Smoke billowed from the chimneys, the departure bell rang on the platform, and the train with its whistle slowly started and headed for the other side of the border.

Oppenheimer stacked the luggage of two people on the side, and Chen Muwu sat on the bunk in the box, looking out the window at the station that was constantly retreating.

At the moment of going to China, he continued to recall what he saw and heard when he returned to China.

After President Cao Da, who came to power by bribery, fell because of the Second Zhifeng War, the position of the nominal head of state of the Beiyang government, the president, has been vacant.

In the later period, the prime minister basically took over the functions of the president, or established a provisional government, and Duan Provisional Administration, who had held a meeting on the aftermath, was in power, and it was dismal for less than two years.

However, because of the "March 18" tragedy this spring, Duan Provisional Government also stepped down.

From April to the present, the cabinet has changed three times, and at this time, the chief of the navy, Du Xiqi, is acting as the prime minister and taking over the functions of the president.

Although the nominal head of state is confused, this does not mean that the entire Beiyang government is leaderless.

When President Cao Da was in power, the real speaker of the Beiyang government was Wu Yushuai, who was the direct line to which he belonged.

After the second Zhifeng War, the direct family basically withdrew from the stage of Beiyang, and the person behind the entire northern government became Zhang Gongzi's father, Zhang Dashuai.

On the bright side, you sang and I appeared, and the prime minister and temporary government who changed like a marquee are just puppets.

It really depends on Zhang Dashuai, who holds military power, to cover the sky behind the scenes.

Probably for the reason of avoiding suspicion, he has never gone to the capital Shaojing, but has been running back and forth between the two places of Tianyu in the Guanguan and Fengtian outside the Guan, remotely controlling the situation in the north.

Zhang Gongzi, who was a special envoy on the border to welcome distinguished guests, followed the special train of the Swedish crown prince from Manchuria to Mukden - where Zhang Dashuai is now.

Because of diplomatic etiquette, the Swedish crown prince will definitely accept the invitation in Mukden.

However, Chen Muwu didn't need it, he estimated that Zhang Dashuai, who was busy with business, was not very willing to see him.

Zhang Dashuai met with the Crown Prince of Sweden, firstly, because of diplomatic practice, and secondly, he also wanted to see if he could procure any advanced weapons from this Western power to deal with the gang in the south.

Although Sweden can only be regarded as a decent country in Europe, it can be regarded as a great power if it has shares in the public concessions of Linghai and Xiamen.

was not welcomed by Zhang Dashuai, but on Zhang Gongzi's side, he still insisted on inviting Chen Muwu to stay in Fengtian for a few more days, and by the way, he visited the Northeastern University that he was proud of, and looked at the two Hanqing buildings he donated money to build.

Chen Muwu, who was like an arrow, refused the invitation.

After eating an authentic Northeast meal in Mukden and resting for a night, Chen Muwu and the Crown Prince of Sweden temporarily took their leave, took Oppenheimer out of the army, and boarded the train from Fengtian Station to the south again.

His original plan to return to his hometown was to first follow the Gyeongbong Line to Tianyu, and then change to the Jinpu Line from here, and go south all the way home.

As for taking a few more steps, it was not within Chen Muwu's scope of consideration to take a turn from Tianyu to Shaojing first.

The "March 18" tragedy not only brought down the temporary government of Duan, but also caused a great turmoil in the academic circles of Shaojing.

One of Chen Muwu's deceased was wanted by the authorities for writing an article on "In Memory of Liu He Zhenjun", which had been published in middle school textbooks, and "Dead Land" with the same theme, to criticize the provisional government of Duan's provisional government.

He couldn't go back to his home, so he could only take refuge temporarily in the Yamamoto Hospital he opened, and received an invitation from Lin Yutang in the summer.

So now Lu Xun has left Shaojing to teach at Xiamen University on the southern coast.

Thinking of Mr. Lu Xun, Chen Muwu remembered another thing.

It should be next year that Lu Xun will refuse the kindness of Sven Heding, the antiquities dealer who invited the Swedish crown prince to visit China, and will not allow himself to be nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

In his reply to the intermediary Tai Jingnong, the reason for his refusal was "The Nobel Prize, Liang Qi is supernatural and unworthy, and I am not worthy...... What are the best writers in the world than me, they can't get ...... If it is because of the yellow-skinned people, they will be treated with extra leniency, but it will be enough to grow Chinese vanity ......".

But now the situation has changed compared with before, this time it is completely possible to nominate Lu Xun for the Nobel Prize without Sven Heding, the youngest Nobel laureate Chen Muwu.

And with Chen Muwu, a person who won the Nobel Prize "genuinely" with his own ability, maybe Lu Xun may also change his mind and agree to his nomination invitation.

Chen Muwu decided to wait until he returned to Qihai and settled everything, and then wrote a letter to Mr. Lu Xun, who was far away in Xiamen, to express his idea.

He only had Mr. Lu Xun in Shaojing who wanted to see him, and since the Si people had already left, Chen Muwu felt that it was pointless for him to take a detour.

Even if he arrives in Shaojing, who can Chen Muwu meet?

Could it be that he wanted to meet his "good friend" Dr. Hu?

However, if Dr. Hu is nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, he will not refuse.

……

Shortly after leaving Manchuria, the train had crossed the border and entered the Chita Prefecture of Sulian, and the scene outside the window had gradually become desolate.

Oppenheimer settled and counted the luggage carried by the two men, took out the apricots he had just bought at the station, and washed them in the pool at the end of the carriage, before returning to the box and sitting down on the bunk opposite Chen Muwu.

"It's not sour, it's sweet."

He tasted it, and then handed the other apricot in his hand to Chen Muwu, who was looking out the window in a daze.

After doing this, Oppenheimer pulled out a notebook from the bag he was carrying, then took out and unscrewed the pen and wrote and drew on it.

The book full of content is the travel diary that he recorded on a whim for this trip to China.

Su Lian had a lot of time in transit this time, and his memory of this trip to China was not blurred, and he could just modify and supplement the contents of the diary.

Oppenheimer planned to send it to publishers in the United Kingdom and the United States to see if they would be interested in publishing his travel diary.

Although his family is rich, he has always been a rich second generation and is also unhappy.

His teacher and idol Chen Muwu's family is also very wealthy, but Dr. Chen has earned several times more money than his own family property by relying on his own skills.

Oppenheimer wanted to be on par with Chen Muwu, both academically and in life, so he decided to start by publishing Bob's Travel Diary.

Bob is a pseudonym that Oppenheimer gave himself, derived from his nickname Robert.

But there is no difference between the use and uselessness of this pen name, because the name Chen Muwu appears in a large number of diaries.

So as long as you check the information a little, you can find out who this Bob was who returned to China with Chen Muwu in the summer of 1926.

Oppenheimer had been following the Swedish crown prince and his party on the train, and it was not until he boarded the train from Mukden that he really came into contact with Chinese society.

So the first part of Oppenheimer's diary begins with his departure from Mukden.

*

Date.

Today was our first day out of Mukden, and I wrote the first sentence of this diary in a bumpy but comfortable first-class carriage.

Mukden is a large city in the northeast of China, and almost all of them were built by the Chinese themselves, a few points larger than Harbin on the China Eastern Railway - this hub station and the nearby city construction have a strong Russian style, and if it weren't for the black-haired and yellow-skinned Chinese people walking the streets, you might have mistaken this place for Juansk, or St. Petersburg.

Mukden was once the earliest capital of the Qing Dynasty and is also the home base of Chang Tso-lin, the great warlord who now rules the entire northern part of China.

I was able to meet Zhang Dashuai from afar at the dinner to welcome the Swedish crown prince.

Zhang Dashuai is not tall, with a very Western mustache on his mouth, not smiling, giving people a very serious feeling.

Rather, his son and heir to his future career, General Chang Hsüeh-liang was easier to get close to.

He should be Zhang Dashuai's eldest son, but strangely, the elders around him always call him "Sixth Son".

Maybe it's a term of endearment, or maybe Chinese people have a special way of sorting family members.

Although Zhang Shaoshuai looks like a talent, he is also tainted with a bad habit of the Chinese.

In the few conversations he had with Dr. Chen, he always apologized and left for a while.

When Zhang Shaoshuai comes back again, he will always have a strong smell of cologne on his body.

But I can always smell a foul smell behind the smell of perfume.

After asking other people, I realized that Zhang Shaoshuai's rude departure was to smoke Fushou ointment.

A few decades ago, the British knocked on the door of the ancient Oriental Central with their guns and began dumping opium there.

Even the sons of the great warlords were not spared, but Dr. Chen was able to clean himself and get out of the mud without staining, which is very commendable.

At the same time, it dawned on me why Dr. Chan was at Cambridge University and showed a strong resistance to tobacco.

Zhang Shaoshuai should have met Dr. Chen for the first time on the Manchurian slang platform when we entered China.

But for some reason, he showed an unusual enthusiasm,

I was amazed that Dr. Chan not only had such a high reputation in Europe and the Americas, but also that he had such a high influence in his home country that he could be greeted by an heir to a warlord who would control half of China's territory in the future.

When I was in England, I read in a book called "The Analects of Confucius" that China is a country that respects teachers and teaches very much.

Unexpectedly, as soon as I entered China, I witnessed that this statement is not groundless.

Later, I learned that in addition to being a world-famous physicist, Dr. Chen also has another identity, family.

He once serialized a million-word article in a Chinese newspaper, during which the newspaper reached the number one sales in the whole country - an achievement that Sir Conan Doyle had not been able to achieve when he wrote the Sherlock Holmes series.

Zhang Shaoshuai is also one of Dr. Chen's readers, and he is also one of the most enthusiastic ones, which is why he shows such kindness to us.

My Chinese language skills are only barely enough to be able to converse with Chinese people who speak Mandarin in the north, and it is not enough to translate Dr. Chen's full text into English.

I can only hope that others will complete this work as soon as possible, so that Dr. Chen's masterpiece can be brought to readers in the English-speaking world as soon as possible.

Fengtian is Zhang Dashuai's base camp, so Zhang Shaoshuai also has the right to override others here.

As a friend of Zhang Shaoshuai, we don't need to buy the train tickets for the south this time.

The night before leaving, Zhang Shaoshuai sent someone to deliver the tickets.

In addition to the special train of the Crown Prince of Sweden, it was the first time I took a train in China.

We took the first-class carriage on this trip, and the interior and exterior configuration of these carriages imported from abroad looked similar to those of the United Kingdom and the United States.

When I first entered the carriage, I had the impression that China is a country with a very serious gap between the rich and the poor.

From Mukden to Tianyi, the value of our ticket is about 12 US dollars and 50 cents, which is a full 30 silver yuan when converted into the local currency of China.

As far as I know, workers in China can already be regarded as middle- and high-income people, and their monthly salary is about five silver yuan, about two US dollars.

In other words, a first-class ticket is equivalent to half a year's salary for a Chinese worker.

But even so, the first-class carriages are still overcrowded.

I was the only foreigner in the entire first-class carriage.

The rest of the passengers were dressed in suits and top hats, and they were almost indistinguishable from Europeans and Americans, except for their hair color, skin color, and height.

At first, I thought that they were all rich people in China, but when I calmed down, I couldn't understand a word of what they were talking about.

Only then did I realize that they might not be Chinese, but the tyrannical person in Northeast China, and the backer behind Zhang Dashuai.

On the bright side, there were false and flattering smiles on their faces, but when others could not see them, I could see in their eyes full of evil gazes.

This country and nation gave me a very unpleasant feeling, and in the dark, I suddenly had an inexplicable thought in my heart:

I may never be friends with any of them, but there's a good chance that I'll be your mortal enemy.

Other:

A few hours after leaving Mukden, the train stopped at a station called Goubangzi in the evening.

Dr. Chan opened the window and bought a delicious dish called smoked chicken from the food vendors on the platform.

*

Date.

After a difficult night in the sleeping berth attached to the first-class carriage, our journey in China has entered the second day.

Before the train arrived in Tianyi, it also passed through a station called Yanshan.

According to Dr. Chen, it is the largest industrial city near the capital of China, Shaojing, the birthplace of the China-China Railway, and the location of his alma mater, the Ministry of Communications, Yinshan University.

It is also the birthplace of Mr. Hoover, the much-loved and respected Secretary of Commerce of the United States.

But according to Dr. Chen, Secretary Hoover's means of making a fortune are not very glamorous.

Although the size of the university is small, the academic standards of its students are very high.

According to Dr. Chen, his senior, Dr. Mao I-sheng, was given the nickname "Cornell of the East" because of his excellent scores in the entrance exams for Cornell University in the United States, which also earned the name "Cornell of the East".

But I think that since the school has produced Dr. Chen, it is more appropriate to upgrade this nickname from "Oriental Cornell" to "Oriental Cambridge".

Because we were carrying a lot of luggage, Dr. Chan had to give up the idea of getting off the bus here and visiting his alma mater again.

But within ten minutes of the train's stop, he got off the train and went to the post box on the platform to deliver a letter to the teachers of his alma mater that had been written long ago.

After leaving Yanshan and spending a few hours on the train, we finally arrived at one of the larger stopovers of the trip, Tianyi.

I wanted to stay here for one night and rest a little, and after buying a ticket for the second stage, I continued south.

But as soon as we walked up to the platform of Tianyi Station with our luggage, things went off the rails again.

(End of chapter)