My era, 1979!

Chapter 4 BJ and Shanghai

Zhao Gang rushed into the educated youth settlement holding a letter, mud splattering from his trousers onto the threshold.

"Xu Chengjun! A letter from your home! It's from the county high school!"

What a loud voice!
Xu Chengjun was squatting on the stone steps revising his manuscript.

He had just finished writing the details of Xu Chunsheng helping his father, Xu Laoshuan, wipe the copper lock.

I took the envelope; there was a red postmark in the upper right corner.

Upon opening the letter, the handwriting was thin and stiff, the handwriting of the father, Xu Zhiguo.

"Has a letter arrived from home?"

Qian Ming poked his head out of the house, his old glasses, which were perched on the bridge of his nose, slipped down to the tip of his nose. He was adjusting the tape on the temples of his glasses in front of a small mirror.

"Didn't your parents just get their hats removed? Maybe something good is going to happen."

Xu Chengjun opened the envelope. The letter was on the school's standard stationery, with the faded words "Serve the People" printed at the top, and a stain of blue-black ink in the lower right corner.

Xu's father's characters were crammed into the grid, written densely:

“Chengjun, my dear son, it’s like seeing you in person as I read this. Your mother’s bronchitis is getting better. The school has approved two catties of brown sugar for her every month, which she drinks with water and finds effective. Your younger sister, Xiaomei, has started working at the county textile factory. She’s an apprentice and earns eighteen yuan a month. Yesterday, she insisted on sending you five yuan after receiving her wages, but I refused—there are grain coupons at the educated youth settlement, and she needs to save them to buy a pair of work shoes. Your older brother, Jianjun, has gone to the Production and Construction Corps. He sent me a photo last month; he looks tanned and strong. He said he might be able to visit us at the end of the year…”

Looking at the names "Xiaomei" and "Jianjun," memories kept flooding back.

His younger sister is three years younger than him, wears pigtails, and is currently an apprentice in a textile factory;
His older brother is five years older than him. He went to the Production and Construction Corps seven years ago and gave him a copy of "How the Steel Was Tempered" when he left.

They all took good care of him.

"What else did Uncle say?"

Qian Ming leaned closer, looking rather sly, "Did I tell you to go back to the county town?"

They asked me if I wanted to go back to the county town to become a private school teacher.

"Yes, that's great! It's a fantastic opportunity!"

Xu Chengjun smiled and shook his head, pointing to the last sentence of the letter, "My father said, 'You have to choose your own path, and once you choose it, walk straight,' so I have to make my own decision."

"You should focus on preparing for your college entrance exam!"

In the original owner's memory, Xu Zhiguo was a math teacher who was rigorous, dedicated, and reliable.
He possessed every quality he could think of that belonged to a father and husband.

If this happened in later generations, he would definitely be hailed as a "five-good man" or a "three-good husband"!
"Being a private school teacher is great!"

Zhao Gang walked by, munching on a cornbread bun. "Decent!"

Xu Chengjun didn't reply, but folded the letter into a square and stuffed it into his shirt pocket.

Going back to be a teacher was a safe option, and it was the biggest source of confidence that Xu's father gave to the original owner.

When the sun was high in the sky, Xu Chengjun and Qian Ming squatted on the edge of the field to rest for the afternoon.

The sweet potato porridge in the enamel mug was steaming, and Qian Ming took out a book with a worn-out cover, "Nine Hundred English Sentences," from his cloth bag.

"Still memorizing vocabulary?" Xu Chengjun's face looked miserable.

Damn postgraduate entrance exam English!

Qian Ming pushed up his glasses, the lenses gleaming: "I heard on the radio yesterday that Beijing Foreign Language Institute is going to expand its enrollment, not only recruiting recent graduates, but also young people from the community."

He wrote a line of letters on the ground with a twig. “Look at this, ‘ambition,’ the first word my dad taught me.”

You time-traveled too?
Qian Ming's father is an English teacher at a middle school in the county town.

Qian Ming studied for several years and was the only person in the educated youth settlement besides Xu who knew the ABCs.

Although her English wasn't great, she was a top-notch English speaker in a county town at that time.
"You need to take the Beijing Foreign Languages ​​Exam?"

"I want to give it a try." The voice was a little low, and it didn't sound very confident.

Qian Ming then pulled out a yellowed "Dongfeng County Middle School Student Status Certificate" from the bottom of the cloth bag, with the commune's official seal on the corner.

This household registration is also a major reason why Xu Chengjun doesn't want to take the college entrance examination, or at least won't choose to take it this year.

For educated youth to take the college entrance examination, they first needed to obtain stamps from the production team, the commune, and the county education bureau. Household registration and school registration were also troublesome matters.

Because the original author was lazy and irresponsible, this aspect was a complete mess.

It's basically nothing.

These days, without online office work, efficiency is low; it takes at least two months to get things like household registration and school records sorted out.

“My dad said that language is the key that can open the door to the outside world. Besides, it’s 1979 now, and who knows, we might have to deal with foreigners in the future.”

Qian Ming paused, then lowered his voice, "It's just that my math foundation is weak; I can never understand function problems."

This is the right direction to take.

In a few years, foreign trade and diplomacy will experience a boom, and people who understand foreign languages ​​will become highly sought after.

1979 wasn't the era when learning less commonly taught languages ​​was dominated by AI, and pink collars were considered less desirable than dogs.
But at this moment he was more concerned about something else: "Do you still remember the specific requirements for the worker-peasant-soldier recommendation program at Fudan University?"

"You need two published works and two recommenders with associate professor or higher titles."

"I've already marked it all. For literary works, I need a recommendation from the provincial writers' association, which is very difficult!"

Xu Chengjun leaned closer to look and saw that the magazine paper had turned yellow.

Qian Ming underlined the four characters "Fudan University" in red pen with a wavy line, and wrote "Xu Chengjun?" next to it, the question mark drawn crookedly. "You're still worrying about this for me?"

"Watching you write a novel, I feel like it has potential!"

This kid!
You're so good at talking!
Zhao Gang came over at some point, a straw in his mouth, and looked around with a grin, saying, "Xu Chengjun writes novels, and Qian Ming studies foreign languages. They'll both be government employees in the future."

"You stay in Xujiatun and guard the base camp."

“We all have a bright future!” Xu Chengjun added afterward.

The funniest thing is that in this day and age, nobody actually finds this statement strange.
Qian Ming's face flushed red. He stuffed his English book into his cloth bag, but a photo accidentally fell out.

It was a middle-aged man wearing glasses, holding a child, standing in front of the teaching building. The words "Dongfeng County Middle School" were faintly visible in the background.

"This is my father."

Qian Ming quickly put the photo away.

"It was taken in 66, before the people were sent down to the countryside."

As he finished work in the evening, Xu Chengjun passed by Qian Ming's bed and saw him studying math problems under a small kerosene lamp.

The draft paper was covered with function graphs, and next to it was a copy of "High School Algebra" with "1965 Edition" written on the cover.

"I know how to do this problem."

Xu Chengjun squatted down, picked up a pencil, and drew auxiliary lines on the paper.

"Look, if we break this triangle into two right triangles, we can use the Pythagorean theorem..."

Qian Ming's eyes widened: "That's right! How come I didn't think of that?"

He pushed up his glasses and asked suspiciously, "You're so good at math?"

"My dad teaches math."

Xu Chengjun smiled.

"I was forced to do a lot of problems when I was a child."

Actually, the original owner's math skills, while not terrible, were not much better than Qian Ming's.

However, from his perspective in his later years, the math problems of today are actually not difficult at all. The college entrance examination in this era is roughly equivalent to the level of junior high school to senior high school in later years.

The same goes for English.

After the two finished working on the problem together, Qian Ming suddenly said, "How's your draft coming along? Should I ask Officer Liu to submit it for you later?"

"It will probably take a few days to write."

Xu Chengjun recalled his father saying in the letter that "Old Liu from the county cultural center is a good person" and that he was his father's old colleague!
It's because we know each other! It makes things easier!
"We'll see how things go then; I might need to trouble you."

"That's easy to discuss."

Qian Ming agreed, then pulled out a small cloth bag from under his pillow, inside which were ten sheets of graph paper: "Here, this is for you. My brother sent it from the army. He said it's military-grade and thick."

"Copying manuscripts is useful."

Xu Chengjun felt a surge of warmth in his heart.

In those days, paper was precious; ten sheets were enough to write half a novel.

Although the brigade was small, there were people everywhere who cared about him.

He was about to thank him when he noticed Qian Ming's gaze fall on his shirt pocket.

There, bulging and bulging, were my father's letters.

"Aren't you going back to the county town to become a teacher?" Qian Ming suddenly asked.

"No, not yet."

Xu Chengjun gazed at the wheat field outside the window, the setting sun turning the wheat waves golden-red.

"Give it a try submitting your work, aiming for Shanghai."

Qian Ming nodded, then lowered his head again to work on the problem, his pen scratching on the paper.

"Alright. I'll take the exam in Beijing. Maybe we'll run into each other at the train station."

Xu Chengjun didn't say anything, picked up the manuscript paper Qian Ming gave him, and started writing by the light of the kerosene lamp.

In the distance came the sounds of Xinghua's coughing and Zhao Gang and his friends' laughter as they played cards.

Night fell at the educated youth settlement.

Xu Chengjun tucked his father's letter into the manuscript paper.

One sentence in the letter revealed Xu's father's vision: he gave Xu Chengjun another option.

"The world outside is vast; you need to have eyes to see it."

Shanghai and Beijing, two distant place names.

In the winds of 1979, it quietly became the path beneath the feet of two young people.

(End of this chapter)