Chapter Forty-Nine: A Major Stir

Hong Tao had his eye on quite a few other things he wanted to buy and bring home. However, first, his finances were running tight, so he had to focus on purchasing items with greater potential for appreciation; second, his grandfather was starting to lose his patience!

At the beginning, Grandfather could tolerate Hong Tao bringing home something odd every now and then, stashing it in his room. But as the items multiplied and the sums involved grew larger, Grandfather could no longer restrain himself. No matter how much he doted on his grandson, he couldn’t escape the constraints of his times—a few hundred yuan in exchange for a pile of old junk, most of which the family had no use for. The old man began to sit Hong Tao down for a talk.

“Grandpa, have you ever collected antiques or calligraphy and paintings?” Hong Tao could only try to explain himself slowly in response to his grandfather’s rebuke.

“I’ve never gotten involved with that stuff. It was all a pastime for the Manchus. Don’t pick up those habits—wasting money!” Grandfather cut him off before he could finish, handing down his verdict immediately.

“Look here, for instance, this wristwatch I bought—twenty years from now, it could be worth tens of thousands. Do you believe me? I’m not squandering money, I’m saving it. It’s even better than putting it in the bank.” Hong Tao pressed on, hoping to persuade the old man with numbers.

“Tens of thousands! That’s absurd! This shabby watch? It’s not even as good as the one on my wrist!” Grandfather remained skeptical.

“It’s not the same. Take your cricket gourd, for example. A gourd made by Liu from Sanhe is surely more valuable than yours, right? It’s the same with watches—what matters is the brand. The two watches I bought are like those Sanhe Liu gourds: the longer you keep them, the more valuable they become. Do you understand now?” Hong Tao was at a loss until he heard the cricket singing inside his grandfather’s pocket, and suddenly found the perfect metaphor.

“If you put it that way, I suppose it isn't a loss after all...” After hearing his grandson’s explanation, the old man finally understood. He didn’t know what ‘investment’ meant, but he did understand the principle behind cricket gourds.

Profit could persuade his grandfather, but when it came to his own father, money wasn’t the only issue. Everything else could be hidden in Grandfather’s room, out of his father’s sight, but the multimeter still had to be brought home for use. So, Hong Tao had no choice but to pin the blame on his uncle, claiming it was borrowed from the electrician at his uncle’s workplace.

“Hmm, it’s good that you’re interested in radio electronics, son. I support you. But you might be starting a bit high—building a radio isn’t that easy. Just reading books may not be enough. Uncle Wang is a physics teacher; how about I take you to his place on Sunday and let him give you a few lessons?” His father had no objections to Hong Tao’s interest in radio at all; he didn’t even mind that his son had used family money to buy several old issues of “Radio Electronics” magazine. He just worried that self-study might not be enough, and thought it best to find him a proper teacher.

“Uncle Wang’s lessons are too advanced for me right now, I can’t understand them yet. Let me study on my own for a while, and once I’ve got the basics down, then I’ll go to him,” Hong Tao replied immediately, dreading the idea. That Uncle Wang was a physics professor at the Normal University, a friend his father had made during their labor re-education days. He was a good man, highly knowledgeable. In Hong Tao’s previous life, Uncle Wang had even bought parts himself and assembled a 14-inch color TV for their family, and later invented several patents.

But those who did research often had one flaw: low emotional intelligence—his even lower than Hong Tao’s father. If you didn’t speak to him, he could spend an entire afternoon staring at circuit diagrams without saying a word. In his past life, Hong Tao had learned radio from him, often spending hours at his house, but unless you kept asking him questions, you’d learn nothing. Hong Tao had no interest in playing the eager student, pestering Uncle Wang with questions for a whole afternoon. His current knowledge sufficed; when the time came for him to assemble a TV, it wouldn’t be too late to seek him out.

“You’re right, it is a bit early for him to teach you. Why don’t I teach you myself? I know a thing or two about it,” his father said, thinking Hong Tao had a point. He knew Uncle Wang’s temperament best, and doubted he’d be able to impart the basics to his son, so he decided to do it himself.

“I’ll study on my own first, Dad. If I don’t understand something, I’ll ask you. I like figuring things out myself,” Hong Tao replied, even more reluctant to let his father teach him. Sure, his father understood radio theory, but only in theory. When he explained transistors, he’d inevitably veer off into calculating amplification factors, not just in general terms, but insisting you master all the mathematical proofs. In the end, you’d learn more math than radio electronics.

“Exactly! Everything must be figured out. That’s the proper way to study. Go ahead, read on your own. If you run into trouble, come ask me,” his father said, satisfied. He was always telling Hong Tao to have a questioning mind and never stop until he understood.

His father didn’t just leave Hong Tao to his own devices; somehow, he managed to find several books about radio electronics, regardless of whether Hong Tao could understand them, and gave them all to his son. He even borrowed an oscilloscope from his school’s lab to help Hong Tao better visualize the differences between alternating and direct current waveforms. For his son’s education, he spared no effort. In the future, an oscilloscope wouldn’t be much, but in those days it was cutting-edge equipment, unavailable to most institutions. Even in universities, it took considerable effort to borrow one.

His father’s emotional intelligence might have been inconsistent—sometimes high, sometimes low—but when it came to his son’s studies or development, he was always willing to ask for favors. Back then, universities had plenty of interesting equipment: he could borrow ice skates from the sports department, then take Hong Tao, Jin Yue, and his brother-in-law—Hong Tao’s uncle—skating on Houhai Lake; or get mushroom spores from the biology department, have his wife sterilize a bag of cottonseed hulls in the unit’s autoclave, and then cobble together a makeshift incubator with wire and plastic sheeting for Hong Tao to observe how mushrooms grew from a few threads into a cluster.

Or he’d bring home some chemicals from the chemistry department, run a small experiment in his study, and explain to Hong Tao what electrolysis was, or what remained in the test tube after burning a magnesium strip.

Although Hong Tao already knew most of these things, he had to pretend he didn’t. After listening to his father’s explanations, he’d claim to understand most of it, then raise a couple of thoughtful questions to prompt another round of teaching. Only after everything was clear would he let things rest. Even when they went ice skating, Hong Tao had to fake falling several times before daring to skate on his own. At moments like these, he saw his father so genuinely happy and fulfilled.

To make his father happy a few more times, Hong Tao figured it was worth a few tumbles and some feigned ignorance. Making others happy wasn’t such a hardship, after all.

All in all, Hong Tao was fairly content with his life. Aside from the tedium of school suspensions in the mornings, the monotonous food, and the lack of extracurricular entertainment, everything else was quite good. At least, he felt that with his own abilities, he could live quite well in this era. One should be content—contentment brings happiness.

Winter passed and spring returned. In the blink of an eye, another Spring Festival was over, and the calendar turned to 1978. When the poplar fluff drifted through the air again, Hong Tao was already six years old. In less than two years, he’d shot up in height, now over 1.3 meters tall—almost a head taller than his peers. Though still on the thin side, he no longer looked like a beanpole; at least his chest was no longer just ribs, and his arms and legs were well-developed. Thanks to regular exercise, his muscles were much firmer than those of other children.

The only flaw was his dark complexion, but that wasn’t his fault—he’d never been fair-skinned, and spent every day outdoors, getting tanned.

What surprised Hong Tao was that Jin Yue had reached 128 centimeters in height; it seemed those catfish really worked. He remembered in his past life, when they started elementary school together, Jin Yue’s head barely reached his shoulder. Although girls matured earlier than boys, such a marked change couldn’t be explained by early development alone.

Actually, after the Spring Festival in 1978, Hong Tao stopped eating catfish. Instead, he had two eggs a day, and about once a week, his uncle would bring their family a chicken, a rabbit, or a big piece of pork belly. He simply couldn’t stomach the greasy catfish anymore; by dinnertime he’d start to feel nauseous.

All these eggs and meat came from his uncle’s purchases in the countryside. Starting that year, more and more people from the villages came into the city to sell goods. Not only could you see vendors pushing wooden carts or riding bicycles selling farm produce on the city’s edges, but sometimes they’d even appear in the alleys, most frequently exchanging eggs for food coupons, but also trading peanuts, sunflower seeds, and strips of dried tofu.

Hong Tao had been keeping an eye on the newspapers. Last year, the chief architect had been appointed to the standing committee, and in May this year, he saw the article “Practice Is the Sole Criterion for Testing Truth” published in the Guangming Daily. He knew that an era of change was about to arrive, but he had no sense of exactly when—after all, in his previous life, he hadn’t paid attention to such things, and all the political lessons he’d learned in school had long been forgotten. As the saying goes, you only regret not having read more when the need arises!

Still, judging by the current situation, the countryside was already beginning to loosen quietly. Although the higher-ups were still engaged in their final struggles, the common people below could barely restrain themselves.