Proud Farm Girl With A Space

Chapter 18

After getting a good night's sleep Su Tang planned to head into town. She was not particularly anxious about it though and she went through her morning routine as usual. First, she calmly got up, then made some red date milk porridge and ate it with her brother. Once they had both eaten, Su Tang picked up her bamboo basket and Su Nuo picked up his basket full of wild peaches and the two of them headed to town together.

After they arrived at the town, Su Tang took Su Nuo straight to East Street. Qinghe Town was not a very big town but it for the time period it was not too small. There were two intersecting streets where merchants and vendors could peddle their wares and East Street was the more popular of the two.

That was because the largest (and only) academy in town was on that street. Because of the academy all the children who wanted to study, whether they were from one of the nearby villages or from the town itself, would at least pass by this street.

Scholars in the Qihuang Kingdom had high status so many people wanted to become one, however, it was very expensive to study. Basically, even the most common academy in a smaller town like this would charge at least two taels of silver for a year's tuition. If you thought about it, hardly any of the villagers who lived in this area were able to earn two taels of silver in a year so they really couldn't afford to study at all.

What's more, the cost of studying was not just tuition. The academy did not provide accommodation or meals, so if the student didn't live nearby those things would cost extra money. And apart from that, the other significant cost came in the form of books, paper, and ink. Even the most inexpensive books cost around 500 copper coins and students often need to buy important books for their studies, not just the cheapest ones. Those books would cost at least one or two, or maybe even more, taels of silver. For the most expensive books, it could cost up to dozens of taels.

And the rarer a book was the more it would cost. Some books were printed using a new method called 'block printing' so they were a bit cheaper but as students progressed in their studies and needed higher levels of materials, the fewer of those materials would be available. That was because basically, all the highest level books were the personal manuscripts of some scholar or other, so they were naturally very expensive.

On top of all that, things like ink, paper, writing implements, and inkstones were all precious and expensive things so only a very rich farmer could even afford to send their children to study. It wasn't that they didn't know that studying could change their fate or that they didn't want to study, it was just that most people couldn't afford it, so knowing was in vain.

The end result was that scholars were more or less only produced by wealthy families. So, because of the existence of the academy on East Street of Qinghe Town, there were often a lot of people on the road who came from households that were more or less well off, which was why a lot of shops had opened near the academy.

There were bookstores and stores that sold writing implements, ink, and inkstones. But it wasn't just stores that sold scholarly supplies, even Fuxing House, the largest restaurant in town, was built on East Street. Of course, there were also some relatively more affordable small shops and street vendors on the road.

Of course, not all the students who came to study were well-off. The poorer students generally had to go to and from their nearby villages, but there was obviously no way they could make a long round trip at lunchtime, so many students had to spend some money to buy their lunches every day.

Today Su Tang planned to bring her fish balls to the Fuxing House to see if she could reach some sort of cooperative agreement. After all, the fish balls produced by the space did not have any bones and they tasted good, so they could be considered to be very high quality. Plus Qinghe Town was close to the Qing River so everyone already had the habit of eating fish. Even though fish balls were fairly common, there were not many fish balls on the market that were comparable to Su Tang's at all.