Literary Master 1983

Chapter 385 The Debate of the Century (Part 1)

Soon, even Ai Feng, who had previously helped Yu Qie get the Audi, came to inquire about Yu Qie on behalf of the Economic Daily:
What kind of person is Professor Watson?

who?

This actually stumped Yu Qie!

Watson is a racist warrior who has transcended petty interests, a bully and thug who is always involved in gossip, prejudiced against women, but friendly to Chinese people!
Even in the Western scientific community, where hypocrites and villains abound, Watson was among the most hated.

Otherwise, he wouldn't have had all his honors revoked in the future, or even fallen so low in his later years that he had to sell his Nobel Prize medals. He could have been worth hundreds of millions, but he ruined everything because of his outspokenness.

How destitute was he?
At that time, even his former enemies had become wealthy and began to feel that Watson's later years were indeed excessively impoverished. One of them bought back the Nobel Prize medal that Watson had sold and gave it to Watson again, then said to a reporter:

"James is, after all, a Nobel laureate, a genius who discovered the DNA double helix... He's getting senile! Let's leave him some dignity."

How would you evaluate such a complex character?
Instead, Yu Qie asked Ai Feng, "Watson is from the biological field, while you and I are both in economics. Why are you reporting on him?"

"It's a long story... After entering China, Pfizer faced a dilemma: should it maintain the same name as globally and remain consistent in China, or should it adopt a new localized name, such as Wan Yao Ling, or the transliterated Fu Aize'er..."

Pfizer is best known in China for Viagra, but it was already a household name during this period. Pfizer is currently a major antibiotic manufacturer, producing drugs such as penicillin, tetracycline, and piroxicam.

Yu Qie asked, "So how exactly is Pfizer named?"

"Pfizer is Pfizer; it simply used its English name. This group plans to build a new factory in Dalian, and the signboard is already done—just those English letters. Plus a very prestigious name like 'Pfizer' and 'Rui'!"

Ai Feng said, "Have you noticed that this is the brand effect of international giants? They would rather spend more money on advertising to maintain a unified global name, but our domestic companies don't have this awareness. This is especially true in the field of biology. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory is very famous, and Watson, as a scientist, can also become a big star and frequently appear in the news!"

“I think domestic companies can also imitate and learn from this. Look at your fellow townsman from Wanxian, he’s a big talker, and his reputation has helped his company.”

Yu Qie said, "So, you want to ask me if Watson deliberately made outrageous statements to build his reputation?"

"That's what I mean."

"Watson is a man of his word. From the first moment he met me, he said that my novels were terrible and that he was the best writer of novels in the world."

"There's such a thing?" Ai Feng was stunned. Then he took out a pen and began to write it down seriously.

In China, probably no one would say such a thing to Yu Qie anymore.

Yu Qie began to recount his story: "I met Mr. Watson in January 1987..."

……

He recounted everything he could about his interactions with Watson so far.

Ai Feng was deeply shocked. After learning the whole story, he finally blurted out, "Actually, Watson and Bethune are a bit similar."

"Who?" Yu Qie wondered if he had misheard.

"Bethune, that's the Canadian doctor you're thinking of! An internationalist fighter! You've read too many textbooks and don't know what kind of person he actually was!"
-
New York, USA.

The “debate of the century” that has recently swept across the United States is being held live on CNN, and Watson has already arrived at the television station by car.

Two days before the evening debate, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory also hosted students from Dalton School in New York.

Every year, the laboratory hosts "princelings" from elite schools all over the United States, exposing them to the cutting-edge discipline of biology.

Dalton School is such an elite private school, where students not only come from wealthy families but are also exceptionally intelligent. Thanks to their excellent upbringing, they easily gain admission to top universities across the United States after graduation.

Watson had previously created a peculiar test for these "top high school students in the United States," and the average score was 107, significantly higher than the national average.

However, it is not as good as the primary school affiliated with Yenching University.

It might even be worse than the primary school in Northwest China that Yu Qie mentioned.

Watson felt immense pain whenever he thought about this.

"There are three people here with scores above 140, I want to know who they are..."

“They’re all of Chinese descent,” Watson’s assistant said. “Look at their names: David, Bruce, Catherine… but actually they’re Liu, Li, and Zhang.”

Watson was starting to lose his composure: "What percentage of students at Dalton are Chinese?"

The assistant said, “I don’t have exact figures. But I graduated from there, and as far as I can remember, there were rarely more than ten Chinese students in a grade. Because we were, in fact, a white school—of course, we wouldn’t say that openly.”

“Damn it!—Isn’t this racism? This is real racism!” Watson exclaimed.

The assistant refused to discuss the matter.

“Ah! America is a hypocritical country!” Watson sighed, then muttered to himself, “In other words, every Chinese child who comes in is a genius.”

The assistant, who was listening nearby, couldn't help but say, "In fact, that's true."

Watson then asked, "Tell me honestly, do you believe that Chinese people are more intelligent?"

The assistant said, "Judging from the scores on the intelligence test... that's the case."

Watson snapped, "You're spouting this nonsense too? It's just you and me here, and I want to hear your true thoughts."

The assistant paused for a moment, then said, "Judging from the results, that is indeed the case."

Watson immediately shouted, "I order you to say that damn thing! The Chinese are indeed more intelligent than others! Is it so hard for you to admit that?"

The assistant was surprised that Watson was so furious, so he had to repeat the phrase "Chinese people are more intelligent than others" many times.

“Very good.” Watson calmed down and fell into deep thought.

This kind of dialogue has happened many times.

It's no secret that East Asians are highly intelligent, but the academic community has deliberately suppressed these facts. People know that Asians are good at math, but they don't know how this reputation for Asian math prowess came about. There's a story behind it in the American education system, and Watson happened to experience the whole process.

This formed the basis of his initial positive impression of East Asians.

Watson worked during the early Cold War, when the US and the Soviet Union were exhausting all their resources to compete, from missiles and satellites to kitchens, cars... and eventually even students' math skills.

At that time, Americans did not practice "happy education." On the contrary, in the 1960s, the American education system spent twenty years drastically revising middle school math textbooks. Radicals angrily shouted, "Besides definitions and calculations, can't we learn something useful in our math classes?!" As a result, calculus, probability and statistics, logic, and other subjects that could help build airplanes and spaceships were comprehensively transferred to middle schools. This is historically known as the "New Mathematics" movement.

The "New Mathematics" movement caused a huge uproar. Students complained bitterly, with widespread aversion to learning, which had already affected their mental health. Conservative mathematicians angrily denounced the movement at a Ministry of Education meeting: "Students don't even understand basic concepts, how are they supposed to learn advanced mathematics? If this continues, they won't even understand basic calculations!"

In this tumultuous decade, the fundamental skills of a generation of American high school students were destroyed. They not only failed to learn advanced mathematics, but also basic math. The "New Math" movement faced immense pressure and was eventually halted. Conservatives then led America down another wrong path—"Back to Basics."

Then the middle school students went even further, writing addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division for ten years, going from one extreme to another.

Then some people felt that the correction was too extreme, so they started the "New Math" movement 2.0 again, which once again caused pain to American high school students... In the end, they had to admit that some people just couldn't learn it, and it had nothing to do with attitude, it was just that they simply couldn't learn it.

In this process, Asian Americans have risen significantly because, regardless of the version of the "New Mathematics" movement, their adaptation has been significantly better than that of other races. Their achievements are so remarkable that if you only look at Asian Americans, especially East Asians, you might think that the "New Mathematics" movement has been a complete success.

However, once they were gone, the American education system was forced to face the outcome of the movement's failure once again.

At this point, many people realized something was wrong. This was a large-scale experiment involving several generations of American students, and each time a certain ethnic group rose to power.

What does this tell us? Isn't it obvious?
It's just that some people are stupid and some are smart, right?
But the American education community doesn't see it that way. They are afraid of hurting the fragile minds of middle school students, and they are also afraid that this conclusion will damage the prestige of the superpower.

Ultimately, the American education system concealed this fact. Later, it even reversed course, discriminating against high-achieving Asian Americans and using numerous bonus point policies to effectively discriminate against the Asian American community when it comes to the fundamental right to education.

Watson felt a surge of anger; he was dissatisfied with the academic atmosphere, where white could be called black. He was simply stating a fact, so why was it so difficult?

At that moment, Watson suddenly thought of Yu Qie's novel, "The Village Teacher."

Although he had never been to Ning County in Northwest China, he suddenly felt sad for the primary school students there: perhaps a higher-dimensional civilization had indeed come here, but just like in the stories, a group of primary school students saved the earth.

However, after daybreak, no one in the world knew of their efforts and talents, and humanity continued to waste its precious intellectual resources.

At seven o'clock, Watson's assistant reminded him: Francis Clark (Crick) is ready, the debate will be broadcast live across the United States, and the ratings have already begun to rise significantly.

"Everyone is really looking forward to this debate between scientists! While not everyone possesses high intelligence, everyone is eager to discuss it!"

The host is Larry King, whose show, "Larry King Live," has consistently topped the CNN ratings since its inception. He's known for his directness and never minces words.

This could force Watson to confront the question of whether he is racist.

"The good news is that we will also be connecting with Jimmy Frokutz, the head of Time magazine's China bureau. He knows China very well and is a graduate of the history department at Yenching University. I believe Jimmy at least has a positive attitude towards Chinese children."

"From the perspective of the show's entertainment value, he might speak up for you."

From Yenching University in China?

He's Yu Qie's classmate.

Watson nodded after hearing this and took a deep breath.

He suddenly asked his assistant, "Yu Qie wrote 'The Village Teacher' for me. Should I mention him in the debate? He is a very reputable man."

“I probably don’t want you to mention him. As far as I know, he only agrees with your point of view to a limited extent.”

“Then let’s not mention him!” Watson said. “Do you know Li Baoku? He’s a village teacher who exists in stories. I feel like I’m in a very dangerous situation, just like him…”

"However, Li Baoku still wanted to teach before he died. I think Li Baoku died a worthy death, and I hope so too."

Meanwhile, at Yenching University in the other hemisphere.

Yu Qie also gained a general understanding of what kind of person Dr. Bethune was.

He learned that Watson was debating live across the United States, but unfortunately, the broadcast was not available in mainland China, and Yu Qie would not be able to see the recording for a long time. He could only hope that Watson would perform well.

Although Watson was a bully, his existence was beneficial to the Chinese biological community.

Watson cannot be defeated.

Yu Qie immersed himself in the relevant historical materials and discovered that Watson did indeed have some similarities with Bethune.

In official articles, Dr. Bethune is described as a great friend of the Chinese people and an absolute internationalist fighter, which is absolutely true!
In reality, Bethune had very few friends; he was almost a loner. The only thing he was truly renowned for was his exceptional medical skills. Bethune was unparalleled in his profession; he performed 19 surgeries in one day, and even donated blood on his birthday.

Although he smoked, he also offered cigarettes to the wounded. Bethune used most of his allowance to buy cigarettes for the wounded. During a routine operation, Bethune accidentally cut his finger. Due to a lack of disinfectant and his relentless work, he ultimately lost his life at the base.

This is the Canadian doctor who has touched generations. He drinks, smokes, and has a bad temper... but when it comes to matters of principle, he is completely loyal to the Chinese people.

Thus came the memorial article: "In Memory of Norman Bethune".

After his death, the shortage of medical talent in the base area immediately became apparent, and the cold reality came to the fore. Only then did people realize that Bethune was indeed a good person.

Yu Qie's feelings were quite complicated. In his previous work, "The Village Teacher," which he wrote for Watson, there was an element of taking advantage of him.

Watson arrogantly claimed responsibility.

Now, however, Yu Qie genuinely wants to write a novel about Watson, which might slightly make up for his apology.

At 9:00 AM sharp, CNN's "Larry King Live" began. A gaunt old man with slicked-back hair and large black-rimmed glasses gave the opening remarks:

Do you know the secrets of the human genome?

"Appearance, height, and intelligence; genetic diseases, defects, and deformities... We all want to pass on the good genes to our next generation and weed out the bad ones. This is almost impossible; it involves the forbidden zone of life. Only God can do the work of arbitrarily combining good genes."

(End of this chapter)