Literary Heroes of the Republic of China

Dr. Fu left after eating, and didn't say anything to Mu Qiong.

On the contrary, Boss Chen felt very honored that Dr. Fu came to eat in his restaurant. He personally sent Dr. Fu out, watched Dr. Fu leave, and said to Mu Qiong: "Dr. We eat in the store...our store is really amazing now!"

Mu Qiong didn't think their store was great at all.

Although I haven't eaten next door...but the tonkatsu sold next door is obviously as delicious as the ones in their store.

Boss Chen is still rambling: "Although Dr. Fu earns a lot in Gongji Hospital, he always gives medicines to people, and the expenses are high...I didn't want to take his money, but he must give it, scholar It's just different."

These days, being a doctor or teacher earns a lot of money compared to other jobs, but Dr. Fu’s dress is very simple, so many times, and I haven’t seen him riding a rickshaw or anything... I think it’s because the wages are used to treat the poor For obvious reasons, he is not well off financially.

Mu Qiong couldn't do it himself, but he admired such a person: "Boss, how about this, next time Dr. Fu comes, you scramble two eggs for him."

"That's a good idea." Boss Chen nodded.

The two were chatting when a newspaper boy came over: "Sir, do you want to buy newspapers? There are newspapers and Dazhongbao!"

The newsboy Mu Qiong looked familiar to him, it was the one who didn't show him the recruitment notice back then.

They are all out to make a living, and it is not easy for anyone, and Mu Qiong does not take revenge on a child: "I will buy a report." He has long wanted to buy a newspaper to understand the current society.Although he has read a lot of history books, he is not a historian who studies this period. In fact, he knows a lot about many things at this time.

A report costs two copper dollars, which is not cheap, but it looks like a good deal. There is a thick stack. After he paid for the newspaper, the dark-skinned newsboy said a lot of good things in a stack. Walk.

The kid didn't recognize Mu-joon at all.

"Do you buy newspapers to read?" Boss Chen asked.

"Well, I'll read it to my mother and my sister when I go home." Mu Qiong said.

"Very good... you can read it to me too." Boss Chen said.

"Boss, you can read it yourself." Mu Qiong gave the newspaper to Boss Chen.

"What am I looking at? I don't know a few characters in total." Boss Chen touched his nose: "Even if I know characters, if they are connected together, I don't know them again."

Mu Qiong was quite surprised when he heard Boss Chen say that.

When Chinese learn English, it is normal for them to know the words but not the meaning of the whole sentence. After all, they have not lived in an English environment since they were young, but they should not encounter such problems when learning Chinese.

Even if everyone has a different accent, at least they all grew up in Chinese from novels, so it’s not like they don’t know the meaning after reading the sentences.

However, he was surprised for a little while.

Because he quickly read the newspaper in his hand.

The paper used for the declaration is quite good, and the handwriting printed on it is also clear, but at first glance, it is really difficult to understand - even if the words on it are in traditional Chinese characters, it is still typeset vertically.

It doesn't matter that it is typeset vertically, but it is still written in classical Chinese!

That's right, at this time, the famous New Culture Movement hadn't started yet, so... people generally still use classical Chinese.

In fact, in ancient times, people also spoke in vernacular, but because at the beginning, characters were written on bamboo slips and silk, it would be too troublesome to write in vernacular, so classical Chinese appeared naturally.

After the invention of papermaking and the invention of movable type printing in the Song Dynasty, popular novels in vernacular Chinese finally appeared, such as the Four Great Masterpieces.

But vernacular Chinese is still not the mainstream, and the most commonly used by scholars is classical Chinese.

Of course, Boss Chen couldn't read it. In fact, there were other reasons... There was no punctuation in newspaper articles at this time, and only spaces were used to break sentences.

Mu Qiong has read the original owner's memory, and has known this for a long time, and he is used to it. After all, he has read a lot of books in modern times, and copied many ancient books when practicing calligraphy. It is easy for him to adapt and he can read classical Chinese.

But for people like Boss Chen who don't know many words, the lack of punctuation will undoubtedly make it more difficult for them to understand the meaning of the article.

Mu Qiong could understand newspapers, but to be honest, he didn't want to read them—the news in this newspaper was all flat and poorly formatted, which made him feel a bit boring after reading too much modern interesting news.

However, that's all he can read now, and it cost two copper dollars to buy, so it would be a waste of money not to read it.

It was already two or three o'clock in the afternoon, and there were not many customers. Boss Chen asked Mu Qiong to change his suit and put it on for the new waiter. Joon sits behind the counter where he collects money and asks Moo-joon to read him the newspaper.

Mu Qiong took the newspaper and read it slowly.

"Wait, what are you reading?" Boss Chen couldn't understand Mu Qiong's words.

At the moment, the language in the country is not yet unified, and Shanghai dialect is generally spoken in Shanghai. Boss Chen usually speaks Shanghai dialect with a strong accent, while Mu Qiong has always spoken Suzhou dialect before.

But when Mu Qiong read the newspaper, he subconsciously used Mandarin.

Although Suzhou dialect and Shanghai dialect are somewhat different, they can still understand each other. Putonghua is different...

"I speak Mandarin." Mu Qiong said. In 1909, people changed the name of the official language from "Guanhua" during the Ming and Qing Dynasties to "Guoyu", which is very similar to modern Mandarin.

"That's right, you have studied, so you must have learned Mandarin... Forget it, stop reading it, and tell me the meaning." Boss Chen sighed.

Mu Qiong told Boss Chen what the news meant.

There are several sheets of paper in the "Declaration", which looks like a good deal, but after Mu Qiong opened it, he felt like he was being cheated... There are many advertisements on it.

Of course, there is a lot of content.

Mu Qiong explained the above news one by one.

At this time, when writing news, it was unemotional and very concise, but when Mu Qiong explained, he would use his own language to beautify it, so that it became interesting.

Boss Chen listened quietly and interestingly, and expressed his opinions from time to time: "Those people really don't know what they are thinking. They tried to drive out the emperor before, and now they want to be emperor again!"

Mu Qiong smiled and said nothing, and continued talking.

Boss Chen is not interested in some content in newspapers. For example, Beijing has just promulgated the "Copyright Law", and the declaration uses a large page to talk about it, but Boss Chen doesn't want to hear it at all.

Mu Qiong was very interested, but he was not in a hurry to read it. He turned the page directly, looked at the title and said: "Italy will go to war with Austria after withdrawing from the Triple Alliance..."

In the page behind the declaration, some content related to the First World War was written.

Although Shanghai was very peaceful at this time, Europe was not. In 1914, the First World War broke out, and right now it was fighting fiercely there.

"What country are these?" Boss Chen asked.

Mu Qiong still knew something about the First World War, so he explained it a little bit. After hearing this, Boss Chen's face turned ugly: "Britain is also at war? I don't even know!"

Boss Chen's expression was very ugly, and Mu Qiong suddenly remembered something... When he first came to the restaurant, Boss Chen once said that his son had gone to study in England.

At this time, news transmission was very slow, and Boss Chen himself was not a person who read newspapers and cared about current affairs. He usually chatted with people about short stories from local parents, so he didn't even know that Europe was at war.

Mu Qiong didn't know what to say for a while.He has always been bad at comforting others.

Boss Chen didn't want to listen to comfort: "Tell me about this again."

"Boss, I don't know much. I haven't read the newspaper for a long time, and there is a lot of news in the newspaper." Mu Qiong was a little helpless. He knew the final result of the war, but he couldn't say it now.

Boss Chen froze for a moment, stared at the newspaper reports for a long time, and finally said, "Tell me something else."

Mu Qiong also talked about other things.

At this time, there was too little entertainment for people, and the life of the people at the bottom was still very closed. Mu Qiong's "speaking" of the newspaper was actually not good, but the employees in the store came and went to listen to a few words, and one of them came to eat. The seven or eight-year-old children stood aside and listened very carefully, and they were unwilling to leave.

Mu Qiong was a little embarrassed by this battle.

As for Boss Chen, ever since he knew there was a war in Europe, he seemed very lethargic.

But the business of the western restaurant is still going on as usual. It is the matter that Mu Qiong originally wanted to mention going back early, but now I am embarrassed to mention it.

Mu Qiong got on the tram with the newspaper that day, and then trotted all the way home—he wanted to go back early and exercise his body by the way.

When he came home, there were still people waiting for him at home.

This warmed his heart, and another thing surprised him a little.

After he got home, he found that Zhu Wanwan's and Mu Changyu's beds had been made, but there was no bedding on it, but a piece of white paper and a pencil.

Zhu Wanwan and Mu Changyu bought pens and paper and came back.

This was Mu Qiong's negligence. He wanted to take the time to buy it, but he didn't expect the two of them to buy it by themselves.

"Brother, come and see what I wrote!" Mu Changyu said immediately when he saw Mu Qiong.

"Changyu, let your brother eat first." Zhu Wanwan said. When she spoke, her hands were twisted together, obviously a little uneasy.

At this time, Mu Qiong had already come to the table made of door panels, and he saw the words on the white paper at a glance.

The words he taught yesterday were written on white paper twice in total, and these two times were obviously not written by one person.

Both Zhu Wanwan and Mu Changyu wrote it.

It was the first time for them to write, and the writing was not very good-looking, but Mu Qiong said: "Changyu, your writing is really good, much better than mine. When I was just learning, I couldn't write well no matter what."

Mu Changyu immediately became proud, and Zhu Wanwan was not so easy to fool: "Qiong'er, you were only four years old when you learned to write..."

Mu Changyu suddenly froze.

Mu Qiong rubbed his sister's head: "I just learned a little earlier. If you started learning at my age, you might learn better. Now... even if you started learning later than others, as long as you work hard , sooner or later you will learn to be like me."

Mu Changyu was encouraged, and immediately said: "Brother, I must learn to read well, so that I can read books in the future!"

Hope appeared in Zhu Wanwan's eyes.

"You can definitely do it, and so can my mother." Mu Qiong said.