Soul Returns to Hong Kong: From Tailor Shop to Richest Woman

In mid-March, the wind in Beijing was still cold, but tender green buds were already sprouting on the branches.

Lin Ying finished a signal processing class and was walking with Chen Jian on the path outside the teaching building. Chen Jian was holding half a red bean cake he bought from the cafeteria, and while eating it, he complained to her about how complicated the motor experiment would be next week.

On the main road ahead, two foreigners were following the school office staff toward the information building; the old man in front was wearing a dark blue woolen overcoat and was taking long strides, while a tall young man in a light gray trench coat followed behind him.

Lin Ying was stunned. She raised her hand and pinched Chen Jian's arm hard.

"Ouch!" Chen Jian almost dropped his red bean cake. "Lin Ying, are you crazy?!"

"Look at those two people in front of you."

Chen Jian rubbed his arm and looked ahead: "Foreigners? It seems like the school did get a group of exchange students recently... What's wrong?"

Lin Ying didn't answer him and ran straight ahead.

"Professor! Matthew!"

The old man in front turned around, his expression instantly changing from formal greeting to surprise.

"Lynn!"

That's really Smith.

The tall man behind him also turned around, holding a paper cup of tea that he had somehow gotten his hands on; Matthew, alive.

Lin Ying ran up to them: "Why are you all here?! Especially you, Matthew! Aren't you supposed to be unable to leave the country?"

Professor Smith patted her on the shoulder: "Surprised?"

Matthew took a sip of tea, his tone exactly the same as before: "I'm also pleasantly surprised; the heating here is definitely better than in London."

Lin Ying looked completely bewildered.

The person in the school office tactfully said, "Professor Smith, I'll go and help you with the check-in process," and then left.

Smith pulled Lin Ying to sit down on a bench by the roadside: "We wanted to inform you before we came, but the procedures weren't finished yet, and we were afraid of getting disappointed, so we didn't tell you in advance."

"What exactly happened?"

"You and we have signed a bilateral science and technology cooperation agreement." Smith looked at her. "Lynn, your people have made outstanding achievements in signal processing; both sides have decided to conduct academic exchanges in the areas of communication engineering and fundamental physics. We have sent three professors and ten researchers over, the first batch to stay for one semester."

Lin Ying paused for two seconds to process the information: "So you're here as an exchange professor?"

"Yes, the people here are very shrewd. As long as they have well-known professors, I, this old body, can still work for a semester; then a second group of people will come to take over."

Lin Ying turned to Matthew: "And what about you? Is your lab willing to let you out?"

Matthew placed the paper cup on the armrest of the bench, his expression somewhat complicated: "It's a long story."

To make a long story short...

Matthew: "Our lab had been working on this for two years, and we thought it was cutting-edge, but after signing this exchange agreement and exchanging information, we realized that our people had already done it."

"So our boss said that instead of reinventing the wheel, we should collaborate directly; I came with the first batch to be responsible for teaching and exchanging ideas in experimental physics." Matthew's tone carried a hint of resignation. "To put it bluntly, I'm here to learn."

"You actually admit you're here to learn?" Lin Ying looked at him. "This isn't like you."

"People always have to grow up." Matthew picked up his teacup. "Besides, the food in your cafeteria here is better than in Cambridge."

"Of course!"

The three of them sat by the roadside and chatted for ten minutes; Chen Jianyuan stood there, not daring to approach, until Lin Ying waved to him, at which point he came over.

"Chen Jian, this is my tutor at Cambridge, Professor Smith; this is his son, Matthew, a physicist."

Chen Jian stammered a greeting in English; Matthew nodded in response, then said in Mandarin, "Hello."

Chen Jian was completely stunned: "He can speak Chinese?"

"I took a three-month crash course," Matthew said without batting an eye. "That's enough."

"You can reach this level in just three months?" Lin Ying raised an eyebrow.

"As long as it's enough to insult people."

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

The news spread very quickly.

The next day, the whole department knew that a group of visiting scholars from the UK had arrived; among them were several young physicists, Cambridge graduate students, who were actually assigned to teach experimental classes to the Industrial Automation Class of '91.

The reason is simple: Matthew's research is highly related to their motor speed regulation and control system project next semester. As soon as Professor Zhang heard that a British guy specializing in physical system modeling had arrived, he immediately gave him half of Wednesday afternoon's lab class.

When Matthew first walked into the lab, all sixteen students in the class were there, plus seven or eight students from the next class who had come to audit the class and squeezed into the back row.

Standing at the door, Teacher Zhang gave Matthew a brief introduction: "This is Dr. Matthew Smith from the Department of Physics at Cambridge University. This semester, he will assist us with the experimental teaching of the motor control system section. You can ask him any questions you may have."

Matthew stood in front of the podium, glanced around the classroom, his gaze lingered on Lin Ying for a moment, and then looked away.

"Today we're working on closed-loop speed control of a DC motor," Matthew said, his Mandarin broken and interspersed with English. "Who can tell me how far along your experiments were last week?"

Liu Yang raised his hand: "The power tripped six times last week."

Matthew: "When are you planning to offer it up for the seventh time?"

Someone in the classroom was trying not to laugh.

Once the experiment officially began, everyone realized that this Englishman's teaching style was completely different from Teacher Zhang's; Teacher Zhang was the type who would scold you if you made a mistake, and then you would have to figure it out yourself; Matthew, on the other hand, would tell you why you made a mistake, which physics part you went wrong with, and then scold you.

The first person to ask a question was Liu Yang: "Professor Matthew, I'm not sure if the direction of this feedback signal connection is correct."

Matthew walked over and glanced at it: "The direction is right."

"Then why is the ammeter reading unstable?"

"Because your connection is loose," Matthew said, pointing to the cable. "Tighten it."

After saying that, he left; Liu Yang stood there waiting for a while, thinking there would be more to come, but nothing happened.

The second person to ask was Chen Jian, "Professor Matthew, I would like to know how to adjust the parameters of this speed controller."

Matthew looked at his console: "The formula is on page seventeen of the manual."

"I calculated it according to the formula, but the result is wrong."

"That means there's a discrepancy between your actual motor parameters and the values ​​on the nameplate. Measure it yourself and then calculate it."

He left right after saying that, and Chen Jian stood there thinking: I asked the same question as if I hadn't asked at all?

Then there's Lin Ying.

Lin Ying walked up to Matthew and opened her experimental notes on the table: "Matthew, the damping coefficient of this second-order system, I calculated it to be 0.42 using mathematical methods, but the overshoot of the actual motor is almost twice as large as the theoretical value. I suspect that the nonlinear term of mechanical friction is the culprit, but I don't have enough experimental data to confirm it."

Matthew put down the documents in his hand, turned around and walked to her workstation. He stared at the derivation process in his notebook for a while.

"Your math is fine; you've overlooked the change in contact resistance between the brushes and the commutator. This isn't a matter of mechanical friction; it's an electrical issue."

"Contact resistance?"

"Yes, when a DC motor is running at low speeds, the contact state of the brushes is unstable, which introduces a random variable; if you treat it as a constant parameter, the result will naturally be biased."

Matthew picked up a pen and wrote a line of physical expression directly in the blank space of her notebook. "Re-correct the damping term according to this and run it again."

Lin Ying looked at the formula and suddenly realized, "No wonder I couldn't get it right no matter how I adjusted it!"

"You rely too much on paper derivations." Matthew threw the pen back at him. "An electric motor isn't an equation; it's a living physical system with things you can't predict."

"I understand." Lin Ying immediately turned around and went back to adjust the parameters.

Matthew turned to leave, but Lin Ying called him back: "There's one more question."

"explain."

"What carrier frequency should I choose for PWM? I checked three sources and they gave me three different suggested values."

Matthew came back: "These three documents correspond to three different types of motors. First, figure out which type the one in front of you is."

"Permanent magnet."

"Then choose high frequency, above 12kHz, for better noise reduction."

Thanks.

This scene was witnessed by everyone around.

After class, Liu Yang stood in the hallway with a resentful look on his face: "Lin Ying, have you noticed? I ask him a question, and he just replies with one sentence and leaves; you ask him a question, and he'd love to write an entire paper for you."

Chen Jian chimed in, "Me too. No matter what I ask, they always say 'read the manual' or 'test it yourself.' But when you go there, they open their hearts and explain the principles and write down the formulas."

Sun Miaoshu laughed so hard she almost fell over: "Neither of you think about it! Lin Ying is Matthew's junior from Cambridge, someone he watched grow up! Of course she's different! Go ask him, he doesn't know you, why should he tell you so much?"

Liu Yang retorted, "Then next time I'll bring a notebook with me, filled with formulas!"

"Are you sure he can understand the formula you wrote?" Chen Jian added mercilessly.

Because it was a course taught by senior researchers, the school promoted it extensively, and more and more people audited the classes.

Because every time Lin Ying finished asking a question, Matthew would add something like, "Were you just spacing out all day in Cambridge?" or "No matter how good you are at math, it's all for nothing if you're bad at physics."

Each time Lin Ying heard these words, she could only grit her teeth and say, "You're right!"

Teacher Zhang sat in the back drinking tea and watching the show. He said to Teacher Zhou next to him, "These two have been arguing so much that they've figured out all the experimental content for the whole semester. It's not such a bad thing."

Teacher Zhou wholeheartedly agreed: "There are just too many people auditing the class, and not enough seats."