Jiang Zhen naturally did not like Toyo. In the past, when he was in Daqi, he didn’t like to hire ronins like other sea merchants did. 

Even so, he wouldn’t go so far as to make a fuss about it for no reason. Of course, it was still necessary for them to learn the Daqi language.

When he first arrived in Toyo, Jiang Zhen had a rather chaotic period of time. However, when Cheng Yongzhen’s old troops came to join him, and his fleet of ships that had been sent to carry provisions to the Liaodong Iron Riders was also retrieved by his men, bringing with it food that was originally intended for the Iron Riders, Jiang Zhen’s days settled down.

Jiang Zhen took this opportunity to compile teaching materials with Zhao Jinge and his accountants, one for language and one for mathematics in simplified characters.

Both the language and math textbooks were in simplified characters. 

After Jiang Zhen came to Daqi, he learned traditional Chinese characters, and he had to admit that traditional Chinese characters have their unique beauty, but similarly, traditional Chinese characters had their own disadvantages – they were too difficult to learn.

In some countries where the language was particularly simple, many people could learn the language of their country without going to school, but no one could do that in Daqi. After all, each word was difficult to learn. 

Over the years, Jiang Zhen has always let his men go to school to learn how to read, but his subordinates’ knowledge was very general. They not only couldn’t recognize many words, but even if they knew them they were unable to write them. 

It was definitely not easy to make people who have never learned words before, learn so many words.

In modern times they invented simplified characters and pinyin to spread education faster, so that those who have never read before could also learn to write faster. Now, Jiang Zhen also decided to use this method. 

This also turned out to be very beneficial. After using simplified Chinese characters, the speed of learning words accelerated, while the existence of Pinyin let everyone unify their accent.

Of course, it was a given that there were many things Jiang Zhen himself had forgotten, and he couldn’t exactly copy it over, but that didn’t matter much, did it?

Jiang Zhen let his own men learn, so he naturally also let Toyo ronins learn too, especially their children.

In the school built by Jiang Zhen, in the morning teacher would  teach the children cultural lessons. In the afternoon, he would take the older children to do some work, such as binding books, planting land and growing vegetables and so on.

Studying was free, but if they wanted to study they also had to do some work. 

The Toyo people didn’t feel that Jiang Zhen was using child labor, and they are very grateful to Jiang Zhen. After all, Jiang Zhen has given their children the opportunity to receive an education. However, Jiang Zhen did it with selfish intentions.

This school had a rule: in school you must only speak Chinese, which was the official  language of Daqi.

When Jiang Zhen was in elementary school, his own elementary school had such a rule. 

The place where he grew up had quite a distinctive dialect, but because of this rule, many of the children his age spoke the dialect very poorly or some simply didn’t speak it.

The Toyo people he took in were the people from the bottom of society, so they couldn’t even write in their original language. So Jiang Zhen let them learn the language of Daqi while letting their children learn the written language of Daqi from a young age. In the future, these people were expected to completely forget the language and words of Toyo. 

In fact, the most ruthless way to invade a country was to destroy its civilization. 

If the Toyo people completely forget their civilization, could they still be regarded as Toyo ronins? 

Of course, they also couldn’t be considered Daqi people. After all, Jiang Zhen was teaching these people modern knowledge.

Not only that, on top of the customs and habits, he also made a lot of changes.

For example, in Daqi, men could have three wives and four concubines, but here, Jiang Zhen directly stipulated that each man can only have one wife.

If Jiang Zhen had wanted to decree something like this in Daqi, he  would have been scolded to death, but here, no one objected at all.

Although there were literate people among his men, they could not be considered serious scholars. Yet they also readily agreed with this, not to mention there was a shortage of women and gers. 

Whether it was Jiang Zhen’s men, or the old troops of Cheng Yongzhen, the vast majority of these people were men!

So a large group of people was still single! When Jiang Zhen said that each person could only marry one wife, they naturally all raised their hands and feet in favor of it!

Each person can only marry one wife, how good it was! Otherwise, the women and gers would all want to marry Jiang Zhen, He Chunsheng, or someone else, how could they still marry a wife?

One person should be able to marry only one wife!

Jiang Zhen’s own men didn’t object at all and the Toyo were naturally also not opposed. 

They were poor and at the bottom of the Toyo social hierarchy, so many of them wouldn’t even marry a wife. As this was the case, one person marrying only one wife was good, what does it matter?

This was the first edict issued by Jiang Zhen. Not long after, Jiang Zhen stated that all women and gers also had to work, and wherever they were, girls or gers should also go to school. 

There was also no objection to this.

At present, they were particularly short on manpower. Men had to participate in training and take turns patrolling to defend their territory while also going to sea to do business. With so much work left, it was no big deal to let women and gers work, right? 

Didn’t they already see Zhao Jinge taking care of so many people?

As for children studying together, it was even less important. 

Most of the people who followed Jiang Zhen to Toyo were poor. When they were young, men and women used to play together so why did it matter if they now went to school together?

After all, Jiang Zhen’s own daughter went to school!

Jiang Zhen was actually very lucky. The people who followed him were originally born poor so it was very easy to train them.

Many ideas were changing in subtle ways.

Under the deliberate guidance of Jiang Zhen, many things in this place were slowly moving closer to modern times, and many ideas were also slowly taking root in people’s subconscious. 

When a woman moved out of her home because she was dissatisfied with her husband’s love for beating people and relied on her own ability to earn money, Jiang Zhen said she could get a divorce and find someone else to marry.

That woman did not hesitate to divorce and quickly found someone else to marry. 

Most men didn’t recognize that as a problem. Many of them could not marry a wife, so they even wished for such things to happen more often. 

However, Jiang Zhen knows that times were already changing.

If they were still in Daqi, it would be too difficult to make such changes. It would at least be necessary to break up the entire class system several times, but it was much easier here. 

They are all outlaws who have left their homes; it’s good enough to be alive so they didn’t care about many things. 

Jiang Zhen began to intervene in the war between the two sides of the Toyo Imperial Family a long time ago and made a lot of money by selling weapons to both sides. Despite that, he never personally got involved in the war. 

To accumulate grain widely and claim the throne slowly was the most suitable solution for his current situation.

However, when both sides fought almost to the point of discovering his presence and began to fear him, even wanting to drive him away, he no longer hesitated and did it. 

The Toyo people he took in had been loyal to him for a long time already, while the rest of the Toyo citizens already knew they could eat and live well by following Jiang Zhen. They didn’t resist when Jiang Zhen was not thinking of killing them. 

Jiang Zhen had a lot of craftsmen from Daqi and had the best weapons on hand, as well as a highly-trained army. With such an army, wanting to clean up the Toyo Imperial Family was not a difficult task.

If the two sides could unite, maybe they could fight against Jiang Zhen, but the key point was that the Imperial Family had been fighting for so many years, and the hate ran deep between them. How could they cooperate? 

Toyo was not large so it took Jiang Zhen two years to take over Toyo. 

War always kills people, and this time was also not an exception. 

Some of Jiang Zhen’s men died, but even more Toyo people died. 

Most of the nobles in Toyo were killed and their properties were taken over by Jiang Zhen. Then their land was distributed to the people of the Toyo by Jiang Zhen while at the same time he started to implement his own schools in the places he occupied.

Jiang Zhen was not a person who could do everything. In some aspects, such as dealing with tedious affairs, he was actually not as good as Zhao Jinge. 

He couldn’t manage too many people, let alone too much land. Fortunately, Toyo was not particularly big, and there were not too many people here.  

Moreover, Jiang Zhen also learned that among his people, there were still some with hidden talents. 

Of course, he was still short of subordinates. 

However, even if there was a shortage of people to govern the country, he will still be able to stabilize it when he has an army. When a few years passed, new talents would also be there. 

In the eighth year of Jiang Zhen’s arrival in Toyo, he built a country within a country, establishing the Republic of China.

This is one of his own intentions. 

When Jiang Zhen first proposed the founding of the people’s Republic of China, his men were very supportive. They wanted Jiang Zhen to become the emperor and become emperor officials. They also started thinking of building large mansions and starting to enjoy life. They would even find some Toyo women to serve them.

All of that was vetoed by Jiang Zhen.

Jiang Zhen directly made a constitutional monarchy.

The emperor would not have much power and would have more of symbolic meaning. The power would be in hands of a president and parliament, with titles being only honorific and would not grant any privileges. 

At first, no one understood why Jiang Zhen did so, but later they found that when they joined parliament, they could get a lot of rights and they didn’t have to worry about being killed by a powerful emperor, which made them all feel much better. 

Of course, not being able to marry a few wives was not very good, but over time they got used to it. 

After Jiang Zhen established a constitutional monarchy, he did not become emperor himself, but let Zhao Jinge do it. 

However, he became Prime Minister.

The day before his inauguration, Jiang Zhen embraced Zhao Mingzhu who had already grown up and not hugged him for years, “Father, will never let you be bullied in the future!”

 

Edited by: Antiope1

 

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