Chapter 122: Three Works
On the first day of April, the Cultural Affairs Bureau fell into madness. The reason was a message from the Information Bureau Information Turbulence Processing Office stating that their Director’s eldest daughter had salvaged new books from the information turbulence again, and there were four of them! Four!!
As for why it became four books, that was because Xiang Chuan suddenly remembered while writing the application that with modern people’s reading level, the original text of Dream of the Red Chamber might have some ambiguities, so she attached a more authoritative detailed commentary on Dream of the Red Chamber, turning it from three books to four. After sending the four books along with the application to the Information Turbulence Processing Office, she turned around and buried herself in math homework. The next morning, she casually went to class as if nothing had happened, tossed a sentence “Wait for the Information Bureau’s message” to the Class President Lu Daiqing who was full of expectation, then faced death unflinchingly carrying yesterday’s exercises toward Ainuo who had a blank expression, starting a new day of math torment.
Meanwhile, Lin Minzhi, who had left home earlier than her daughters, naturally didn’t know about these things. After she elegantly sat on the office chair in the Director’s office and took a satisfying sip of milkshake, she connected her personal terminal to the office port, and overwhelming information came bombing in directly from the Information Bureau.
Four complete ancient books! Complete!! Books!!
Lin Minzhi took a deep breath of cold air and immediately had Secretary Lisa arrange a Cultural Affairs Bureau cadre meeting for team leader level and above.
[Pardon my rudeness, Director, haven’t you received any wind of this from your daughter these past few days?]
The Deputy Director took advantage of the various ministers and team leaders being immersed in the four books to quietly send a message to Lin Minzhi.
This message pulled Lin Minzhi out of her immersion in The Count of Monte Cristo. She looked at the Deputy Director sitting beside her and shook her head with a bitter smile.
The Xiang Family had been using a free-range education style since Grandpa Xiang Chuan’s generation. Xiang Weiguo, naturally influenced by Xiang Chuan’s grandfather, adopted the same educational approach. Lin Minzhi was a bit worried at first, but seeing Xiang Qi’s outstanding performance of being elected Student Council President in his first year of high school with overwhelming advantage, it made her let go of the Second Fleet family education tutorial she had salvaged from the space-time network. Among the two daughters born later, Xiang Xue also performed outstandingly under the couple’s free-range approach. The only one without anything particularly outstanding was Xiang Chuan. Lin Minzhi and her husband had worried about their eldest daughter: everyone in the family was either a social terrorist or had outstanding personal charm, so how come it seemed like a break with the eldest daughter? But after experiencing about a month’s “cultural impact” and the Class Competition live stream, the couple suddenly realized: their eldest daughter was a late bloomer? Fair enough.
The couple watched their eldest daughter’s changes with joy in their eyes and hearts, and her interest in cooking could take Xiang Weiguo’s Group to the next level—what was there not to enjoy? Watching her husband go through pain and pleasure throughout March, Lin Minzhi drank fruit milk on the side and expressed sympathy.
And now, this “enjoyment” had come to her. Lin Minzhi was attracted by the plot of The Count of Monte Cristo while bitterly smiling repeatedly in her heart, thinking that this month she would probably be busy with her feet not touching the ground.
During the club activities rest time in the afternoon, just as Lu Daiqing and the Literature Club leader ran to the A Bite of China Club under the pretext of inquiring about the audit progress but actually to freeload food and drinks, the audit results for the four books finally “arrived late”.
Pretty fast, huh. Xiang Chuan thought this while sending the documents of the four books to the Class President and Literature Club leader whose eyes were shining, mainly because the previous audit of Thirty-Six Stratagems had taken almost a whole day, but now the four books were completed in just half a day.
“The Cultural Affairs Bureau’s audit this time is quite slow.” Liang Gong, who was sitting quietly on the side as a small transparent, suddenly said.
Huh? This is called slow? Xiang Chuan blinked her eyes and found everyone either nodding in agreement or nodding their heads.
“After all, it’s the volume of three books, and complete ancient books. Do you think we have the most advanced audit team here?” Nancy took a bite of cake and elegantly complained.
“No, actually it’s already quite fast.” The Class President suppressed the urge to immediately open the books and read voraciously, closed the light screen, pushed up her glasses, and explained, “Normal books take only five minutes from submission to result because modern literature’s themes and content have entered a fixed category. The occasional changes are just the Twelfth Fleet’s script copies, but those either aren’t circulated outside or are versions we’ve read countless times already, so the three books Xiang Chuan Classmate brought out can be considered the biggest cultural impact since Romeo and Juliet.”
So that’s why the school’s Chinese Language Class turned into Political Science Class? Xiang Chuan absentmindedly thought while staring unblinkingly at the math problems on the light screen. In that case, if books and information from the 21st Century and earlier eras were put on the network, maybe it could affect the upcoming Chinese Language Class? Fast-forward to “Reborn: I Recite Quiet Night Thoughts on the Immigrant Spaceship”?
“Will having three more books at once add some new things to our Chinese Language Class all of a sudden?” Ainuo suddenly lifted his head from the math problems. “Never mind third year high school and second year high school. We’ve first year high schoolers just started classes. If the Education Bureau has any sensitivity, they should start compiling new textbooks as soon as they get these three books, not to mention our Club President thoughtfully attached a detailed commentary booklet for one of them.”
Hearing this, everyone swished their gazes toward Xiang Chuan, who at this moment also supported her forehead and fell silent.
Use Dream of the Red Chamber as a textbook? Memorize Cao Xueqin’s poems where every one hides a bunch of metaphors? She’d rather memorize stuff from her old friends Li Bai and Du Fu!
She now deeply regretted not choosing Three Hundred Tang Poems last night. Maybe by then a line like “The white sun sinks behind the mountain, the Yellow River flows into the sea” could be used to cope with the high school graduation exam. It’d be better than having to memorize Daiyu’s Burial of Flowers or classic segments like Granny Liu Visits the Grand View Garden, content she usually skimmed over with one glance.
“After all, these books were found by our fleet’s residents in the information turbulence themselves, so it’s normal for them to enter textbooks. I heard the Twelfth Fleet also put Romeo and Juliet in their textbooks.” Ainuo opened the four documents he had just seen Xiang Chuan stuff into the club shared folder, casually copied The Count of Monte Cristo—which he had some interest in after hearing Xiang Chuan’s introduction yesterday—to his own terminal.
“Not to that extent, not to that extent.” The Class President slowly took a sip of juice to moisten her throat. “Generally, textbook replacements start preparation from elementary school or junior high stages. We unfortunate high school students still have to obediently use the current textbooks.”
Pretty good, at least no need to face those poems from Dream of the Red Chamber that she wasn’t very familiar with for three years of high school. Xiang Chuan breathed a sigh of relief, leaned back on the chair, bit the straw, and took a sip of fruit milk to calm her nerves.
“So these three books won’t have any impact on our batch?” Liang Gong asked, his hands not idle, bringing over cake topped with cream and uncut fruit.
This was the homework Xiang Chuan had assigned them these past two weeks: learn to cut fruit, then arrange cake fruit decoration. Thanks to the modern compressed laser cutter, this divine tool that prevented kitchen novices from getting their hands covered in cuts, Xiang Chuan decisively took out some cheap fruit for them to practice. It wasn’t that she hadn’t thought of using vegetables, but ginger hadn’t even achieved mass production yet, soy sauce, MSG, various starches were still nowhere in sight—cutting too many vegetables would just leave a pile that, besides stir-frying, boiling soup, or making buns, had no other use and would end up thrown away. Though modern food production was so abundant that non-seafood vegetables and meat were almost free, as a student who got full marks in thought education class since childhood, Xiang Chuan would never overlook any wasteful phenomenon with food. So she chose the currently more abundantly used fruit as their knife practice opponents. Botched fruit could be made into fruit milk or small jars of jam; well-cut ones went directly on the cake. After practice, they became afternoon tea snacks directly—one move, multiple gains.
“For us who are still junior high students, they’re just three somewhat special extracurricular books, but when it comes to choosing majors in university, it probably won’t be the same for me.” The Class President pushed up her glasses, looking at the three books on the light screen. “Three years from now, the Education Bureau and ancient civilization scholars will surely thoroughly study these three books, and by then they’ll definitely bring indispensable changes to university literature clubs. Maybe our batch of graduates’ club experience won’t even be useful by then.”
She said this with her mouth, but Xiang Chuan still saw expectation in the Class President’s dazed eyes.
Heh, young people still like challenging things, huh.
But whether there will only be these three books by then is uncertain.
Recently it’s been layoffs and job changes. Originally thought it could stably update, but after all the hassle recently it’s barely stabilized. Now in the trial period, praying I can safely turn permanent after three months.
