northernbook Chapter 159 1 Learning skills
Chapter 159 1 Learning skills
For this happy event of the Fang family, the gift they sent was the heaviest ever. Unlike the ten or twenty cents they gave to other families, this time, Mr. Gu and Mrs. Li directly gave Gu Xing six taels of silver.
Gu Xing refused to accept it at first, but later Li started crying. The two aunt and sister-in-law hugged each other and cried, reminiscing about the good old days for a while. Gu Xing really couldn't persuade Li, and didn't want her sister-in-law to talk nonsense to her anymore, so she accepted the silver with gratitude.
Except for the daughter-in-law who married into the family, everyone with the surname Fang has a bottomless appetite. More than 90% of the family's income is spent on "eating".
Before this year, when it comes to finding wives for their children, they could only look for those with a cheaper dowry, or even those without any dowry at all.
Like Gu Xing, she was married to the Fang family by her father without any dowry.
Her father was attracted by the fact that the men in the Fang family were strong and able to endure hardships, so he made an agreement with the Fang family that they could waive the dowry, but in the future Gu Xing would have to bring the men and children back to help her parents' family during the busy farming season.
The other daughters-in-law of the Fang family basically came in this way. For various reasons, their families agreed to ask for less or even no betrothal money, which greatly reduced the financial pressure on the Fang family.
Gu Xing's second sister-in-law Liu and her second daughter-in-law Xiao Liu, both came from mountain families. Their family lived a hard life, but the elders in the family loved girls very much. In order to get them out of the mountains and marry into a good place, the Liu family carefully selected the Fang family with good family traditions and upright people for Liu.
After Liu got married, she lived a comfortable life and had a harmonious relationship with her elder sister-in-law Gu Xing. When her niece Xiao Liu grew up, she married Xiao Liu to Gu Xing's second son.
The two families had already decided on the marriage. After the Fang family's life became better this year, the Liu family even approached Liu to make indirect attempts, fearing that the Fang family looked down on them and would find a way to cancel the engagement or something.
Liu didn't even bother to ask Gu Xing, but directly told her sister-in-law in her natal family that "it's not true".
She had great confidence in the character of her husband's eldest brother and sister-in-law. She had also watched her nephew Fang Youcai grow up. If her niece wasn't also very good, she would not have married her niece to Fang Youcai, otherwise she, the matchmaker, would be blamed in the future.
Gu Xing's family did not let Liu go back on her word. Not only did they not regret the engagement, but they also treated the Liu family with the same care and kindness as always.
After Fang Youcai and Xiao Liu's wedding was completed, Bai Jingzhou's second cousin Bai Jingming also got married.
Although he was a bit lazy and not as hardworking as his uncle Bai Jingzhou and his eldest cousin, he had a cheerful personality, a sweet mouth and could coax people. In addition, he was good-looking, so he didn't have to worry about getting married.
If it weren't for his mother's previous mischief, which made his future father-in-law and mother-in-law worried and afraid that their daughter would be bullied after marrying into the family, he should have gotten married in late autumn.
After much difficulty, the matchmaker came back and forth to help dispel the concerns of the old couple of the Qian family. Uncle Bai Jingzhou immediately began to arrange a marriage for his second son.
As Bai Jingming's cousin, Bai Jingzhou would definitely go to help arrange his marriage. Therefore, he and his younger brothers and sisters were temporarily absent from Gu's School.
"Gu Family School" was a joke made up by Gu Wenxuan. It was called a school, but in fact it was not a proper place for teaching.
At the beginning, this "school" only had Gu Wenxuan teaching everyone martial arts. Later, Bai Jingzhou began to teach everyone reading, arithmetic, and medicine.
Later, Lin Shuzhen joined in. In addition to taking over from the busy Bai Jingzhou in teaching the children to read and write, she would also take time to teach the girls needlework.
As the scale of this "school" grew, Gu Wenxuan's requirements for everyone also became higher and higher.
She didn't force Mr. Gu and Mrs. Li, but she hoped that everyone of their peers and the previous generation could learn to read and do accounting.
In her words, "You can't let someone sell you out without you knowing that you are signing a contract to sell yourself." "You can't let someone cheat you out of your money without you knowing that they overcharged you."
Her statement won the unanimous approval of Mr. Gu and Mrs. Li, so even the youngest two children in her family, the fourth and fifth, were brought over by the old couple to receive literacy training.
A basic literacy class was quickly established. Jia Yuelan, Ning Qirui, the two brothers Bai Jingshan, Gu Wenxuan's four younger brothers, Bai Jingzhou's brothers and sisters, and the Fang brothers... who could not recognize all the words or even could not read at all, were all regular students in this basic class.
In addition to learning to read and count, they will also practice martial arts with Gu Wenxuan and others. Of course, the intensity of each person's martial arts training is different.
Bai Jingshan's younger brother Bai Jinglin, who likes to practice martial arts but is still young, and those who don't like to practice martial arts but are required by Gu Wenxuan and Bai Jingzhou to have certain self-protection abilities, such as Bai Jingzhou's younger siblings and Gu Wenxuan's four younger brothers, have always had the lowest martial arts training intensity in the audience.
Bai Jingshan, Ning Qirui, Jia Yuelan, and the Fang brothers all maintained a similar amount of training as Bai Jingzhou. The one who trained more intensely than them was Gu Wenxuan, who had already recovered most of his strength and abilities.
As for Mr. Gu and Mrs. Li, they are old, so Gu Wenxuan only asks them to practice Tai Chi every day to strengthen their bodies. She also pays attention to providing them with nutritional supplements, so that they can be as healthier as possible and live longer.
People of Gu Yongming's generation, including Gu Yongming, Jia Guizhi and Gu Yongqing, were all happy to practice Tai Chi, but Lin Shuzhen was only willing to accompany Li in practicing Tai Chi.
She was a lady raised in a wealthy family. Although she later married into a peasant family because of exile, her living habits and thinking patterns had already been formed. Gu Wenxuan didn't want to force her to practice martial arts, so she didn't force her.
On the contrary, Bai Chong and Ning Cuizhi were very happy to learn a few tricks from Gu Wenxuan and Bai Jingzhou.
They each had their own things to do, and it was not convenient for them to practice martial arts at the same time and place as Gu Wenxuan and the others. So the two of them made a special space at home based on their actual conditions. When they had time, they would practice for a while, and when they didn't have time, they would be busy with other things.
They can adjust the duration and intensity of martial arts training independently, and do not think that training is hard at all. However, it is different for the children who are being taught by Gu Wenxuan.
Because Gu Wenxuan has been letting them progress step by step in a purposeful manner, the children always feel tired and miserable every day, and practicing martial arts is very strenuous.
Gu Xiaowu relied on his young age and fought again and again, always holding Gu Wenxuan's hand and acting like a spoiled child. Especially after winter came, he didn't want to practice martial arts anymore.
As he walked out against the sharp north wind, he said to Gu Wenxuan with a bitter face, "Sister, I really don't want to practice martial arts anymore. It's really, really tiring."