Chapter 108 New Oriental Chinese School in Yemen

Sana'a, the capital of the Kingdom of Yemen.

Thanks to oil extraction, the capital of the Kingdom of Yemen has now taken on a new look. There are more BMW bicycles, Qilin motorcycles, BMW cars, etc. on the streets than on the streets of Yingtian City.

This is not surprising. Yemen's dignitaries are all gathered in the capital, and they will all get a share of the profits from oil, but this has nothing to do with ordinary civilians, and their lives remain unchanged.

On the contrary, due to the influx of various commodities from Longhan Kingdom, some of Yemen's remaining industrial industries are on the verge of collapse. However, no one cares about these. The upper class has made a fortune through oil and as compradors of Longhan Kingdom's commodities.

I no longer have any interest in starting a company or running a factory. After all, it is hard work and the money comes slowly. As for ordinary people who are out of work, they might as well go back to farming.

In the city of Sana'a, there is a spacious but slightly dilapidated house with a sign hanging on the door: New Oriental Chinese School.

The school was founded by three Yemeni veterans: Mahmouhong, Hassanpin and Awajan.

All three of them had fought in the war with Ye Qian before, and they also learned Chinese from Ye Qian. Although they didn't understand a lot, it was enough for daily conversation.

After the war, Ye Qian discovered that the three of them had good learning abilities, so before leaving, he gave them an American-Chinese dictionary as a parting gift.

The content of the American-Chinese Dictionary is not very extensive. It is actually a dictionary of traditional and simplified Chinese characters, and also includes pinyin and annotations for each character.

Simplified characters first appeared in the Southern and Northern Dynasties from the 4th to 6th centuries AD. During the Sui and Tang dynasties, the use of simplified characters became more and more common, especially among the people, and was called vulgar characters. In the Song Dynasty, simplified characters became more popular due to the use of printing. The first time in history that simplified characters were given legal status was the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, which used simplified characters extensively in seals, announcements and books between 1851 and 1864. The standardization of simplified characters in the modern sense began in the early 20th century, such as the Chinese character simplification scheme proposed by Qian Xuantong and others in 1922, and the publication of Du Dingyou's "Standard Simplified Character Table" in 1934. Finally, the adoption of the "Chinese Character Simplification Scheme" in 1956 established the standard for modern simplified characters.

So at this time, there were already complete and mature simplified characters, and pinyin was naturally "invented" by Zhang Feng himself.

During the Meihua Company period, it was stipulated that all printed texts, such as newspapers, company documents, etc., must use traditional Chinese characters.

Handwritten texts, such as student assignments, letters, etc., only need to use simplified Chinese characters.

So in today’s Long Han Kingdom, even if you can’t write traditional Chinese characters, you must recognize them, otherwise you won’t even be able to understand government documents.

Of course, all students now need to learn traditional and simplified Chinese characters, as well as elective courses in English, German, Arabic and other languages.

Among them, English and German are the two most important foreign languages ​​at present. To enter university, you must be proficient in one of them.

After all, Longhan’s scientific and technological talents need to communicate in German or Chinese, and all books on advanced knowledge require English to be understood.

After the war, Mahmouhong, Hassanping and Awaqiang were all retired by the Yemeni military. Now that the war was over, there was naturally no need for so many soldiers. Those who were able to stay and receive military pay had never fought in a war.

There was no compensation, and the three men searched for a long time but couldn't find a suitable job, and their military wages were almost gone.

Just at this time, Loulan City began a large-scale construction and was in urgent need of a large number of workers. The Longhan Kingdom liberated the entire island of Madagascar, and its territory expanded nearly 10 times, and it also needed population for development.

Therefore, Loulan City established an Immigration Bureau to recruit immigrants from the entire Middle East. In fact, absorbing population is only a small part of the reason.

Loulan City is equivalent to the land of Yemen occupied by the Longhan Kingdom. This requires an outlet to allow the Yemeni elites to have a good life through immigration, so that they will not complain about the Longhan Kingdom's occupation of land in the future.

They can also continuously attract talents away from Yemen, so that Yemen will never develop and can only become an economic colony of Longhan Kingdom and still need to rely on Longhan Kingdom's military protection.

As for the upper class, they have long been lost in the life of decadence and luxury. No matter how Yemen develops, as long as there are poor people, their wealthy lives will not change at all.

The Longhan Kingdom certainly does not need the lower-class people in Yemen. This will not only maintain stability in Yemen, but also prevent Yemenis from taking over the jobs of ordinary citizens of the Longhan Kingdom.

Mahmouhong, Hassanping and Avaqiang seized the opportunity of the times, got together, took out all their savings, rented a large warehouse outside Sana'a, and founded the New Oriental Chinese School.

The name was taken from their teacher Ye Qian who once said that his hometown was from the far east, and then he started a new life here.

Over the past two years, the three of them taught themselves through dictionaries, consulted Middle Eastern immigrants like Faisal, and then taught their students what they knew about Chinese characters, grammar, and spoken communication.

Finally, we got the information of the immigration interviewer through a Yemeni Longhan person, and catered to his preferences, which made it easy for a large number of students with good academic performance to pass the immigration test successfully.

The school's student population has grown from less than 10 at the beginning to nearly 500 students filling the classrooms today, and the three of them have made a lot of money as a result.

In an office at New Oriental Chinese School, the three founders are worried about the increasing number of students.

"There are more and more students now, and it is difficult for just the three of us to handle it," said Hasanping.

"Well, it's time for the school to expand. We should open branches in other cities. With the increase in trade between Longhan and Yemen, and the increasing number of joint ventures such as the Sino-Yemen Oil Company or Sino-US-owned enterprises, in addition to immigrants, the country is actually lacking a lot of talent who can speak Chinese." Awaqiang continued.

"That's true. Then let's start preparing to open a branch. As for the teacher vacancies, I think we can select some from our students, and then we can spend money to hire a few Chinese from Longhan Country. Although the salary will be higher, it will also gain the trust of students, which is very beneficial for school enrollment." After listening to what the two said, Mahmaohong also told them the plan he had thought of a long time ago.

Hasanping and Awaqiang had no objections after hearing this, and New Oriental School officially began its expansion. After Zhang Feng returned to Chaoge, he also began to work on the education reform of Longhan State and held a work meeting on education in Weiyang Palace.

The result of the meeting was that Longhan Kingdom's schools were divided into 6 years of elementary school, 6 years of middle school, and university.

The law of compulsory education for six years of primary school was established, which means that primary education is free, but of course this is only limited to public primary schools.

Secondary schools are divided into comprehensive, technical-vocational, and specialty schools.

The comprehensive category is the normal liberal arts and science; the technical professions basically cooperate with various enterprises to cultivate the technical application talents they need; the specialty category includes sports, fine arts, music, etc.

Generally speaking, only students from comprehensive and specialty schools can take the college entrance examination, but this is not absolute. Students from technical and vocational schools can also apply for the examination.

Currently, all primary and secondary schools in Longhan are private schools, which are owned by the Meihua Company.

There is not even a single university that does this. Excellent students either stay in the American Chinese Science Institute as intern assistants for academicians or researchers, and then slowly get promoted to researchers.

More of them go abroad to study, and after returning home, some of them join the Academy of Sciences for theoretical research, while others join companies under the Meihua Group.

There are many overseas students who have returned to China after studying medicine in Huatuo Hospital.

The educational gaps in each state now need to be filled by public and private schools.

The meeting also decided that Meihua would first provide funding and the Meihua Science Research Institute would provide teachers to establish the first university in Longhan Country, Meihua University. Of course, this is also a private university.

For the school's disciplines, Monkey Zhang University in Los Angeles, USA, Monkey Zhang University will send the team that originally prepared the university to provide guidance.

Help China University of Political Science and Law to become a university that is fully comparable to the top universities in the United States. Of course, whether it can eventually develop into what was planned, rather than slowly deforming into a garbage university that trains workers in an assembly line model, depends on the ability of China University of Political Science and Law itself.

The location of Meihua University is in the suburbs of Yingtian City, less than 1000 meters away from Meihua Science Research Institute.

The meeting also decided to establish a public national university: Chaoge University.

From the name, it seems that this is a university located in the capital of Longhan Kingdom. The model will also be copied from Meihua University, but Meihua University will focus on science and engineering because all the scientific talents in Longhan are in Meihua Science Institute.

The science and engineering faculty of Chaoge University is definitely not as good as that of Meihua University, and Chaoge is the political and cultural center of Longhan Kingdom. There is no shortage of talents in Chinese studies and politics, so Chaoge University will focus more on liberal arts.

But as far as the current situation is concerned, the public Chaoge University is inferior to Meihua University in every aspect. As time goes by and history develops, the geographical advantages of the capital will become more prominent. Perhaps Chaoge University will become the strongest university in liberal arts in the near future.

After the meeting, Zhang Feng immediately had the meeting content submitted to Congress. A few days later, Congress passed the bill with a unanimous vote.

Newspapers also reported extensively on Long Han Kingdom's education policies and called on citizens to apply to set up private schools or donate to the Ministry of Education to establish public schools.

Zhang Feng's companies, including Meihua Company, Maple Leaf Group, Qilin Group, and Phoenix Group, have all publicly announced the amounts of their donations and expressed their willingness to continue to fulfill their responsibilities for Long Han Country's education.

People from all over the country, actually citizens of Youzhou, donated about one month's salary to the state government and did their part.

Domestic wealthy businessmen, especially Chinese, have applied to open private schools. Studying is ingrained in the Chinese people's DNA.

There was even a wealthy businessman named Cao Wang who made automobile glass and wanted to apply to establish a university, but his application was rejected by the Ministry of Education.

Meihua Company spun off its schools and established Meihua Education Group to continue to develop the education industry.

Taking advantage of its land advantages (all the land in Longhan Country currently belongs to Meihua Company), capital and teaching staff, Meihua Company quickly expanded across the country. Meihua Company mainly operates comprehensive and vocational and technical schools.

The application of Maple Leaf Group and Hua Tuo Hospital under Shennong Bio-Pharmaceutical Company to establish a Hua Tuo Medical University has been approved. The site is also in the suburbs of Yingtian City, close to Meihua University.

Huatuo Medical University is a university that combines Chinese and Western medicine. It will also become the second research base of Shennong Bio-Pharmaceutical Company. After all, many confidential research projects are carried out in the United States, and Zhang Feng is still a little worried.

Qilin Group and Maple Leaf Group have invested in Phoenix Education Company, which was established by Phoenix Group. Phoenix Education’s main business scope is specialty and vocational and technical schools.

Phoenix Education has already occupied a place in the American sports industry. It owns several stadiums, various teams, and the ownership of the World Fighting Championship. It also has sports-related production and sales industries such as sneakers, sportswear, footballs, and basketballs.

Relying on such advantages, Phoenix Education quickly established a firm foothold in Longhan, and has no competitors. However, the sports industry in Longhan is just emerging now. After all, these will only attract people's attention after basic needs are met.

In addition, Phoenix Education has established a cooperative relationship with Paramount and opened the first film school in Longhan Country, mainly to train Chinese extras for Paramount and to prepare for the future expansion of business in Longhan Country.

(End of this chapter)