test the Four Books and Five Classics. After all, the Four Books and Five Classics have unified answers. Although the Four Books and Five Classics are far from practical vocabulary, if you want to test practical vocabulary, there is no way to test it.

.

For example, if you are taking a test on [Catalogue], the question should be based on standard pronunciation and let the scholars fill in the words.

But what the heck is the Chinese phonetic notation? The Chinese phonetic notation is to use the pronunciation of common simple characters to mark the pronunciation of complex characters.

The phonetic notation of the crossbow is, Yinqierumu, Yinqiechier.

Okay, this Lu Mu, is he a road or a slave? This Yin Qie Chi, is he a talent or a sidekick?

The phonetic symbols are inaccurate, and if they are inaccurate, there will be no way to fill in the words based on the phonetic symbols, and there will be no way to test those practical vocabulary words.

But it is like Li Mengxi's method, where the examiner reads the question and the scholar takes dictation. Although this works, it has big problems.

Once the guards are involved, the variables become bigger. The guards may not like a certain person and deliberately stand far away from him. The examiner may see an acquaintance and deliberately stand close to him.

In addition, transportation was blocked in ancient times. The blocked transportation caused long-term regional isolation. Regional isolation resulted in various dialects and accents. This is an unsolvable problem. If the examiner is asked to read the question and the scholar writes it silently, the scholar will

Whether you can understand what the examiner says or not is another question.

Based on all this, Li Mengxi realized that the ancient test of the Four Books and Five Classics was not just about dulling people's minds and cultivating slaves. There was also the reason for the difficulty of the test.

Li Mengxi copied down one hundred and twenty blank questions in a regular manner. He was tired from writing. When he thought about it again, there were hundreds of people in the Junzi camp, plus Zhuozhou scholars, and they were exhausted from copying hundreds of copies.

Therefore, printing must be used.

Thinking of printing and test papers, Li Mengxi thought of a seemingly very efficient technology for printing test papers. When he was a child, in the first and second grades, teachers would use wax paper and metal pens to handwrite test papers, and then print them one by one.

Printing, it seems that a wax paper test paper can be written in half an hour, which is much faster than printing with wooden boards and movable type.

However, in ancient times, why were the two techniques of wooden movable type absolutely dominant, and where did the wax paper technique go? Is it because there was no wax in ancient times, or the ancient wax was too expensive, Li Mengxi didn't quite understand.

This time there was an imperial examination, and printing was required. Fortunately, before Liu Bei came back, it was still winter, and Li Mengxi, who was bored in the winter, did not waste his time leisurely. He made full use of the winter time, and he chose to go

Testing various technologies, such as steel pouring, curved shaft plowing, activated carbon, papermaking and printing, etc. were all completed in winter.

Li Mengxi's unintentional move, he accidentally took another step forward. If printing had not been launched earlier and craftsmen had not been summoned to explore the technology, there would be no accumulation of technology at all now. If the carpenters could not even engrave characters well,

, then how can we say that we can print test papers today and tomorrow the craftsmen will have solved all the problems and print them directly.

Li Mengxi calculated the time since he asked the carpenters to carve wooden boards and trial-produce movable wooden characters. It was almost a month, and he didn't know if the carpenters had carved a fine, regular and usable wooden board in a month.

Li Mengxi asked Liu Bei if there was any wax in the army. Liu Bei said there was, and set off to get it.

When the wax was brought, Li Mengxi saw that it was butter wax. This thing was not good.

Li Mengxi frowned and asked if there were other waxes, such as a white wax, which is waterproof and does not stick to the lake like butter wax. Once it is melted and spread on the cloth, it will be very smooth.

After Li Mengxi talked for a long time, Liu Bei finally understood. Liu Bei suddenly said hesitantly, "You are talking about insect wax, right?"

Li Mengxi stopped writing and was stunned, "Uh, what is this insect wax?"

After that, Liu Bei told Li Mengxi some common sense. This insect wax is actually a kind of tree. There will be insects growing on the tree. When the insects eat the leaves, they will spit out white wax and flow to the tree. Then carefully scrape the wax flowing from the tree.

Come down, gather it bit by bit, melt it again, insert the core wire, and you will have a piece of insect wax.

Insect wax is white and exquisitely clear. However, this wax is extremely expensive and is mostly used by wealthy people.

Speaking of rich and noble families, Liu Bei made a metaphor, saying that Zhang Fei's family could not afford insect wax.

At this point, Li Mengxi understood why wax paper printing technology was not common in ancient times. The root cause was wax. People could not afford to light lamps, so how could they afford good white wax? Printing is a cheap and popular technology. If it loses its price

With the advantage of low cost, the cost of making a wax model is higher than hiring someone to copy it by hand. Moreover, it is obvious that the durability of wax paper is very low, the weather will fade, the ink will smudge the wax, and the wax model will be useless if it cannot be printed many times.

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And given the high cost, not many copies could be printed, and perhaps not even one copy could be printed.

It's not like withered boards. Printed with withered boards, they can be used for decades and can continue to be used, but the cost is very different.

What Li Mengxi didn't expect was that wax society was one of the factors that restricted printing.

According to my memory from elementary school, it is very convenient to print test papers on wax paper, and the characteristics of the test papers are that they must be updated quickly. There is a large demand for mold making. It is impossible to print the test papers on one board and then print the same test papers next time.

Let’s take the same test paper again.

Test papers have to be changed every three to five days, which is extremely frequent. However, with such a frequent change frequency, whether it is with wooden boards or movable type typesetting, the cost and efficiency are still too low, and it is not suitable for teaching purposes.

Li Mengxi knew very well how helpful examinations were to teaching work. To improve teaching efficiency, one must have the ability to print a large number of test papers. To have the ability to print a large number of test papers, the problem of the source of insect wax must be solved.

According to Liu Bei, insect wax was rare and precious, and ordinary people could not afford it. Li Mengxi kept this in mind, and it was necessary to find a few insect wax trees to see how to increase the cost of insect wax.

This matter is of vital importance, as it is an important step in perfecting printing technology, and printing technology is also crucial to cultural education and even imperial examinations.
Chapter completed!