Chapter 332 - Campus

"Not bad." Hu Qingbai laughed. The Ministry of Education's office building stood within the park—a modest two-story structure of red brick and tile. Relocating out of the government compound meant they could claim an office building outright, rather than cramming into a handful of prefabricated units.

Just inside the school gate stood a large stone pedestal, its top conspicuously empty. Several National School students were climbing on it; spotting the approaching "Chiefs," they leaped down and scattered.

"That's the base for a statue," Mei Wan explained. The Ministry of Education had originally planned to erect a great man's likeness—but since debate over which great man remained unresolved, the pedestal stood vacant.

The playground was expansive, a regulation four-hundred-meter track encircling an open field. Equipment lined the edges: horizontal bars, parallel bars, climbing poles. A football goal fashioned from wooden frames and fishing net had been erected. Nearby, surprisingly, stood a basketball court, complete with hoops that appeared quite serviceable. Xiao Zishan silently credited Wu Kuangming, who oversaw forestry and wood products—the man's standards improved continuously.

Yet the students merely wandered the grounds, squabbling and playing on the equipment. No one was playing football or basketball.

"No balls?"

"We found a few aboard the ship..." Hu Qingbai started to say taken by the General Office, but remembering the General Office's Director stood before him, he pivoted. "—Not enough to go around. We wanted to manufacture some ourselves, but Mo Xiaoan said requisitioning rubber reserves for footballs and basketballs would certainly be rejected."

"Didn't ancient China have a football of its own? Gao Qiu was supposedly expert at it. Can't we produce the Song Dynasty version?" Xiao Zishan shrugged, unconcerned.

"Not the same thing." Hu Qingbai thought the Director rather given to lateral associations.

"Can't inflate it. No elasticity." Xiao Zishan suddenly recalled that the Army often used American football as a confrontational training exercise. During his last visit to Yanchang Village, he had even seen local youth playing the sport. American football required less of the ball itself, and the physical intensity was even greater.

"We could teach everyone American football. And baseball! The equipment isn't complicated to produce."

"Isn't American football's physicality a bit extreme?" Bai Yu expressed concern. "Children get injured easily."

"American children play American football." Xiao Zishan waved the objection away. "We're building a seventeenth-century America here!"

This peculiar analogy left everyone momentarily speechless. Yet upon reflection, the Transmigration Group did harbor such ambitions—World Hegemon was a title anyone would covet.

And so it was decided: American football and baseball would be added to the school athletics program. The Army would teach football; the Special Reconnaissance Team would handle baseball—Xue Ziliang, as a second-generation Chinese-American, was well-versed in the most popular sports of his homeland.

The newly constructed teaching building's whitewash had not yet dried, so the facilities remained unoccupied. The corridors were silent. Viewed from the inside, the classrooms reminded Xiao Zishan of the primary school he had attended as a child. Wide windows, fitted with glass panes, maximized natural illumination. However, the wooden frames limited the pane sizes somewhat, reducing overall lighting efficiency.

"No electric lights?"

"No. We lack the technology to manufacture bulbs, and existing ones are strictly rationed. The Industrial and Energy Committee suggested carbide lamps for nighttime use—they can handle that."

Blackboards, desks, and chairs were all standard designs. The blackboards had been painted, but desks and chairs retained the raw white finish of unpainted wood. Xiao Zishan reflected that it was impressive enough for Wu Kuangming to have a crew of seventeenth-century migrant workers producing twentieth-century furniture at all.

Above the blackboards, slogans familiar to any transmigrator had been painted in ink on the fresh plaster: "Study Hard, Improve Every Day," "Cultivate One's Character," "Knowledge is Power"... The variety was considerable.

Classroom numbers were nailed above each door. Hu Qingbai explained that to maximize utilization, they had forgone the one-class-one-classroom model in favor of a university-style approach: different classes meeting in different rooms as schedules dictated. This squeezed the most value from limited facilities.

"Is that really necessary?" Xiao Zishan asked. "Setting aside universities, primary and secondary students are in class from seven in the morning until five in the evening. Outside nighttime hours, classrooms have almost no idle capacity to exploit."

"Our educational system is pragmatic." Hu Qingbai was confident. "One-third cultural instruction, one-third labor practicum, one-third military and physical training. Each class probably spends only half its time in a classroom at any given moment."

This "Three-Thirds" system had earned effusive praise from Ma Qianzhu, who declared at multiple meetings: "The Fangcaodi pedagogical model perfectly embodies the spirit and superiority of the Transmigration Group," and "It represents the ideal fusion of theoretical study and social practice," and "It is a superior framework for cultivating new citizens with the 'Three Haves'—Ideals, Culture, and Discipline."

The labor practicum was not a matter of cutting paper with scissors or kneading modeling clay. Students performed genuine unskilled labor in fields and factories.

The campus itself hosted practicum facilities: a small farm comprising vegetable plots, a livestock area, and a substantial biogas digester. Biogas served both cooking and sanitation—organic waste and human refuse were processed into fertilizer for on-site application, eliminating the problem of sewage and filth disposal.

Beside the farm's riverside stood a simple wind-powered waterwheel for irrigation, flanked by a row of bamboo-frame sheds of varying sizes designed by Bing Feng.

"Many of the farm's facilities were built with student participation," Hu Qingbai said. "Not just the practicum farm—students contributed substantially to the entire campus construction. Originally, these children had classes outdoors and studied in dormitories. Now that they can move into proper buildings, they're overjoyed. Their labor enthusiasm has been tremendous!"

Hu Qingbai had clearly caught the enthusiasm himself. He gestured excitedly. "Take this waterwheel, for instance—several students built it themselves. Not bad, is it?"

"Indeed. But the waterwheel isn't turning." Xiao Zishan observed that the branch of the Wenlan River here had insufficient flow to power the mechanism.

"It'll be useful once we dam the water upstream." Hu Qingbai remained buoyant. "The vegetable garden lets students grow their own produce. The livestock area will house pigs and sheep—fed on cafeteria swill—"

"Swill?" Xiao Zishan had observed local eating habits. Given how fiercely they cherished every grain, it was hard to imagine much food going uneaten. This was not a twenty-first-century university.

"There's still some. Students can supplement feed by growing pigweed and sweet potatoes, and cutting hogweed. Sheep are even simpler—just cut grass." Hu Qingbai smiled. "The harvests from the garden and livestock will all go toward improving meals for students and teachers, increasing self-sufficiency and reducing dependency."

"And these bamboo sheds?" Xiao Zishan ducked into one of the larger structures. It rose nearly two stories, framed entirely in moso bamboo with walls of woven reed matting. The floor was compacted clay and sand. But its purpose was unclear.

"Site of the school-run factory," Hu Qingbai explained.

"What will it produce?"

"Without power machinery, we're limited to manual work initially. We'll accept outsourced processing jobs—Wu Kuangming agreed to subcontract rattan and straw weaving. The machinery factory also promised to build us a few hand-cranked knitting machines. Safety helmets, straw hats. Whatever else can be arranged will be coordinated at meetings."

The next shed was lower and smaller. Inside, shelves resembling library stacks had been constructed and arranged neatly.

"This can't be the library, can it?" Xiao Zishan was puzzled—the structure seemed far too short and crude for such a purpose.

Everyone laughed. "We're planning to cultivate fungi here. Oyster mushrooms, wood ear, shiitake... Huang Dashan provides the spawn and technical guidance."

"Aren't you worried about technology proliferation?"

"Cultivation techniques can spread—in fact, the more widely, the better. We just need to control the spawn. That's Huang Dashan's patent."

"Let's see the library now."

To Xiao Zishan's surprise, the library was a luxurious two-story building with a reinforced-concrete structure and a peaked roof. The gray structural beams and columns seemed almost jarring, inlaid within the red brick walls. From outside, the building appeared heavily fortified: iron bars on the windows, iron-sheet shutters, and an iron-clad door with a modern lock.

"The contents are extremely valuable; hence the construction standards." Mei Wan unlocked the door as she spoke. "Otherwise, I would never have authorized reinforced concrete."

The building served as both library and laboratory. The well-ventilated second floor housed the reading room, bright and spacious. Rows of newly built shelves stood temporarily empty, containing only thread-bound classics purchased from Guangzhou, newly printed textbooks, and bound volumes of the Lingao Times. Textbooks remained problematic; Zhou Dongtian and the chemical department were still working to solve the ink formulation for large-scale printing. Once that hurdle was cleared, the collection would grow rapidly.

The ground floor comprised four laboratories—Physics, Chemistry, and Biology—configured to middle-school standards, along with associated storage rooms. What stunned Xiao Zishan most was the Electrical Laboratory. He might not be involved with the Planning Committee's work, but he knew perfectly well how precious the electrical equipment installed here was to the transmigrators.