Riding the wind of rebirth

The novel is set in the Cantonese capital at that time, and it contains many Cantonese colloquialisms such as "Li Bai who made peace with the barbarians", "wearing shoes and socks", and "same umbrella, different handles", which are all texts with a very distinctive local style.

Zhouzhi means that as long as the monkey finds these places in the book, marks them with annotations, and if the meaning changes from the current Cantonese, expands on them, a decent paper can be produced.

This is an interesting and practical aid for readers in non-Cantonese-speaking regions who later read the novel.

Zhao Xing's attitude towards learning can be seen from how difficult he was to pass the CET-4 (College English Test Band 4) and how successful he was in running a film and television city with Zhou Zhi. As the saying goes, "No one knows a son better than his father." When he suddenly heard that his son was going to write a thesis, he simply couldn't believe it.

After confirming it repeatedly, he was overjoyed and boasted everywhere, saying that his child was going to write a thesis on a novel set in Guangdong.

Our little monkey is about to write a thesis! After so many years of ancestral graves, we've finally encountered a literary vein!
The couple had done business all over the country, but they were completely unaware of Ouyang Shan's towering status among writers nationwide, especially in Guangdong Province. They even asked a colleague from the Federation of Literary and Art Circles who was attending a meeting at the hotel to look for Ouyang Shan's "A Generation of Eminent Figures." They thought it was a niche work like the Lingnan classical novels, and wanted to find it to read and also prepare it for their child.

The comrades from the literary association were taken aback, thinking they had met a true expert: "How did you know that Comrade Ouyang Shan was proofreading 'A Generation of Eminent Figures'? Impossible!!"

Ouyang Shan's status in the Guangdong cultural circle is similar to that of Ba Jin in the Sichuan cultural circle. The key point is that the old man is still alive and is the vice chairman of the China Writers Association, the chairman of the Guangdong Writers Association, and the vice chairman of the Guangdong Federation of Literary and Art Circles.

Now he is old and blind, unable to read or write. Yet, even in his current state, he persists in absorbing knowledge and creating, through a secretary specially assigned to him by the organization.

Secretary Hu would read newspaper articles to him every day and then transcribe his dictated writings. In this way, he would work five or six hours a day, and each morning he would write thousands of words.

These works mainly consist of essays and memoirs, and more than one hundred have already been completed.

At the same time, Secretary Hu also had to help organize the selection and publication of "The Collected Works of Ouyang Shan". This part was about three million words selected from Ouyang Shan's total of more than ten million words, totaling ten volumes of works for reprint.

The most important part of this collection is the 150 million-word masterpiece "A Generation of Elegance". Ouyang Shan took this matter extremely seriously, even scrutinizing every punctuation mark. He revised and added to many parts, with some additions and deletions reaching one or two thousand words.

This matter was actually a way for Ouyang Shan to feel that his days were numbered and to give a final summary of his literary career. Therefore, he kept a low profile and did not announce it to the public. So when Liuxing's parents told the leaders of the Federation of Literary and Art Circles about it, the leaders were quite shocked.

Secretary Hu happened to be this leader's subordinate, so the leader told Secretary Hu about the matter, actually half-jokingly telling him not to think that the organization's task of helping Ouyang Lao organize his works was a waste of his talent. He pointed out that even graduates of the Chinese Department of Sichuan University specifically chose his works as their thesis topics.

As a result, Secretary Hu told this story to Professor Ouyang as a joke. Unexpectedly, Professor Ouyang took the matter very seriously and asked Zhao Xing to visit him during his vacation to tell him about the upcoming revisions to "A Generation of Elegance" and to avoid including the deleted parts in his thesis to prevent contradictions with the new edition. This was the rigorous academic attitude of a senior scholar. The old man was already semi-retired and rarely requested to meet with outsiders or younger generations. For most people, such an opportunity would be something to be eagerly awaited, but for Zhao Xing, it turned into Zhou Zhi digging a pit for him and causing trouble.

"Wenxin, you must go with Monkey then." Even Zhou Zhi was both amused and exasperated when talking about this. Ouyang Shan held a great place in his heart, and he would probably be too excited to sleep if he had such an opportunity to pay his respects. However, when the person in question was Zhao Xing, he was really worried that this guy's performance in front of the old man would embarrass Shuda University. "I feel more at ease with you there to smooth things over. I'm really afraid that the old man will be angered by Monkey and suffer some serious consequences."

"I really admire Old Master Ouyang now!" Du Wenxin said excitedly. "I recently read through his entire 'A Generation of Elegance,' and it's so well-written, especially when read in Cantonese—it's so flavorful! He truly deserves his reputation as one of the Four Great Talents of Lingnan. I'll definitely go with Monkey!"

"Let's not talk about that for now, Zhouzi, you damn well better give me some advice!" Zhao Xing basically coasted through his four years of undergraduate studies, and he knew his own limitations better than anyone. Now that he was facing a question from a powerful figure, it was impossible for him not to feel guilty.

“Humanities students are easier to fool.” Although Zhou Zhi was a humanities student, he had to admit this. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be so many pseudo-scientific and unofficial histories circulating on the internet in later generations, and so many people would believe them. He coughed lightly and said, “Here’s what you do. Didn’t you participate in the construction of the Cantonese dialect database before? You can start from there and say that it was because of your participation in this project that you became interested in dialects, and then you started to study dialect masters like Ouyang.”

"It's probably too late to gain any insights from 'A Generation of Eminent Figures' now. You should focus on studying the first part, 'Three Families Lane.' Make sure you read 'Three Families Lane' thoroughly and in detail." Zhou Zhi suggested to Zhao Xing while scooping out fatty intestines from the pot: "'Three Families Lane' is the most important part of 'A Generation of Eminent Figures,' and your conversations will mostly come from it. You can talk about your insights from reading 'Three Families Lane,' and have Wen Xin help out with the rest. There shouldn't be any major problems."

“Don’t be so nervous. The great people I’ve met are all approachable. Even if you have some shortcomings in your studies, do you think they’ll hold a grudge against you? They’ve seen countless unambitious students in their lives, so why would they care about one more?” Zhou Zhi said. “So you can rest assured that the elders won’t hold it against you; they’ll mostly encourage you.”

"That's true!" Reassured by Zhou Zhi's words, Zhao Xing smiled again: "The big shots only hold people like Zhou Zi to high standards. Dean Gu always smiles at us. He doesn't even have the right to scold graduate students, let alone undergraduates like us?"

"You're actually pleased with your ignorance?!" Du Wenxin was both annoyed and amused. "Let's forget about everything else, but you don't even study the great works written by famous authors in our own dialect. How dare you say you graduated from the Chinese Literature Department?!"

"Starting today, no more misbehaving in the library! You're going to read 'A Generation of Heroes' to me, or I'll report you when I get back from the holidays!"

“Wenxin, what you said makes sense.” Zhou Zhi nodded seriously: “But please don’t overlook the details.”

"What details?" Du Wenxin asked nervously when she saw Zhou Zhi's serious expression.

"The details are..." Zhou Zhi suddenly turned into a lazy expression: "How exactly did the monkey cause you trouble in the library?"

Du Wenxin's face flushed bright red instantly. Everyone was taken aback at first, then burst into laughter. (End of Chapter)