British writer

In the end, Lu Shi still rejected James.

This is a deliberate decision.

It's not that he feels that he is not qualified, but that he is worried about getting angry.

In the first few years of the Nobel Prize, in order to attract the favor of all kinds of bigwigs, the Nobel Committee was quite unscrupulous and did not do anything about personnel.

Their only principle is to rub as much as they can,

The "cracking" here refers to rubbing traffic.

For example, the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Theodor Monsen in the second year.

The German has many identities:

Classical scholars, jurists, historians, journalists, politicians, archaeologists, writers...

Only there are no writers.

The reason for the award given by the Swedish Academy is also quite strange: "The greatest history writer in the world, this point is undoubtedly revealed in his immortal masterpiece "History of Rome"."

Very outrageous.

Many people suspect that Monson won the award purely because of his great fame and high status in the history circle.

This is in line with the principle of "you can rub it if you can rub it".

Lu Shi worried about being used,

Try to imagine that the Nobel Committee revealed Lu Shi's evaluation of a certain writer or a certain work in an "inadvertent" situation:

"Lu Shi, a visiting professor of London political economy, author of "Guns, Germs and Steel" and "Roger's Mystery", and a famous historian, believes that XXX is not enough to match the Nobel Prize in Literature, and gave XXX comments... "

The picture is so beautiful, I dare not think about it.

The Nuo Committee made enough gimmicks and enough traffic, but Lu Shi formed a relationship with others,

This business is too bad.

Therefore, it is better not to wade in muddy water for the time being.

In the following time, Lu Shi's main energy will be on the preparation of "Mirror\

,"But it's just messing around,

With two professionals, Scott and Cooper, coupled with the influence of Wodehouse and the name of the University of London Union, there is no resistance to running a newspaper.

Everything is going on in an orderly manner.

Instead, Lu Shi became an idler.

Fortunately, Gu Hongming didn't leave after he came to London. He came to visit from time to time and joined hands to fight landlords.

This time, Lu Shi will not let him go like last time.

"bomb!"

"I'll blow it up again!"

"Well, let's go."

...

After playing a round, Lu Shi smiled and said, "Okay! Shuffle the cards!"

Natsume Soseki shuffled helplessly.

On the other side, Gu Hongming couldn't take it anymore,

"How do you win as soon as you take the landlord?"

He folded his cards,

"I won't play anymore! I won't play anymore! It's too frustrating. It's fine to write articles as a junior like you, but you can't even play cards... Hmph! If Zhengxiang hadn't returned to China, I would definitely let him take the lead. The four of us Rub a few laps together."

Lu Shi laughed loudly,

"Okay, I can play mahjong too, and I am full of five poisons."

Ninety percent of the well-known scholars in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China liked playing cards and rubbing hemp and other recreational activities.

Many people should have heard of "Hu Shi's Diary\

,"The content inside is very classic:

July 21st: The second chemistry test...playing cards.

July 22: Playing cards. Read several American short stories and classics.

July 24: Classes begin. A book about virtue and struggle. play cards. evolutionary math.

...

In short, all kinds of card games have become memes on the Internet.

Lu Shi stretched his waist,

"If that's the case, then don't play."

He turned around and straightened the manuscripts on the table.

Gu Hongming looked at Lu Shi, then at Natsume Soseki, and finally at our yawning yawner. He couldn't help but said, "The atmosphere here is so good, it reminds me of my school days."

Lu Shi was curious,

"How do you say that?"

Gu Hongming lightly twirled his beard and said: "Students can refer to each other as a help for creation."

He often came to visit Lu Shi during this period, not only for playing cards, but also for business——

Reading and reminders.

Gu Hongming couldn't help laughing,

"Frankly speaking, I thought I didn't like popular novels, but after reading your works, I feel that I like both reasoning and fantasy."

Lu Shi joked, "I like it better than playing cards?"

Gu Hongming waved his hands again and again,

"That's not enough."

The three people in the room laughed at the same time.

We looked at them curiously, and with a "meow~", we got into Natsume Soseki's arms.

Gu Hongming asked: "Lu Shi, how many manuscripts have you written?"

Lu Shi spread his hands,

"Mr. Gu, you said that you come here every now and then, how much do you think I can write? People chase after newspapers and magazines. It's good for you, and you just chase after the author's house. Is the next step going to be the author? Close the little black room for me?"

Gu Hongming chuckled, and said stiffly: "Actually, I like "I Am a Cat" better than your "Lord of the Rings."

It's not all nonsense.

Because "I Am a Cat" is about Japan, it must be more familiar to read.

Natsume Soseki said: "Mr. Koo has won the prize, and my work is definitely not comparable to Lu's. How can the fluorescent light of rotten grass compare with the bright moon of Tianxin?"

Gu Hongming waved his hand,

"We Chinese are humble enough, but you Japanese..."

The latter words were not clearly stated.

Natsume Soseki blushed slightly, a little embarrassed.

When Gu Hongming turned to Lu Shi, he said: "Of course, popular novels are interesting, but I still want to read the book on the study of Ming history. Your style of writing is very bold. Now most people don't write history in biographical style anymore. Are you trying to imitate Tai Shigong?"

Lu Shi waved his hand,

"That book is not a history book, and it is not accurate to classify it in the biographical style."

Gu Hongming nodded,

"Fifteen Years of Wanli" is easy to understand, even people without historical background can read it.

Those with this characteristic are obviously not history books.

Gu Hongming said: "By the way, last time you were talking about "What are guns, germs and steel called... popular science..."

Lu Shi said, "Popular science books."

Gu Hongming nodded,

"Yes, that's right! It's a popular science book. Is this "Fifteen Years of Wanli" also a popular science book?"

"Fifteen Years of Wanli" is more serious than popular science books, otherwise it would not be possible to be used as a textbook in so many universities in the United States.

But it also has imprecise places,

Generally speaking, this book is between a monograph and popular science, and it is not easy to classify.

Lu Shi didn't answer.

Seeing that he stopped talking, Gu Hongming continued: "You write very well, but the subject matter... Sigh, you said that you are writing history textbooks, what is not good to use, why do you use Ming history? The resistance inside is extremely huge."

He paused, and asked, "Do you know why the later dynasty took the initiative to revise the history of the previous dynasty?"

Lu Shi replied: "This is the tradition of Chinese historiography."

Gu Hongming did not expect to get this answer,

In his mind, Lu Shi has always hit the nail on the head, why is he so naive and pedantic about this issue.

He asked back, "You just said, tradition?"

Lu Shi nodded,

"This is a great tradition. Later dynasties compile history for former dynasties. It is the victor's respect for the loser's history, and it is also a cultural identity. Although dynasties change, the nation, culture, and civilization have always continued."

Gu Hongming was speechless.

Indeed, Chinese history writing is a habit of inheriting civilization, which is a rare habit throughout the entire history of civilization development in the world.

He thought of Lu Shi's speech in Cambridge,

That speech has been sorted out by Cambridge University and the University of London Alliance successively, and published in the school magazine,

In his speech, Lu Shi firmly stated that Chinese civilization is continuous and originated from ancient China.

Gu Hongming said with emotion: "It would be great if all of us were young people like you..."

This is a sincere compliment.

Lu Shi shook his head and changed the topic back,

"Mr. Gu asked me the question just now. I actually know the answer you want to get. You want to say that the later dynasty compiled history for the former dynasty. Legitimacy."

Gu Hongming nodded,

Sure enough, Lu Shi was as sharp as ever.

Lu Shi said: "History can indeed be described in its own way, but if there is no act of description and arrangement, then everything is out of the question. Any dynasty cannot be born out of thin air, and recording history is the starting point."

Gu Hongming nodded his head,

"Okay! Okay! Lu Shi, I once told Zheng Xiang that you are a 'young talent', but now it seems that you are conservative. You are much stronger than us old scholars."

Lu Shi shook his head,

"That's not enough."

He pointed to the original manuscript of "The Fifteen Years of Wanli" and said, "I'm almost pulling out several strands of hair because of this now."

Natsume Soseki snickered beside him,

Lu Shi ate well and slept soundly, but he never lost a few hairs.

Gu Hongming said: "Yes, this kind of article is the most difficult to write, because it needs a lot of historical data to support it, otherwise it will appear very untrue. However, I think your book is well written, and the big framework is well established. , it shouldn’t take long to make a book.”

As he spoke, Gu Hongming picked up the manuscript,

"I don't like that you listed Li Zhi as a separate chapter character."

Gu Hongming studied in the West, but he was conservative in many concepts,

Take marriage for example. He is a staunch supporter of polygamy and concubine system, and he is very disdainful of the status quo in the West where monogamy is overtly monogamous and adultery is behind the scenes.

However, Li Zhi was a man of gods. Under the background of the Ming Dynasty, he hated all kinds of ritual constraints, advocated equality between men and women, and never took concubines all his life.

It's no wonder that Gu Hongming was quite critical of Li Zhi.

Lu Shi didn't expand on this topic, but instead said: "Mr. Gu has mentioned the key point - historical materials. I'm going to the British Museum library, where there are many historical books."

Gu Hongming was surprised,

"How come the British Museum has our... um..."

He didn't ask any more, because he already had the answer in his heart.

War is always accompanied by looting of cultural relics,

Napoleon fought for Milan, and frantically snatched cultural relics, paintings, and handicrafts in order to let the Directorate in Paris know what he had done for the cause of the Republic;

Toyotomi Hideyoshi fought for North Korea, and brought a large number of monks with the army to rob scriptures and classics;

More recently, there are Egypt, India, and China;

...

Among them, the worst should be Egypt,

Because of long-term occupation, colonization, and civil war, cultural relics are often looted by tomb robbers in this set of "combined boxing".

There is an ancient Egyptian cultural relic called a wishing cup. After research, it is found that there is a high probability that the tomb robbers thought it was worthless, so they dug it up and threw it aside. It took decades before it was discovered by local residents, and it was collected in the Cairo Museum.

To sort out the country's cultural relics has to rely on foreigners to eat leftovers, which is not bad.

Gu Hongming asked: "Are you eligible to enter the library of the museum?"

Due to space constraints, the British Museum has been divided twice:

The first was in 1880, when museums separated natural history specimens from archaeological artifacts, and museums specialized in archaeological artifacts;

The second time was in 1900, when the museum separated books, manuscripts and other contents to form the new British Library.

Because the project is complicated and grand, the separation has not been completed yet,

During this time, the library and reading room are temporarily closed to the public.

But there is no such restriction in Lu Shi,

He no longer belongs to the category of "public".

James, Cavendish, Wodehouse, and Bernard Shaw all helped to contact them.

With so many bigwigs working together to insure, there will definitely be no problem.

Lu Shi replied, "I can enter."

Gu Hongming pondered,

a long time,

"I... can I go too?"

Although he obtained an official position in the Qing court, he was a marginal figure after all, and he had never seen some things before, so he wanted to see them with his own eyes.

Lu Shi looked at Gu Hongming,

"Mr. Gu doesn't need to say too much, just go with me. It's just that I went to the library of the museum, and there might not be something you want to see. You don't mind, do you?"

Gu Hongming waved his hands again and again,

"Of course, of course I don't mind."

Lu Shi nodded to Natsume Soseki again, and said, "If you have the opportunity to look at the collections of various countries, don't you hurry up?"

Natsume Soseki quickly put me down and packed his things.

The three went to the British Museum in a carriage.

The British Museum is in the core area of ​​London, next to the famous Russell Square, and across two main roads is the main campus of University College London.

It didn't take long to pass from Brear Road,

The three jumped out of the carriage, and they could see the huge Greek Revival building from a distance, which was very spectacular.

They passed the statue of Queen Victoria and made their way to the gatehouse.

Lu Shi and the guard introduced themselves: "Hi, I'm a visiting professor of London Political Economy, my name is Lu Shi. I'm here to borrow the reading room."

The guard raised his eyebrows,

"You said you want to use the reading room? Do you know that the collection of books is not open to the public?"

Lu Shi said, "Just give a notification."

The guard looked at him suspiciously, and his eyes wandered over Gu Hongming and Natsume Soseki for a while, before he nodded and said, "Okay, then I'll go in and make an announcement. You guys wait here and don't move around."

After speaking, the guard left quickly.

Gu Hongming muttered: "This man's words are really annoying, how can he prevent us like thieves?"

Lu Shi chuckled,

"They themselves are thieves and steal cultural relics. When they meet the right owner, they will inevitably be guilty of thieves~"

"Tsk..."

Gu Hongming was speechless in disgust.

The three of them waited for a while, and a well-dressed white British man walked quickly, and rushed forward to shake hands with Gu Hongming.

But soon, he hesitated and stopped, communicating with the guard in a low voice.

The two whispered for a while.

The Englishman then changed his target, walked towards Lu Shi, and said, "You are Professor Lu of London Political Economy, right? I am the manager of the Prints and Paintings Department of the British Museum, Shadney Cowen."