[Now open! Tentatively updating every night at nine.]
Though this story is set in a fictional world, its institutions and systems draw on those of the Song dynasties. Everything serves the plot, so enjoy!
Yue Lingyi transmigrates into the body of a young country girl in the Great Sheng dynasty.
Three thatched cottages, and a family that really doesn’t have much.
The village children run around everywhere, unable to recognize more than a handful of characters.
In her last life, she was a Chinese teacher. In this one... she might as well keep teaching.
She propped a wooden board beneath an old locust tree and wrote three characters with a charred stick: Sanwei School.
She charged no tuition, only grain. With no paper or brushes, her students practiced writing in the sand.
She put together The Farmer’s Literacy Song, taught the children to read with The Thousand Character Classic and The Hundred Family Surnames, and turned poems into stories.
The villagers laughed at her. “Why would a young woman teach? You’ve learned a few characters, so now you think you can pass the county exams?”
She thought, You can’t explain ice to a summer insect. Just wait and see.
One year, two years, three years...
The old locust tree turned green, then yellow, then green again.
In the spring of the sixth year, firecrackers thundered throughout the village all night.
Tie Niu had passed the county school entrance exam, ranking fifteenth in the county.
That night, someone sat on the private school’s threshold and, by the light of an oil lamp, carefully organized six years of records: the grain paid as tuition at Sanwei School, the paper and ink expenses, and the children’s enrollment lists.
At the end, he wrote a line in small characters:
“Six years: one county school student, three bookkeepers, and twenty-five households with people who can read and write. Teacher Yue’s contribution is no less than that of the official schools run by the prefecture and county.”
Signed, Lu Chunshan.
He had come from the capital, Bian’an. He held a minor post, managing accounts and documents.
The first time he met her, she was crouched in the dirt, drawing the structure of Chinese characters. Without even looking up, she said, “Sir, you’ve got the numbers wrong. You undercounted the fields on the western slope by two fen.”
After that, he came every year.
At first he brought scrap paper, then handwritten copies of exam questions, and later...
He brought an official document granting government funds to establish a free school.
The whole village went to thank him. Only Yue Lingyi knew that he never came to check the acreage.
He would sit on the school’s threshold, pretending to look through old account books, his ears pricked as he listened to her teach.
Once, she couldn’t help asking, “Lord Lu, do you happen to pass through here ‘eight times’ a month?”
His hand paused over his counting rods. “...My memory isn’t very good. I keep forgetting what else I’m supposed to do.”
The page in his ledger was filled, line after line, with the words “Huaxi Village.”
Sadly, after all his calculations, the one thing he couldn’t figure out was this:
The round trip from Bian’an, the capital, to Huaxi Village was a thousand li.
[One-line summary]
A modern Chinese teacher transmigrates to a country village and uses a branch to teach local children to read from scratch. Six years later, the village sends its first student to the county school.
Along the way, she picks up a bookkeeper who knows how to do accounts but not how to sweet-talk a woman.
[Reading guide]
Everyday rural life · A gentle, steady pace · Slow-burn character growth
Humanities-minded heroine x science-minded hero · A complementary couple
The heroine focuses on education, while the hero handles the paperwork (bringing paper, money, and permits without stealing the spotlight).
Career: In six years, from gathering wild greens to pay tuition to receiving an eighteen-string government grant
Romance: He can balance every ledger, but can’t figure out when he fell head over heels for her
Theme: Love can make even the longest years worthwhile
