The Southern Dynasties Started from Paper Making and Crushed Valves

Gu Chenzhou, who holds a Ph. D. In ancient literature from the Chinese Department and minored in the history of mathematics and economics, traveled back in time to the first year of Tianjian in Nanliang and became a copywriter from a poor family who couldn't even afford rice. In this era, the gentry monopolized everything, monopolized paper, monopolized knowledge, and monopolized officialdom. A piece of hemp paper cost eighty pennies. Students from poor families could copy books for three months in exchange for thirty pennies. Children from noble families talked about metaphysics and governed the country. Poor families were not even qualified to take the exam. Gu Chenzhou only has one bargaining chip: the modern scientific methodology brought by his previous life. He calculated that 70% of the paper price was monopoly profit, and used the control variable method to improve papermaking technology, creating new paper that cost sixty cents per knife - better quality than the eighty cents mulberry paper. He met Shen Lingxian, the legitimate daughter of the Shen family in Wuxing, a woman who was better at settling accounts than he was. She said, "Your paper can make Shen's account book 30% thinner." From papermaking to printing, from ticket numbers to gunpowder, he used practical knowledge to crush talk, and used data to tear apart the mask of gentry monopoly - until one day, scholars throughout the Southern Dynasties discovered that without Gu Chenzhou's paper, they could not even afford to read. By that time, Gu Chenzhou was no longer just a copywriter.