Riding the wind of rebirth

Zhou Zhi didn't think so. He said, "In fact, whether it's the Oracle Bone Script Integration Project or the Chinese Phonological Database Project, the nature of my work is similar. I didn't conduct detailed research. I mainly did project management. My research direction is also in this area. So no matter which project is used as the background, the content of the defense is mainly on project architecture and management."

"The oracle bone script concatenation project has already achieved some results. If Mr. Gu used it as a thesis defense, it would be a bit boastful. I also think he has considered it carefully. It is better to use the field survey of Chinese phonetics and the construction of a multimedia database as the background, so as to prepare for the next step of the Middle Chinese pronunciation deduction."

"So your doctoral research direction is the inference of Middle Chinese sounds?" asked Mr. Wang.

"If Mr. Gu doesn't put too much pressure on me," Zhou Zhi said with a wry smile, "I think it would be enough if I could complete the Chinese-Chinese pronunciation simulation project."

"There are many different opinions among various schools of thought in the academic community. If you can unify them, it will be an immeasurable merit." Old Man Qi nodded, as if he was certain that Zhou Zhi would succeed.

"I don't dare to count on that." Zhou Zhi smiled and said, "Actually, I am a little bit tempted to take shortcuts."

"What do you mean?" asked Mr. Wang.

"It's very simple. We use the Chinese phonetic and rhyme database that has been completed to reverse and verify your theories. If they work, we will adopt them. If they don't work, we will doubt them."

"From this, we can trace back step by step to the phonological system recorded in Qieyun, including many revised and supplemented versions in later generations, and restore the original appearance of the phonological system of the Middle Ages recorded in China through the form of fanqie."

"To put it bluntly, I want to incorporate all the previous research theories on the phonology of the Middle Ages into the well-collected Chinese phonology database for verification."

"For example, the Qieyun system actually contains more oppositions than any single period of language system, which means it retains more information than a rhyme book that actually reflects a certain spoken language. But the combination of a large number of initials and finals is not balanced and there are many complementarities, from which we can summarize the earlier form of Chinese."

"Based on this logic, Professor Huang Kan discovered that although there are 37 initial consonants in total, only 19 of them can be followed by a large number of finals, which means that the remaining initial consonants may have evolved later or experienced differentiation."

"For example, in his book Qieyun Kao (A Study of Qieyun), a scholar in the late Qing Dynasty, Chen Li proposed a method for systematically analyzing the initial consonants of Qieyun, that is, identifying the upper and lower characters of its fanqie, that is, the connection between the initial consonant and the final consonant and the fanqie of other characters, and developed the 'linking method' to determine the essential differences and appropriate sound values ​​of the phonetic content in the book."

"There are many other directions, such as the rhyme charts of the Song Dynasty, the pronunciations preserved in Chinese loanwords in modern Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese,"

"There is another very important category of classics. Some early documents have transliterations of foreign proper nouns and terms. Particularly important are the many Buddhist scriptures that were transliterated during the Eastern Han Dynasty. Their source languages ​​were mainly Sanskrit and Pali, which are already very well understood by people. By matching the translated Chinese characters with ancient Sanskrit, we can also get a glimpse of some of the pronunciations of Chinese at that time."

"Of course, the most important thing is to correct the current scholars' blind pursuit of knowledge and the practice of cutting the feet to fit the shoes." Zhou Zhi was so happy when he said this: "The Ancient Chinese Dictionary compiled by Karlgren traced all the final rhymes of Middle Chinese back to Ancient Chinese. He also invented a notation system developed from Latin."

"For example, he noticed that many falling tone characters can rhyme or homophony with entering tone characters, such as 赖, expressed as li-, and 拉, expressed as lt. The same is true for 欬khi- and 刻khk."

"Similarly, there are several different initial consonants in a homophonic system, such as the ge and ge of the 'ge' system, which are pronounced as kk; ge, which are pronounced as kak; luo and luo, which are pronounced as lk; and lue, which are pronounced as ljak."

"But these annotations by Karlgren all have Chinese phonetic and rhyme comparisons," Zhou Zhi wrote down the annotations, then pointed at them one by one and read them out loud, "However, many scholars now interpret these annotations according to the Latin pronunciation, for example, reading ljak as '两克' and kak as '卡克' in a light tone, which is completely wrong." "Their correct pronunciation should be what I just read out, with '各' being the k after the word, which only indicates the mouth shape of the final sound, and is not a separate pronunciation instruction."

"We will implement these phonetic symbols one by one in the Chinese phonetic basic database, just like the traditional Chinese characters," Zhou Zhi said. "This is what I just mentioned."

"After that, we can use it to recite Song Ci, Tang Poetry, and Han Yuefu." Zhou Zhi asked, "Is this enough for my doctoral thesis?"

Now neither Mr. Qi nor Mr. Wang expressed their opinions. Mr. Qi laughed and said, "Haha, we only know the basics of what you said. We are not proficient in it. But based on what you said, it's all just hard work without any original ideas. Whether it can be used as a doctoral thesis depends on your grandfather's opinion, haha..."

Mr. Wang also took the opportunity to teach Mr. Ma: "Look, Elbow is so busy and he still needs to improve his eyesight, so you can't use being busy as an excuse. Can you be busier than him?"

"Brother, are you busy getting approval documents?" Zhou Zhi asked, "Have you chosen a place?"

"Look, Zhang Wanfen in Dashanzi, Chaoyang District, is about 5,000 square meters, which is enough for us to arrange. We plan to display ceramics, furniture, doors and windows, crafts, and a hall for temporary exhibitions." Ma Ye said, "The approval document will be issued soon. Oh, by the way..."

At this point, Master Ma bowed to Zhou Zhi and Lin Wanqiu and said, "I would like to invite you two to be the first directors of my museum. Would you be willing to do me the honor?"

"Ouch!" Lin Wanqiu couldn't help but smiled and said, "I dare not refuse Master Ma's honor, but the auction house is a place where wealth is passed on and no good things are left. Even if I become a director, I can't help. I hope you don't mind me being a drag."

"But your junior brother's family is quite wealthy. With him here, not to mention one temporary exhibition, ten temporary exhibitions can be filled for you!"

Contemporary museums usually implement a board system. In foreign museums, the board of directors is generally composed of representatives of government departments, corporate sponsors, experts and scholars, and employee representatives.

There are frequent business dealings between the directors and the museums. For example, the Chinese porcelain collection of the David Foundation is the finest in the world. However, the descendants of the Sassoon family were not good at running this kind of business, so they loaned the collection to the British Museum for long-term safekeeping and exhibition.

In this case, the Sassoon family naturally needs to send representatives to the British Museum to serve as directors.

The reason why Master Ma wanted Lin Wanqiu to be a director was naturally not because of her collection, but because of her influence in the collecting community.

Of course, the reason they wanted Zhou Zhi to be a director was not just because of his status as an expert in collecting and appraising things. Their eyes naturally fell on Zhou Zhi's collections.

What’s funny is that in another time and space, Mr. Wang’s Ming and Qing furniture were actually inherited by Mr. Ma, but in this life they became Zhou Zhi’s collection.

Not only Ming and Qing furniture, but also almost all of Mr. Wang and Mr. Yuan’s lifelong collections were transferred to Zhou Zhi. Now they only have a few dozen small items that they cherish in their daily lives. (End of this chapter)