Chapter 85 (First Update)
The last time Yan Ruyi came to Peking University for the re-examination, she stayed at a guesthouse.
Now that I've been accepted, the school has arranged a dormitory for me, so I don't have to spend money to stay in a guesthouse anymore. The only problem is that I have to bring my own bedding.
Before she came, Dong Yingxue called her and said, "Ruyi, you don't need to bring bedding when you go. I asked my classmate to buy you a new set."
Yan Ruyi went to school to register without any luggage.
She had been here once before, and this time she knew the way well and took the bus to school.
Just like last time when I came to participate in the re-examination, there were reception staff in the square in front of the school.
However, it wasn't the same male classmate as last time; it was a female classmate instead.
The female student greeted her warmly, "Hello, what's your major?"
It had been a long time since anyone had called her "classmate," and Yan Ruyi felt a strange warmth in her heart. She handed her college admission letter to the female classmate, saying, "I'm majoring in cultural heritage."
The female student looked and called out towards the distance, "Teacher Li, Yan Ruyi is here."
A man approached, wearing glasses, of medium height, with fair skin and a refined appearance.
Dong Yingxue's classmate's surname was Li, and his name was Li Chengwen.
I think this is the person.
Yan Ruyi: "Hello, Teacher Li, I am Yan Ruyi."
Li Chengwen: "Hello Yan Ruyi, I am Li Chengwen."
"Teacher Li, where are we going to report for duty?"
"Graduate School Student Affairs Office, let me take you there."
Yan Ruyi quickly replied, "No need to trouble Teacher Li, I can manage on my own."
Li Chengwen laughed and said, "No trouble at all. I came here specifically to wait for you. If Dong Yingxue finds out that I didn't take good care of her younger brother and sister-in-law, she'll hold me accountable later."
Yan Ruyi didn't refuse anymore, "Thank you, Teacher Li."
Li Chengwen offered to help her carry her luggage, but Yan Ruyi was too embarrassed to let her teacher help her carry her luggage, so she quickly said, "It's just a few changes of clothes, it's not heavy, I can carry it myself."
"I've already asked someone to put your bedding in your dorm. Since you graduate students are not full-time, your dorms are randomly assigned to undergraduate dorms. There are four people in your dorm, all from the history department. Today is your first day of registration, and Professor Yue may hold a meeting with you tomorrow morning."
After completing the enrollment procedures, Li Chengwen took her to the girls' dormitory.
There was a dormitory manager downstairs, and Li Chengwen led her to register with the manager.
"Male comrades are not allowed in the girls' dormitory. Go up by yourself, 3rd floor, room 306. Call me if you need anything."
Yan Ruyi thanked Li Chengwen and carried her luggage upstairs.
I found dormitory 306, but the door was closed, so I knocked on it.
A cheerful female voice came from inside, "Come in."
Yan Ruyi pushed open the door and went in, and the three girls in the dormitory looked over together.
"Hello, I am Yan Ruyi."
A tall girl sitting on the outermost seat stood up. "You must be the graduate student who was just assigned here. Welcome, welcome. Your bed is here."
There are four beds in the dormitory. The other three beds are already made up, but the bed closest to the south-facing balcony has a bedding roll on it.
The tall girl said, "Let's get to know each other. My name is Gao Meiling." She then introduced the other three to Yan Ruyi, "Chen Yujie, Yang Liuqing, and Xu Yao."
Chen Yujie asked Yan Ruyi curiously, "How old are you? You look younger than me."
Yan Ruyi: "I'm already 24 years old."
Several people exclaimed "Ah!", clearly not believing it.
Yan Ruyi smiled and said, "I've been working for three years now."
"What's your job?"
"I work at an auction house."
For most people, the auction industry is still an emerging industry, and the group immediately became interested, chattering with questions about Yan Ruyi.
Yan Ruyi answered their questions one by one.
"So your auction house is just like an antique shop, selling antiques."
Gao Meiling: “I have a blue and white porcelain bowl at home. My grandfather said it was from the Xuande period of the Ming Dynasty. When my grandmother was sick, my grandfather wanted to sell the bowl to pay for her treatment. He took it to an antique shop, but the shop said it was not from the Xuande period and was a fake. They said it was worthless and would only give him 50 cents. My grandfather couldn’t bear to sell it and took it back. It’s still at home now.”
There are generally three possibilities in this situation.
One possibility is that the appraiser at the antique shop misjudged the item, and another is that the appraiser wanted to buy low and sell high, making a profit from the difference.
This situation was particularly severe before liberation. Appraisers in pawnshops or antique shops would take advantage of sellers' lack of knowledge, calling even genuine items fake, thus buying low and selling high.
However, it could indeed be a counterfeit.
Yan Ruyi couldn't make a hasty judgment without seeing the actual item.
However, she was still a little curious about what criteria the appraisers at the antique shop used to determine that an item was a fake.
“I did hear my grandfather say that the appraiser said that the signatures of Xuande period were all in six-character regular script, but the signature of my family’s is in small seal script, and it’s only four characters long. The appraiser said it was a later imitation.”
Yan Ruyi said, "I don't think it's very accurate to judge based solely on the signature. Last year at our Cartier Autumn Auction, we sold a blue and white porcelain plate from the Xuande period, and the signature was in small seal script, but it was only six characters in small seal script."
"How much did that blue and white porcelain plate sell for?"
The final transaction price was 30,000.
Everyone gasped in shock.
Yang Liuqing asked Yan Ruyi, "Can you tell if it's a fake or not?"
"Yes, but I need to see the actual product."
Chen Yujie nudged Gao Meiling, "That blue and white porcelain bowl in your house might actually be the real thing."
Gao Meiling: "I'll call home right now and ask my dad to bring that blue and white porcelain bowl over when he has time. Sister Yan, could you help me check if it's genuine or a fake?"
Now that she's become the older sister, Yan Ruyi is really not used to it.
However, she is indeed older than all three of them.
Yan Ruyi: "That's possible, but I'll only be here for a week before I leave."
Yang Liuqing: "Meiling's family lives in a town under Tongyi District. It only takes a little over two hours to get here by car."
"Okay, as long as I don't have classes this week, that's fine."
Gao Meiling excitedly went to make a phone call and returned quickly. "Sister Yan, I've already told my dad, and he said he'll be over in a bit."
Yan Ruyi had already made the bed.
Yang Liuqing called to her, "Sister Yan, it's noon, let's go eat."
Yan Ruyi: "I haven't exchanged my meal tickets yet."
Gao Meiling: "I'm using my meal ticket today. I'm off to eat."
They went to the No. 1 canteen because it was the closest to them.
The food at Peking University is quite good and inexpensive. Yan Ruyi ate a braised pork chop, a stir-fried mung bean sprout with vinegar, and a bowl of rice, which only cost one yuan.
I used Gao Meiling's meal ticket to buy the food.
Gao Meiling said she would treat everyone to this meal.
Yan Ruyi, who was already working and earning a salary, would never let a student who was still studying treat her, so she gave her the money.
The four of them were eating together when Chen Yujie pointed to someone and said to Yan Ruyi, "Sister Yan, did you see that person who just came in? He's also a graduate student who just got accepted this year, just like you, majoring in cultural relics and museums. I saw him report for duty today. I heard him tell the staff at the reception desk that he's from Beijing and works at the Cultural Relics Bureau. He also said that he works at the same unit as his father. Judging from his tone, his father has quite a lot of seniority."
Yan Ruyi looked in the direction Chen Yujie pointed and saw a man, who was a bit older, looking to be in his early thirties.
Gao Meiling: "Why are you telling the teacher all this just to register?"
Yang Liuqing, "Perhaps he wanted to make a deeper impression on the teacher."
Chen Yujie: "Meiling, do you think it's possible that his father is the one who appraised your family's blue and white porcelain?"
Gao Meiling: "It can't be such a coincidence, can it?"
Chen Yujie loves gossip, "I'll go find out."
He ran off with the tray and disappeared in the blink of an eye.
The cafeteria was crowded, and Yan Ruyi couldn't see where she went.
Before long, she returned with a tray. "I found out that his name is Bao Zhan, and he does work at the same place as his father. They both work at the Cultural Relics Bureau, and his father works at the Cultural Relics Bureau's Appraisal Center."
In Beijing, staff at the appraisal center are indeed required to work at antique shops.
The same is probably true in the capital.
If that's the case, based on Cheng Zhan's age, it's quite possible that his father did indeed appraise porcelain for Gao Meiling's family.
Gao Meiling said, "I'll have my dad ask my grandpa later to see if he remembers the surname of the appraiser who did the appraisal for him."
When Gao Meiling's father arrived, Yan Ruyi was in the dormitory explaining the daily operations of Jialide to the three of them.
The three of them really enjoyed listening to this.
Chen Yujie: "Sister Yan, once I start working, can I work at your company?"
Yang Liuqing said, "You're not from Beijing, so it's impossible for you to be assigned to Beijing after graduation."
"I'll apply when I graduate, and maybe I'll get assigned there."
Just then, the dormitory manager called from below, "Gao Meiling, room 306, your dad is here to see you."
Gao Meiling looked down from the window and said to Yan Ruyi, "My dad is down there, but he can't come up."
Yan Ruyi said, "I'll go down."
Liu Qing and Chen Yujie also went downstairs together.
Gao Meiling's father is also very tall, but he is a bit hunchbacked. He is a very honest and kind man.
Gao Meiling: "Dad, did you take that porcelain bowl?"
Mr. Gao patted the bag. "Take it."
Yan Ruyi looked around and pointed to the stone table and benches not far away, saying, "Let's go there."
Afterwards, Mr. Gao put his bag on the stone table, unzipped it, and took out the blue and white porcelain bowl.
It was wrapped in a large piece of blue cotton cloth, which Gao Meiling quickly removed.
Yan Ruyi immediately recognized it as a blue-and-white porcelain piece from the Xuande period of the Ming Dynasty.
She picked up the porcelain bowl and inscribed the mark on the bottom with four small seal characters: "Made in the Xuande period".
Yan Ruyi affirmed, "It is genuine. The most distinctive feature of blue and white porcelain from the Xuande period is its orange-peel glaze, which means that the glaze surface is not very smooth and looks like orange peel. Moreover, the glaze color is mostly white with a bluish tinge, commonly known as duck egg blue. Another typical feature of blue and white porcelain from this period is that the blue pigment on the glaze is severely blurred."
Yan Ruyi pointed out the patterns on the porcelain bowl to them.
Then, based on the actual situation, I explained to them how to identify it.
The four people only understood half of what they heard.
However, they understood one thing: this blue and white porcelain bowl was genuine Xuande blue and white porcelain.
Chen Yujie asked, "Sister Yan, if this bowl were auctioned by your Jialide Auction House, how much could it fetch?"
"This shouldn't be from the official kiln. Those from private kilns are slightly cheaper. Based on the prices of previous auction items, it's probably between 50,000 and 60,000."
Yang Liuqing said, "Meiling, your family is about to become a ten-thousand-yuan household."
Chen Yujie: "If it's real, why did the antique shop say it was fake in the first place?"
Yan Ruyi could only say, "Most of the blue and white porcelain from the Xuande period has a six-character regular script mark, and very few have a four-character seal script mark. I guess the appraiser made a mistake."
However, Yan Ruyi felt that it was unlikely that the appraiser had made a mistake.
Because this blue and white porcelain bowl, apart from the mark being slightly different from the usual ones, is easily identified as genuine due to its glaze, color, and decorative patterns.
Therefore, it's unlikely that the appraiser was mistaken; it's more probable that he deliberately called it a fake in order to buy it at a low price and profit from it.
Gao Meiling: "Dad, didn't you hear my grandpa mention what the master who appraised the small bowl had?"
Mr. Gao thought for a moment, "I went there with your grandfather back then. I remember everyone in the shop called him Teacher Bao."
Bao is not a common surname. The appraiser who appraised the small bowl for the Gao family also had the surname Bao. Yan Ruyi thought that the man was probably Bao Zhan's father.
The others also considered this possibility.
Chen Yujie slammed her hand on the stone table and said, "It's clearly real, yet you say it's fake. Isn't that bullying laymen? Luckily, you didn't sell it."
Yang Liuqing said, "So much time has passed, even if we went to their door to question them, they wouldn't admit it."
Kao Mei-ling: "Perhaps the appraiser really made a mistake."
Mr. Gao frowned and thought for a moment. “Now that you mention it, I remember. After Teacher Bao finished the appraisal, he asked your grandfather if he would sell it. Your grandfather wanted to raise money for your great-grandmother's medical treatment, so he said he would sell it. Someone next to him asked Teacher Bao if he needed a receipt. Teacher Bao said no. Your grandfather then became suspicious and said it was too cheap and he couldn't bear to sell it, so he left.”
Antique shops normally issue receipts when buying antiques, regardless of the price.
After being registered and stored, they undergo a second appraisal, and then are restored according to their condition. The most valuable ones go to museums, while the ordinary ones are sold in antique shops.
The fact that they didn't issue a receipt is enough to show that there was definitely something wrong with that appraisal.
But it's pointless to say all this now.
The only saving grace was that Grandpa Gao had the foresight to sell the blue-and-white porcelain bowl without paying 50 cents.
Mr. Gao wrapped the bowl up again and put it in his bag. He said to Gao Meiling, "Go back and tell your grandfather so he can be happy too."
After Mr. Gao left, Chen Yuling and the others were still indignant. "I don't think it's very likely that Mr. Bao misjudged the situation. He just wanted to buy it at a low price and then sell it at a high price. Even bad bamboo can't make good shoots. I guess Bao Zhan's character isn't much better either. Sister Yan, you and he are both taught by Professor Yue, so be careful and don't let him scam you."
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Author's Note: The main story is nearing completion, and there will be several side stories afterward... Please add my new story, "Mistakenly Recognizing the Villainous Boss from a Different Era," to your favorites. I'll start a new story once you've collected enough of those.
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