Riding the wind of rebirth

"Xinyi, you've been working really hard, haven't you?" Zhou Zhi glanced at Zhang Xinyi, who was sitting in the back row with Ye Xin, in the rearview mirror. "Your exams are coming up soon, aren't they?"

Zhang Xinyi smiled and said, "It'll be soon, but I don't find it tiring. It's quite fulfilling and enjoyable."

After being separated from her husband by Aunt Zhao, Zhang Xinyi was in a bad state for a while. Zhou Zhi wrote her a long letter to comfort her and told her that she could try taking the postgraduate entrance examination. In fact, he wanted her to change her mind.

Unexpectedly, this inspired Zhang Xinyi's fighting spirit, and she once again showed the same enthusiasm she had before the college entrance examination, and began to study hard.

Before the college entrance examination, Zhang Xinyi was particularly hard on herself, often doing homework and test papers until one or two in the morning. Zhao Da Niang came to her crying and begging Zhou Zhi to persuade her daughter not to study so hard.

In his previous life, Zhou Zhi couldn't control Zhang Xinyi either. In this life, it was this opportunity that led Zhou Zhi to organize his own "study group," guiding his friends to study scientifically and efficiently. In the end, everyone's grades were much better than in his previous life.

After not seeing her for a year, Zhou Zhi noticed that Zhang Xinyi's appearance and condition had improved significantly, which Zhou Zhi thought was actually a good sign.

“I haven’t thanked you yet,” Zhang Xinyi said to Zhou Zhi. “It allows me to focus on my postgraduate entrance exam without worrying about my thesis.”

“It’s a piece of cake.” Zhou Zhi laughed, mimicking a line often heard in Hong Kong movies these days: “It’s easy for the Chinese Literature Department to help.”

Tongji University is a very strong university, but its best programs are civil engineering and architecture. With the rise of the real estate industry, the university's status will continue to rise.

However, the Chinese department was only so-so, so Zhang Xinyi wanted to apply to Fudan University, which was also in Shanghai and was the university Jiang Shuyi had attended before.

Fudan University's Chinese Department was exceptional. In 1952, during the nationwide reorganization of colleges and departments, Fudan's Chinese Literature Department was separated from the College of Arts and renamed the Department of Chinese Language and Literature. Faculty and students from the Chinese Departments of universities such as Shanghai University, St. John's University, Soochow University, Datong University, Aurora University, and Shanghai College were transferred to the department. For a time, it was filled with renowned professors, and its majors such as Introduction to Literature, History of Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literature, History of Ancient Chinese Literature, Introduction to Linguistics, Modern Chinese, Classical Chinese, History of Chinese Literary Criticism, General History of China, World History, and Chinese Philosophy were all quite outstanding.

Zhou Zhi actually has a close relationship with the Chinese Department of Fudan University. His teacher, Uncle Gu Kailai, is a graduate of Fudan. After becoming the head of the Chinese Department of Sichuan University, he further strengthened his connections with his alma mater, and he facilitated many collaborations between the two sides.

For example, the Oracle Bone Inscription Joining Project was a joint project undertaken by Zhengzhou University, Chengdu University, Fudan University, Yinxu Museum, Tsinghua University, and others. Qiu Xigui was the head of the Oracle Bone Inscription Project Team at Fudan University, and he and Zhou Zhi were close friends despite their age difference.

As a soon-to-be graduate of the Chinese Literature Department, Zhang Xinyi's first thought when writing his thesis was naturally his friend Zhou Zhi, who hadn't even finished his undergraduate studies but had already begun his doctoral studies.

Zhou Zhi had a ton of projects related to Chinese, but most of them were too advanced for Zhang Xinyi, who was at the undergraduate level. So he suggested that Zhang Xinyi use the Hanwen search engine, which was now available to universities, to write a "Hanwen Search Engine User Manual".

Hanwen Engine is a "digital library" that is compatible with Hanwen Database and is open to universities. Currently, the database contains high-definition scans of various ancient books, which are then converted into digital vectorized electronic documents, as well as digital text versions.

Digital libraries, on their own, aren't particularly impressive when it comes to digital books. However, adding a search engine changes everything. Zhouzhi's graph data retrieval engine, designed for humanities projects, is especially suitable for network-based searches in humanities fields. However, many users today are accustomed to relational databases and are not used to graph data retrieval methods.

Especially in universities, science students are not interested in this database, and humanities students are not good at using it. Less than one-tenth of its actual functions have been developed, so it has not achieved the real effect of promotion.

Zhou Zhi had actually discovered this problem a long time ago, but he was too busy to spare much time. Just then, Zhang Xinyi came to ask about his graduation thesis, and Zhou Zhi thought it was a good topic.

The school's requirement for undergraduate students is simply to complete their major studies. They do not require students to have any original insights in their major. Therefore, undergraduate theses only need to clearly explain the topic, and no further requirements are needed.

Therefore, as long as you summarize how to use search engines and show some small results obtained using search engines, this kind of interdisciplinary paper is already considered a very impressive paper at the undergraduate level.

Zhou Zhi didn't help Zhang Xinyi with this paper; he simply gave Zhang Xinyi the script for the search program of the Three Su Anecdotes that he had written when he wrote "Su Chu" and the "Collection of Anecdotes of Su Dongpo" retrieved by the program for research.

Influenced by Zhou Zhi, the team members are quite proficient in computer operation. Zhang Xinyi's programming skills are relatively average, but writing scripts using the Hanwen Engine and writing the Hanwen Engine itself are two different things. In addition, Zhou Zhi habitually followed ISO requirements and provided a lot of comments for the scripts, so they were not difficult to understand.

With these two scripts and search results, Zhang Xinyi learned them and then "translated" them into an undergraduate thesis, which didn't actually take too much time.

“I’ve read your paper. This summer’s work was worthwhile. It’s definitely good enough to be considered for an outstanding paper award, at least at the undergraduate level,” Zhou Zhi said with a smile.

“I find it quite amazing,” Zhang Xinyi said. “After finishing the thesis, when I review the courses now, I find that I can understand and remember many parts at a glance. Do you think I’m being superstitious?”

“This is not superstition,” Zhou Zhi said. “The metadata association format of graph databases is very similar to the academic structure of humanities. By studying the retrieval script of the anecdotes of the Three Su, Xinyi, you have gained a concrete understanding of how to study humanities projects and how to establish the association between humanities knowledge points in your mind. In other words, you now know how to study humanities, and your accumulation has reached a certain level, resulting in a breakthrough. You have entered what is called the ‘free world’ in philosophy.”

"If you master the learning methods and are willing to learn until you die, you will continue to improve day by day. Of course, the premise is that you can genuinely find enjoyment in the process. If you don't like it, even if you know how to learn, you won't be able to stick with it for long."

“It seems you’ve told us about this before, but I never really understood it then,” Zhang Xinyi said with a smile. “Now I understand it a little better.”

"Then congratulations, Xinyi, you've truly crossed the threshold," Zhou Zhi said with a smile.

Although he said that, Zhou Zhi didn't really think highly of Zhang Xinyi's academic prospects. This girl's hard work in pursuing a master's degree was mainly for emotional reasons, and also partly to spite her family, with a touch of self-torture in it. Once this phase passes, she'll probably return to normal.

Like Jiang Shuyi before the college entrance examination, Zhang Xinyi's purpose in studying was never for the sake of learning itself; it was all quite utilitarian. Such a learning style makes it difficult to go far academically. (End of Chapter)