Chapter 427 Archives

It was only 11 a.m. when the morning classes ended.

Nan Zhiyi stood at the school gate, carrying a heavy cloth bag, waiting for a taxi to return to her courtyard house.

The cloth bag contained more than forty assignments, including the short essays on "The Authenticity and Fictionality of Literature" assigned last week.

She has no classes on Tuesday afternoon, so she only needs to get to the archives before 3 p.m., which gives her a whole block of time to grade papers and a short break.

Now that she doesn't have many graduate courses, she comes here to rest for a while during lunch or afternoon when she doesn't have classes. It's only a few minutes' ride from Peking University to the courtyard house.

Nan Zhiyi tightened her grip on the cloth bag's handle, sighing inwardly. She had come to terms with it; unless Gu Xiao wasn't home, she wouldn't be able to concentrate on her work...

The taxi quickly stopped at the entrance of the alley.

She slowly walked into the courtyard house; the autumn colors of Beijing were in full bloom in mid-to-late October.

Most of the flowers and plants in the yard have turned yellow, with only a few remaining flower heads hanging forlornly on the branches. Leaves are falling down, covering the blue brick ground with a thin layer.

Several chrysanthemums had also passed their peak bloom, their petals slightly curled and wilted, showing signs of fading before they had fully withered.

Nan Zhiyi walked straight into the study and pushed open the lattice-patterned wooden window.

Sunlight streamed in, casting a warm glow on the desk.

The asparagus fern on the table was turning yellow, so she casually picked off a few withered branches.

She took out her notebooks from her cloth bag; the top one had "On the Realistic Characteristics of Dream of the Red Chamber" scrawled on its cover in pen. She picked up the red bean bun she'd bought that morning from the cafeteria, and while munching on it, she turned to the first page.

She frowned after reading only two lines.

The students confused "typical environment" with "living environment," resulting in a disorganized and illogical argument.

She picked up a red pen to make annotations, and the sweetness of the red bean buns became tasteless in her mouth.

Then I revised the second and third versions... the more I revised, the more agitated I became.

Some are just empty theoretical discussions without any textual analysis; others pile up technical terms but make no sense; the most troublesome are those with such illegible handwriting that you have to guess at them.

Nan Zhiyi rubbed her temples. What kind of nonsense were these kids writing?

Looking out at the desolate autumn scenery, she suddenly felt that grading these assignments was more torturous than writing her own novel.

One student actually wrote in his paper, "A typical character must be representative, such as Ah Q in Lu Xun's works, who represents all Chinese people."

Nan Zhiyi drew a big question mark next to it and commented: Avoid generalization.

Halfway through grading, she finally put down her red pen and sighed deeply at the pile of homework on the table.

This isn't grading homework; it's more like painstakingly searching for bright spots in a jumble of thoughts.

She remembered Gu Xiao often saying that ideological work required patience, but now, she felt that the logic of these papers was less coherent than a three-year-old's methodical building blocks. She simply had no patience left...

Nan Zhiyi picked up her thermos, took a few sips of water, checked her watch, and seeing that she still had some time, went back to the master bedroom and slept on the canopy bed for a while.

I got back to the School of Arts archives before 3 p.m.

When she arrived at the entrance of the archives room on the first floor, the other students had not yet arrived.

Nan Zhiyi used the key to open the door.

The archive room was large, with dark wooden shelves reaching the ceiling on both sides and in the middle, and small mountains of books piled up in the corners, roughly tied with hemp rope.

At the start of the semester, Professor Wang instructed her, along with several other graduate students under different professors, to organize these periodicals scattered during the War of Resistance against Japan.

The group worked on and off for a month or two, but only managed to organize a small, sparse row of bookshelves, which was nothing compared to the size of the entire archive.

Fortunately, the professors all said that it could be completed within this semester. She and her classmates were not in a hurry and simply sorted out their subjects step by step.

In the beams of light filtering through the window, dust motes floated slowly, mingling with the musty smell of paper and the strong odor of mothballs, which was somewhat pungent.

Nan Zhiyi took out a mask and cotton gloves from her bag, put them on, walked to the pile of unorganized journals, and carefully untied a bundle.

The paper was fragile and yellowed, some of it sticking together.

She had to first gently separate them with a paper cutter, and then sort them by publication name and date.

The smell of camphor balls was even stronger, mixed with a musty odor that seeped into the mask.

She squatted down and carefully placed a copy of the "July" magazine on the "Literature" section of the stack.

A flurry of footsteps and laughter came from outside the door.

Nan Zhiyi put down a stack of "Literary Front" magazines in her hand, stood up, and dusted off her gloves.

Five students entered through the door.

"You've arrived." She nodded to the group.

Wang neatly tied up her hair and, while putting on gloves, said, "I just ran into Professor Li in the research office. He's urging me to submit my book report again." She sighed dramatically, "I've only finished half of my translation and annotation of 'The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons'." Wang is a graduate student under Professor Li.

A male student wearing glasses chimed in: "You're lucky. Teacher Zhang assigned us to compare the two English translations of 'Dream of the Red Chamber,' and I haven't even reread the original text yet."

This male student surnamed Liu is one of Professor Zhang's students; he is very refined and cultured.

Liu squatted down in front of the pile of periodicals next to Nan Zhiyi. "These July issues are quite well preserved."

Nan Zhiyi hummed in agreement, but didn't continue the conversation, focusing instead on what she was doing.

Liu glanced at Nan Zhiyi before picking up another stack of books and starting to organize them.

Another round-faced girl flipped through a book of "Anti-Japanese War Literature": "I heard they're showing 'Romance on Lushan Mountain' in the auditorium this weekend, are you guys going?"

The round-faced girl's surname was Shi, and she was a student of Professor Chen.

"I'm afraid I won't have time," Wang shook his head. "I have to submit the journal classification list assigned by the professor next Wednesday, and a short practical paper, right?"

She looked at Nan Zhiyi to confirm.

Nan Zhiyi looked up and replied, "Yes, the classification criteria were finalized last week, based on the publication date and genre. We'll each have to submit a copy to our respective professors, and we can all go over the table of contents details together later."

Shi immediately abandoned his playful thoughts and smiled at Nan Zhiyi, saying, "Great! Perfect, I haven't finished writing down some of my categorized lists yet. Nan, yours..."

The conversation naturally turned to the assignment the professor had given...

Suddenly, Liu said, "By the way, I heard that the Institute of Ancient Books is recruiting people to compile local chronicles. Does anyone want to go?"

Several classmates' eyes lit up: "Is it a permanent position?"

"It's currently a project contract, but the professor said that if I perform well, I could stay on."

"Oh? I'll think about it some more..."

The group continued working, tidying up while chatting about their studies and future prospects.

Nan Zhiyi occasionally chimed in with a few words, but most of the time she focused on the repair work.

Around 5:30, Liu dusted off his hands and suggested, "We've been doing this internship for over a month now, how about we go to that Sichuan restaurant outside the school for some stir-fries? It'll be a way to celebrate our successful collaboration. We can split the cost."