Chapter 10

10

Shen Po never could have imagined that someone like him, who had long forgotten which direction a university gate even opened, would actually end up teaching a class, even if it was just to a bunch of little brats.

“All rise, salute!”

“Hello, Teacher!”

Looking down at the sea of dark heads below the podium as they all looked up at him in unison, his scalp went completely numb.

“Sit… sit down.” Shen Po’s gaze drifted nervously. “Where did we leave off last class?”

He looked down and opened the textbook, only to find he couldn’t process a single word, so he quickly shut it again.

The class monitor spoke up. “Teacher, we reached…”

“Never mind, never mind! We won’t cover the textbook today. How about I tell you a story instead?” Shen Po hurriedly cut him off.

Given the authority Wen Yan had previously established, the children remained quiet and well-behaved. Without raising any objections, they waited for Shen Po to continue.

When Shen Po had first woken up in the dorm earlier, he had been overjoyed at first, then alarmed, and soon caught in anxious fretfulness.

He was joyful because he thought he could play on the phone all day. Moreover, having never been here during daylight, there might be vehicles in the village during the day, meaning he could go out and see the world outside.

He was alarmed because he saw the class schedule and alarm clock, realizing Wen Yan had morning classes. That meant he had to teach in Wen Yan’s place. On top of that, Wen Yan had threatened that if he caused trouble, Wen Yan would retaliate on his end. Considering his own status was far more noble than Wen Yan’s, and that a man with nothing to lose had nothing to fear, it was better not to provoke him.

And so, filled with apprehension, Shen Po finally came to the classroom to begin the very first teaching experience of his life.

“Well, how about I tell you about the Republic of China?” Shen Po scratched his head. “How much do you know about the Republic of China? Come on, you answer.”

He casually pointed at the class monitor who had just called for everyone to stand.

The class monitor froze. “Teacher, we haven’t learned that yet!”

These were third-grade elementary school students.

Even back in the Republic of China, they would still be elementary schoolers.

He couldn’t tell the bawdy jokes he used to flirt with dancing girls, nor could he teach gambling tricks. Shen Po felt his entire set of “skills” was utterly useless here. Racking his brains, he finally said, “Then let me tell you about food.”

This place looked so rudimentary; the students surely hadn’t seen much good food.

“You’ve never eaten cream cake before, right? It’s a cake decorated with all kinds of cream flowers on top that melt in your mouth. A high-end cream cake has textures you won’t find in Chinese cuisine, far more delicious than any candy you’ve ever had.”

The class monitor raised his hand. “Teacher, is the cream cake you’re talking about the one you bought yesterday?”

Shen Po blinked. “Huh?”

The class monitor gestured with his hands. “Round, white, with colorful flowers on top and soft inside. You bought it for us yesterday!”

“Yeah, I ate some too!”

“Teacher, you even took a photo on your phone! Did you forget? I’ll show you!”

The little brats chimed in all at once. Some ran up, asked Shen Po for his phone, and opened the photo album to show him.

A beautiful cream cake leapt out at him.

Shen Po was dumbfounded.

A luxury cream cake, so rare in the Republic of China that only the wealthy could afford it, actually existed in this tiny rural village. Was this what the world was like a hundred years later?

Although he had scrolled through Weibo all night and gained some understanding of modern society, that understanding was still one-sided and fragmented. Any slip-up would expose him.

Although Shen Po had been awed by the marvel of the smartphone and had a vague grasp of how advanced information was a hundred years later and how people communicated, deep down, he still believed the small rural village Wen Yan stayed in was backward.

That was, until he saw this cake, and the photograph taken of it.

And Wen Yan’s photo album.

Shen Po had never seen such a crystal-clear photograph, clear enough that it felt like looking into another world through a window.

In his memory, photographs were supposed to be black and white, blurry, and if one could barely make out facial features, that was already thanks to a top-notch camera. Aside from foreigners, any family owning such a camera was bound to be wealthy or prominent.

Yet now, right in this remote little village where everything was so rudimentary, and where through Shen Po’s century-old perspective the children’s clothes could hardly be called stylish, merely clean at best, with haphazard color coordination, they were not the least bit astonished by this miraculous device that could connect to the entire world.

Instead, it was Shen Po who looked like an ignorant country bumpkin, dazzled and slack-jawed.

He asked the children, “Do you know the way to go outside from here?”

The students thought the teacher was testing them and scrambled to answer.

“Take a bus!”

“Transfer at the town, then go to the city to take the bullet train!”

“I know! To go to Beijing, you take a plane!”

“You don’t need a plane anymore! Our city has a high-speed train that goes straight to Beijing!”

High-speed rail! What on earth was that?

Shen Po had barely managed to learn how to search on Weibo from surfing the web the previous night. He pulled up pictures and popular science articles about high-speed rail, once again feeling astonished by its speed.

To think such fast land transportation existed in this world. Wasn’t that just like the Wind Fire Wheels^[1]?!

“Have you ever ridden the high-speed train?” he asked the children.

“No!”

The children shook their heads one after another.

This gave Shen Po some slight comfort. It seemed this kind of “Wind Fire Wheel” wasn’t something just anyone could afford to ride, just like airplanes in his era.

But in the next second, that sense of superiority was shattered once again.

“Teacher, didn’t you say last time that our town will have a high-speed railway station built soon, and when the time comes, we can just go to town and ride it whenever we want?”

Shen Po opened his mouth, able only to force a dry laugh.

“Is that so? Then Teacher must have forgotten!”

He realized his understanding of this era was far from enough. Every time a slight doubt was resolved, even more questions rushed in like a monstrous tidal wave, threatening to swallow him whole.

It made Shen Po feel even more ignorant than these children.

“Teacher, are we still having class today?”

“Last time we only finished half of the new text. Are we still studying it today?”

“Teacher, my mom told me to ask you over for dinner after school!”

“My mom told me to ask you over for dinner too!”

“Come to my house!”

“I said it first!”

Wen Yan was clearly popular among these kids. Shen Po felt a twinge of jealousy, but he didn’t think he was completely useless either.

“How about this? We won’t start a new lesson today. I’ll teach you how to take photos instead!”

Shen Po rummaged through his assortment of useless skills for quite a while before finally finding one he could somewhat show off: photography.

Out of interest, he had properly studied photography for a time under a foreign photographer visiting China. Even though a black-and-white camera was nowhere near as sharp as this smartphone, some principles were still the same. It should be more than enough to impress these kids.

He led the students out to the school playground. While looking for angles to snap pictures on the phone, he gave explanations and took the opportunity to ask about things he didn’t know under the guise of quizzing them.

He finally managed to hold out until class ended at noon. The students mentioned that today was some special day in the village, though Shen Po couldn’t remember what it was. With the New Year approaching, the village bustled with all sorts of small celebrations. Hearing that Wen Yan planned to stay here for the New Year, the villagers eagerly invited him to eat at their homes. Rotating between different households each day would pretty much carry him all the way to the Spring Festival.

If it had been Wen Yan, he definitely would have felt too embarrassed to accept, but Shen Po had no such qualms. He was already sick of the bare, four walls of Wen Yan’s dormitory. The moment he heard he could get a free meal, he agreed without hesitation and followed the class monitor home.

The village had only lifted itself out of poverty the year before last. Thanks to the village party secretary leading everyone in specialized crop farming, the yields had been good and every household had received a share of the profits. By the end of last year, new houses had gone up one after another. Of course, it still couldn’t compare to 1930s Shanghai, but it had already far exceeded Shen Po’s expectations.

By now, he had a rough idea of where this village was located in China. He also knew that in the Republic of China, places outside Shanghai were hard to even imagine.

Shen Po had once passed through the slums of Shanghai, a memory so harrowing he never wished to recall it again. Yet in China a century later, it seemed even children in such remote places could attend school. Their faces lacked the numbness typically seen on the poor of his time. They smiled, full of life, brimming with hopes and dreams. Just like the wealthy of his era, their souls were vivid and alive.

Perhaps shaken by what he had seen and learned, Shen Po did not once think about frequenting dance halls, gambling, or any of his other favorite pastimes all the way through dinner.

He stared blankly at the television in the villager’s home as the news played across the screen. This was yet another novelty he had never seen before. Shen Po figured it was like an oversized smartphone, though its features didn’t seem as versatile. However, the screen was bigger, and there was a small device that could change channels from afar.

The little class monitor’s father worked in town while his mother farmed at home, along with his grandparents living under the same roof. They naturally chatted about heading to the market fair for the Spring Festival, marveling at how much better life had become. Two years ago, let alone a television, they couldn’t even afford to build a new house.

Shen Po listened in a daze, eyes flickering. Far from being picky about dinner, he ate even more than usual. Once finished, he asked his hosts for the remote control and sat near the TV, flipping through channels.

Sitting beside him, the little class monitor asked sympathetically, “Teacher, have you never watched TV before?”

“That’s right!” Shen Po answered instinctively before realizing his slip, quickly correcting himself, “Well, not never, just rarely. I have to grade your homework all the time, so where would I find the time to watch TV?”

He didn’t even look up, watching everything with rapt attention, even the commercials.

The class monitor felt even more pity, thinking his teacher had it worse than him. At least he had grown up with a TV to watch.

Lingering until eleven o’clock, Shen Po saw that the student’s family was ready for bed, so he had no choice but to reluctantly say his goodbyes and head back.

Fortunately, his evening hadn’t been wasted. He had figured out how to charge the phone, and he planned to play on it while charging, pulling an all-nighter.

As for being a wealthy young master in the Republic of China, whoever wanted the job could have it. He had no intention of going back anytime soon!

Yet right at that moment, an unexpected turn of events occurred!

…

After getting the class schedule from Zheng Sheng, Wen Yan waited outside Zheng Sheng’s classroom early in the afternoon. When Zheng Sheng walked out after class, he was immediately greeted by Wen Yan’s enthusiastic smile.

This sudden warmth startled Zheng Sheng, giving him the uneasy feeling of a weasel paying a New Year visit to a chicken^[2]. Yet the Shen family really were his distant relatives, and since he had already agreed to have dinner at the Shen household, he had no way to back out and could only follow Wen Yan home.

Strangely, Wen Yan didn’t seem particularly interested in him, spending the entire walk asking about his maternal grandfather’s deeds.

Zheng Sheng found it odd. “Didn’t you hate studying before? Why are you suddenly so interested in Grandfather?”

Wen Yan sighed softly. “Perhaps this is what they call a sudden enlightenment. Are you visiting Great-Uncle this weekend? I’ll go with you!”

Zheng Sheng felt something was bizarre, though he couldn’t put his finger on what. “…All right.”

Just as the two of them stepped out of the school gates, two young men approached from the opposite direction. Slouching and grinning cheekily, they called out to Wen Yan the moment they saw him.

“Long time no see, Young Master Shen! Oh, is this a new friend?”

“Third Young Master, you haven’t been to the New World the past two days! Mary’s been missing you to death!”

Wen Yan looked straight ahead, acting as if he hadn’t seen them at all, and pulled Zheng Sheng toward the driver, Xiao Wu.

Zheng Sheng had long looked down on these fair-weather friends of his. Seeing this, he couldn’t help making a sarcastic remark. “Young Master Shen, aren’t you going to say a few words to them?”

Wen Yan replied solemnly, “Who I was yesterday is not who I am today. I have turned over a completely new leaf. Starting today, I will study hard and make progress every day^[3]. Please call me Classmate Shen!”

Zheng Sheng thought: Is he possessed by a ghost?