Chapter 3
Chapter 3
A few days later, I noticed that Gu Shi’an seemed a little unhappy. Every line he wrote carried a gloomy, stifled air.
Curious, I asked him, [What’s wrong?]
Gu Shi’an wrote back, [There’s been a famine in the counties up north lately. A lot of refugees have fled here. It was my first time seeing people with bellies swollen so large while the rest of their bodies were nothing but skin and bones. I asked around and found out they’d been eating tree bark and Guanyin clay the whole way here.]
[There have also been a lot of people in the alleys selling their children. I came across a little girl who was being sold. She was truly pitiful, so I gave her father a bag of silver dollars. I thought that money would be enough to keep their family going for a while. I never expected that the very next day, I’d see that man bring out his wife and a baby still in swaddling clothes to sell too.]
[I was so angry I beat him up. But I still can’t understand it. Why has the world become like this?]
Gu Shi’an had been well protected by his family before, so now that he had seen such a cruel reality, he couldn’t accept it all at once.
[Shen Qingqing, you’re from the future. Do you know any way to change all of this?] Gu Shi’an asked me.
I knew history, but I couldn’t reveal it, nor could I change it. All I could write back was, [What you can do right now is study hard.]
[Everyone keeps saying we should study hard, but what exactly is the point of studying?] Gu Shi’an didn’t understand.
[Everyone defines studying differently. Some do it to understand the world. Some do it to make money,] I wrote. [But a great man who also wanted to change this world once said: Study for the rise of China.]
[Study for the rise of China?] Gu Shi’an repeated.
[I think I understand,] he wrote.
[But,] his tone suddenly shifted, [Shen Qingqing, aren’t you only in your twenties? Why do you sound exactly like the old teachers at our school?]
I laughed. [Because I’m a teacher too.]
[Huh?]
I was, in fact, a middle school history teacher.
These past few days, my lessons had just reached the history of the Republic of China. The students below were laughing and joking, completely unmoved.
I asked them how they felt.
One student said with naive longing, “Teacher Shen, I want to transmigrate to the Republic of China and see all that romance and glamour for myself-the Ten-Mile Foreign Settlement full of music and dancing, prosperity everywhere. Maybe I could even have some once-in-a-lifetime tragic romance with a warlord.”
I shook my head and said, “The real Republic of China was a hundred times crueler than what you see in dramas and movies. If we transmigrated there, most of us would probably become coolies, beggars, maids, or servants. In that era, famine and war were everywhere. Selling sons and daughters was commonplace. Simply staying alive was already a luxury, let alone indulging in romance and glamour.”
The students below fell silent, as if they were thinking it over.
Seeing their reaction, I felt I should find a way to teach this lesson properly. History may already be in the past, but it should not be forgotten by our generation.
When I got home, I saw Gu Shi’an’s newest message in the diary.
[I’ll be graduating from high school next year. I told my father I wanted to go to university, and he said I must be dreaming. Why does everyone look down on me!]
I encouraged him, [I believe in you. You’re actually very smart. You just didn’t put your mind to studying before.]
This was the comforting line I often used on my students when I was teaching.
Unexpectedly, Gu Shi’an reacted as if he’d been injected with chicken blood.
[Really? Qingqing, do you really think so?]
[Really.]
[But I’m nine years older than you. You should call me big sister.]
I was twenty-six this year, while Gu Shi’an was only seventeen. Strictly speaking, he ought to call me big sister.
[No.] Gu Shi’an replied very quickly, and beside the words, he even drew a tiny angry figure.
[The age difference isn’t that big. Besides, I’ll grow up very soon.]