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Chapter 230 Dilemma
Yes, after watching the video of Yanbei’s grand lecture, Frank couldn’t sleep all night.

He reviewed his life from the beginning.

To be fair, he felt very satisfied when he first came to the United States from China.

After all, he felt that everything was fresh at that time, and his life on campus was pretty good. He didn't need to worry about making a living.

When he graduated, he accidentally entered the Eisen family. While other students were still struggling to find jobs, he successfully got a teaching position at Berkeley, and had a stable life and a happy family.

The most important thing is that the prices in the United States were not high at that time. Although there were taxes that even he found quite annoying, he could still live a good life with his income.

Although he experienced inflation later, if he followed the plan of his father-in-law's father, Lucas Eisen, his income would also increase in the future, and he could even live better and better.

Obviously the unexpected thing happened when Qiao Yu suddenly appeared.

This young Chinese genius suddenly made him waste five years of hard work.

This even prevented him from getting a chance to show his face in front of many bigwigs at this year's International Congress of Mathematicians.

It was only thanks to Lucas's favor that I was able to give a 30-minute report in the small branch hall.

There are very few listeners, let alone any influence, it's just a barely established reputation.

If everything had gone well, he would have won the Salvi Prize from the American Mathematical Society and a Young Mathematician Award at the International Congress of Mathematicians for his work on the geometric Langlands conjecture.

All of this is to lay the foundation for him to win higher honors at the next International Congress of Mathematicians.

But now it seems that all hope is lost. The Fields Medal is completely out of the question.

If he had any concerns before, Lucas talked to him directly about this issue after the International Congress of Mathematicians.

Given that it is impossible for him to produce any outstanding results at the moment, it is impossible for Lucas to push him forward without him being able to produce any convincing results.

There is no way around it. Although Lucas Eisen has won the Fields Medal, there are many Fields Medal winners still alive, and no one can really cover the sky with one hand.

There are many Fields Medal winners who are even older than Lucas Eisen, such as Pierre Delini and Edward Witten.

The younger generation of Fields Medal winners are more famous in the academic world, such as Peter Schultz, Tao Xuanzhi, and Qiao Yu.

With these people watching, you can imagine how difficult it is to operate.

Not to mention that Lucas Eisen also sensed something was wrong. He had a feeling that the emerging mathematical star was targeting Frank.

But he had inquired privately and observed the two men interacting with each other with his own eyes, and he really didn't see anything unusual between them, and it didn't seem like they had ever met before.

But no matter whether Qiao Yu took the initiative to target Frank or not, the result could not be changed.

All I can say is that the golden age of mathematicians is too precious, and whether one has talent will be revealed early. Although there are examples of late bloomers, it would be a big joke to take individual cases as the general situation.

So he could only regretfully tell Frank that his chances were slim. It would be better to set a more realistic goal and get a tenured professorship at Berkeley.

But this is obviously inconsistent with Frank's requirements for himself.

To put it bluntly, how much does a university professor without a legal status in the United States earn in a year? Add to that inflation and the tax burden that cannot be escaped, and it is difficult to support a family!
Not to mention that people are most afraid of comparison.

If America could still be as glamorous as it was when he first arrived, or if his life no longer had any vision or ups and downs, he would be content to just be a tenured professor at a university.

After all, if you are not as good as the best, you are better than the worst.

But the current situation is not like this. His son is now a Fields Medal winner, the family is already wealthy enough, and the future is limitless...

In other words, he could have lived the life of a billionaire, and his spiritual realm could have reached a new level.

In the future, we only need to pursue spiritual things and don’t need to worry about material things at all.

But the reality is that he will not be able to directly join the ranks of billionaires in the future. He even needs the help of the previous generation to live a barely well-off life.

He didn't even dare to think about what would happen if he failed to become a tenured professor, or if his grandfather died one day in the future and the school terminated his contract.

The United States does not have a safety net and will not give him a break just because he is unemployed.

By then he might not even be able to pay the high property taxes.

He couldn't even sell his mansion like other middle-class people after losing his job and move to a worse neighborhood to make ends meet.

Because there is absolutely no way his wife Irene would agree.

This is the perception that native-born Americans are branded with from birth - that life in different neighborhoods is bound to be completely different.

The same house can be shockingly cheap in some neighborhoods, but at the same time, the public security and education in the cheap neighborhoods can also be shockingly bad!

Even children only make friends with peers who live in the same neighborhood, not to mention adults.

So if it really came to that, Frank knew with his ass that Irene would definitely choose to divorce him for the sake of the children.

Although she no longer has a job, she is the only daughter of an educated family and can live well on her own.

As for him, he could only rely on his parents. But the problem was that his parents had given him a lot of money over the years, and basically all the money they brought from China to the United States had been used up.

The jobs of the two were not very respectable, and the salary they received was not high. The total salary of the two of them was only more than 3,000 US dollars a month.

His parents are 60 and 62 respectively. They have to wait until they are 67 to apply for retirement benefits.

But the scariest thing is that due to income factors, neither of them has a 401K. Both of them only have traditional IRA accounts.

To be honest, given the current situation in the United States, the money in his parents' IRA account is barely enough to take care of themselves, let alone support him.

After all, in the United States, property taxes are not waived after retirement. As long as you own a property, you have to pay it for the rest of your life.

Although Berkeley's property tax is not high, with an annual tax rate of only about 1.2% of the property's valuation, for elderly families who have lost their ability to work after retirement and have a monthly income of only $2000, the monthly property tax expenditure of more than $400 is still difficult to bear.

Frank felt more and more frustrated the more he thought about it that night. He couldn't understand why two years ago he was a highly respected mathematics professor with a bright future.

How did he end up like this two years later? Well, he knew that it all started when his work on the geometric Langlands conjecture was overturned by Qiao Yu.

But if he had revealed his identity to Qiao Yu directly at that time, perhaps his situation would be different now.

The only problem was that he really didn't expect that Qiao Yu had surpassed Lucas in the academic world in just two years, and had become a leading figure in contemporary mathematics.

Who the hell can I go to for justice? !

But going to recognize his relatives at this time is not a matter of losing face, but he had already met Qiao Yu before, so why didn't he acknowledge this son at that time?

Yes, Frank was thinking about how to find a perfect excuse to test Qiao Yu's attitude.

After all, if he fails to gain Qiao Yu's approval and offends Lucas, then his only option in the future would probably be to be a street homeless person.

So that night, Frank even blamed his own parents!
If they had not insisted on taking him abroad back then, but had stayed in the country and accepted the fact that he had a child, how could he face this dilemma now?
He can already enjoy life in advance.

Frank felt suffocated when he thought of this. His parents' cognition was worthy of their suffering.

At that time, they at least had a whole building of demolished houses in Star City, and had previously worked as contractors. Their lives in China were much better than those of most people back then.

Although the management was standardized later and his father could no longer work as a contractor, he could still live a rich life even if he just lay down and collected rent.

In a fit of rage, he sold all his properties and came here, and now he lives the way he does today. Who can I blame?

If he had continued to stay in China, he might have even married Qiao Xi and could now be lying at home enjoying his retirement!
Yes, at first there was just resentment, but when the sky brightened, the resentment had turned into hatred.

He had completely forgotten that one of the reasons his parents decided to immigrate to the United States was because he suddenly had a child, which put the whole family in a panic.

It's just that a sophisticated egoist like Frank has extreme thoughts and doesn't think he has done anything wrong even if he thinks about these things.

But when this idea popped into his mind, Frank suddenly felt that the world had become wider.

Yes, he could completely put all the blame on his parents! He could use the excuse that his parents didn't allow him to be with Qiao Yu to make up for his mistake.

This was undoubtedly the best reason at this stage. Now he had to consider how to get in touch with Qiao Yu...

Sending an email or calling directly is naturally the least feasible option.

If possible, it would be best if he could meet with Qiao Yu or Qiao Xi in private! This way he could confess in person and explain the whole story.

Yes, at this time Frank really believed from the bottom of his heart that all the responsibility lay on his parents and had nothing to do with him.

When he left China, he was just a high school student. What could he understand?
So it’s all my parents’ fault!
Really, thinking of this, Frank suddenly felt relaxed.

But the question is what reason to go to China.

The Berkeley School of Mathematics does not have much cooperation with China, and Yanbei University just held a large-scale lecture which he did not attend.

This means that it would be difficult for him to find a reasonable reason to go to China, and it might take some time.

But Frank felt like he had found the direction, and everything became clear. Even the rising sun seemed so bright to him.

What Frank didn't know was that he wasn't the only one who regretted last night for a long time.

In fact, some others are also deeply regretting!

……

In a small meeting room in a distinctive white-painted house in Washington, DC, five people were working from home until their eyes were red.

There is no way. The unusual movements in the stock market in the past two days are very worrying. After all, finance is the foundation of this land.

Although they do not need to be directly responsible for the abnormal decline in the stock market, the person they are responsible for must be held responsible.

That person was in a bad mood, so the pressure was naturally passed on to his staff.

The higher-ups want a solution, they can't just throw up their hands and say there's nothing they can do.

After all, the workplace is not a TV show, let alone a series in the Commonwealth. If the boss is in a bad mood, he can really make them unemployed with just one sentence.

"I've said it before. We should try to keep him here when he comes to Philadelphia in July to attend the International Mathematicians Conference."

"Well, now's not the time to complain about this, Jack."

“But I did make suggestions at the time.”

"Yes, I know, but we talked to Langley about this matter, and the professionals felt that the proposal was not feasible at the time! And we are not prophets!"

Obviously such an argument is meaningless.

But when people are temporarily at a loss for what to do, it seems that they can only quarrel like this.

Maybe the solution to the problem has come...

Yes, the solution to the problem came to me soon...

“Maybe we can work with Google, IBM, and Microsoft to host a world-class quantum computing technology conference by these technology companies!
Then invite Qiao Yu to participate. If he agrees to come, then our chance will come. We can keep him in the United States!"

Jack looked at the person who gave him the idea as if he were a fool, and said unhappily, "He only stayed at the International Mathematicians Conference for two days and then left! What makes you think he would accept such an invitation?
Even if he doesn't have so many ideas, Qiao Yu's brain is now a national treasure! Do you think China can let him attend this unprecedented and sudden meeting?"

"Okay, Jack, you can't say that! The Quantum Computing Conference is held every year, not just this year. And let's open our minds. What if it's not held in the United States?"

After hearing what the chief of staff said, Jack was silent for a moment, thought about it, then shook his head and said, "It's still difficult! As long as it's in the West, I think it's difficult!"

"You can give it a try. It doesn't have to be in the West. Pick a place where the other party can feel safe! It's indeed difficult in China, but if you change to any other place in the world, there are opportunities!"

Hearing this, Jack nodded reluctantly and said, "Okay, that does sound like a solution. So the question is, where should we choose?"

(End of this chapter)