Back to the 80s Machinery Factory

Chapter 386 Dormitory Mini-Class

Teacher Lian nodded: "Go on."

Chen Luyang didn't know if what she said was right or wrong, but everyone had stood up and hundreds of eyes were staring at her.

Even if it's wrong, you have to grit your teeth and keep going.

“And plastic sandals,” Chen Luyang said. “Especially in the urban-rural fringe areas, when prices rise, people will turn to buying canvas shoes or straw sandals.”

"And canned goods. Especially dried fruit and canned fish, people buy less when prices go up and stock up when prices go down. The market is very sensitive to prices."

Teacher Lian's expression remained ambiguous as she continued, "What about those with low price elasticity?"

"Salt," Chen Luyang answered without hesitation. "Even if the price goes up, everyone will still buy it."

"We also have to buy honeycomb briquettes for heating in the north during winter. If we don't buy them, we'll freeze to death. We have no choice."

Hearing Chen Luyang's answer, Teacher Lian picked up the chalk, turned sideways, and wrote a few Chinese characters on the blackboard:
"Cigarettes, canned food, honeycomb briquettes."

"Okay, please sit down." Teacher Lian gestured for Chen Luyang to sit down.

He slowly put down the chalk, turned around and scanned the classroom, his gaze penetrating, as if trying to see into the heart of every student's expression.

"Economics is not about abstract concepts, but about understanding how people make choices when resources are limited."

"If the price of something changes, people will stop buying it—that's called high elasticity; if the price of something increases by 50 cents or a dollar, people will grit their teeth and pay up—that's called low elasticity."

He tapped the blackboard lightly with his knuckles: "Cigarettes are a hobby; canned food is a substitute; honeycomb briquettes are a necessity for survival."

The classroom was completely silent.

Many students suddenly seemed to be awakened and began to quickly write down real-life examples in their notebooks such as "cigarettes = high elasticity" and "coal = low elasticity".

Teacher Lian said, "There are some truths to this. Even if Samuelson wrote five pages, you might not understand them. But if you stand at the street corner and observe who is buying candy, who is picking out vegetables, and who is hesitating while holding their wallet, you will understand."

"So what affects elasticity?"

Just as Teacher Lian finished asking the question, several voices rang out in the classroom:

"It's a demand!"

"It's an alternative!"

Teacher Lian affirmed, "Yes, it is a need."

"If supply is inelastic, then product quality is nonexistent. This leads to the point I want to make today:"

Why did Soviet tractor factories produce mostly scrap metal?

These words caused an uproar in the classroom.

When the Soviet Union was mentioned, Teacher Lian's face lit up with passion: "Under the planned economy, there was no price mechanism. If the higher-ups said they would build 10,000 tractors this year, the lower-ups would actually build them."

Whether anyone buys it or not is unimportant.

"Who will buy it? Whether it will even work after they buy it is even less important."

"So the result is that a car is a car, and iron is iron, but a bunch of waste is produced and takes up space."

As Teacher Lian spoke, she slapped the thick, blue-covered English original book she had brought to the classroom, raising an eyebrow as she said:
"The West says this is a 'rigid structure' where supply is not accountable for demand."

He raised his head again and looked at the whole class:

“And we say that this is the price of a lack of market signals.”

Teacher Lian's words were like a key, unlocking the previously vague ideas in the students' minds.

Although we have now entered a period of reform and opening up, such blatant and sharp public expression of ideas is like seeing the ocean on flat ground or a mountain in a deep valley to these students from all over the country.

"What is a market economy? It's a market economy where some people grow vegetables and others buy them, and prices fluctuate because they're tied together by an invisible thread."

"Instead of issuing orders from above to build 100,000 tractors, regardless of whether anyone uses them or whether there is land to cultivate them, and they end up piling up in warehouses and turning into a pile of scrap metal."

The teacher seemed to give the students absolutely no time to breathe or react, delivering wave after wave of thoughts and words:

"The Soviet Union's scrap metal problem is not just a problem of the Soviet Union, nor of any particular country; it's a question we all need to answer."

"When resources no longer follow demand but instead obey wrong information, they become waste."

……

"get out of class is over!"

As the bell rang, the students in the classroom seemed to be startled awake, reluctantly waking up from Teacher Lian's lesson.

Many students swarmed around the podium, asking questions about the knowledge they hadn't understood in class.

Chen Luyang also wanted to ask.

But he was more curious about what book Teacher Lian had brought.

Taking advantage of his height, Chen Luyang's 5.0 vision made a quick glance!
Economics: An Introductory Analysis——Paul A. Samuelson
"Samuelsonian economics".

Chen Luyang wrote down the book title and then went to the library.

quickly,

Chen Luyang found the book in the library.

Compared to other books, the covers and paper of these foreign language books are much cleaner.

After all, most people's English proficiency is not very high.

Few people read these kinds of specialized books, mainly because they can't understand them.

But for Chen Luyang...

Knowledge is like taking a small shovel and digging and digging in a small garden until you find it.

As for that small shovel, it was a professional English dictionary issued by the school.

Chen Luyang flipped through it briefly; although this professional English dictionary was quite comprehensive,

But since it's a dictionary edited by the school itself, its main purpose is to facilitate students' learning, so it includes more core vocabulary.

The vocabulary covered is still somewhat limited.

Just to be on the safe side, Chen Luyang found several thick economics glossary books in the library before settling into a good spot and burying himself in them.

While Chen Luyang was diligently studying the original text,

Other students also used their own unique abilities to achieve their goals.

Some of the more persuasive ones have already asked upperclassmen (sophomores, juniors, and seniors) to borrow notes and materials.

Unfortunately, there are too many monks and not enough meat.
So, with those few notebooks, everyone passed them around, copying from one to another. Until the second class, many people still hadn't copied anything.

Dorm 421
When Chen Luyang returned to his dormitory from the library with his backpack, his roommates were either reading on the kang (a heated brick bed) or writing furiously at their desks.

Seeing Chen Luyang return, Jiang Feng, sitting at the table, didn't even look up and said:

"Xiao Chen, I only have half a page left to copy. You can copy it after I finish."

Chen Luyang leaned closer curiously: "What are you copying?"

Jiang Feng said, "These are my notes! They were borrowed from a senior in the girls' dormitory. After I finished copying them, my classmates borrowed them. I have to return them right away."

Oops...

How many hands did this notebook go through?

Chen Luyang looked down curiously. As she looked, she chuckled.

"In this sentence, 'precent' should be 'percent', and 'quality demanded' is incorrect; it should be 'quantity demanded.' It refers to the percentage change in demand, not the quality."

Jiang Feng stopped writing: "Huh?"

Chen Luyang picked up the pencil next to her and wrote the correct words on the paper. She said, "These two words are quite similar. 'Quantity' refers to the quantity, while 'quality' refers to the quality. When we talk about elasticity, we are referring to the magnitude of changes in demand, not whether the product is good or not."

This kind of mistake probably wasn't made by a second-year student; it was likely that some classmate misspelled a word while copying notes.

As new students were starting school, everyone was in a hurry to take notes, and that's how they ended up making mistakes in Jiang Feng's notebook.

Hearing this,

Tao Runze, Pan Yu, and the others couldn't sit still any longer.

"Where's the mistake? Let me see?"

Wu Dechen, wearing cloth shoes and holding a notebook he had just finished copying, ran over to take a look.

"here."

Chen Luyang pointed to the notebook, looked at it, and then pointed out another mistake.

"And this sentence: Price elasticity is the slope of demand."

Zhang Dongliang, standing to the side, wondered, "There's nothing wrong with that sentence, right? Teacher Lian said that the slope of the demand curve is elasticity."

Chen Luyang didn't rush to answer. Instead, she took a pencil from the drawer, bent down, and wrote a correction under the line of text.

Then I wrote and explained at the same time:
“Look, this price elasticity is actually ‘price elasticity’. What it really wants to measure is not how steep the line is, but rather the ‘proportion of change in quantity demanded’ when the price changes.”

"Samuelson's book makes it clear: elasticity measures the degree of response, not the geometric slope."

"For example, if the price of cigarettes increases by one cent, the number of people buying cigarettes will decrease by half. What does this show? It shows that people are particularly sensitive to prices, so the price elasticity is high. But this is not a matter of how steep the line is, but a matter of 'proportion'. Samuelson wrote it very clearly in his original book: Price elasticity = percentage change in quantity demanded ÷ percentage change in price."

"So it's not a slope—not a slope in the geometric sense. It should be Elasticity, or more precisely, Price Elasticity of Demand."

Pan Yu, who was standing next to her, couldn't help but ask, "How do you know so much about this?"

Chen Luyang glanced at Pan Yu shyly: "I just browsed some books in the library and looked at the original textbooks."

As she spoke, Chen Luyang took out the "Economics" textbook she had borrowed from the library from her bag and showed everyone the English she had just corrected for Jiang Feng's notes.

"The original version?" Pan Yu was taken aback. "Even the original English textbook that the teacher used in class?"

Seeing Chen Luyang nod, Jiang Feng looked incredulous: "That thing is all in English! You can understand it?"

"I don't understand it all, and it's a bit difficult to comprehend it." Chen Luyang said seriously, "Fortunately, the library has a fairly complete dictionary of professional terms, otherwise it would take some effort to understand the theory if I don't understand the terminology."

“This isn’t an easy question, brother…” Wu Dechen rubbed his forehead, looking at Chen Luyang, the youngest in the dormitory, and suddenly felt a chill run down his spine.

"We can't even understand English-Chinese dictionaries, yet you can read original works on economics..."

After saying that, without waiting for Chen Luyang to be modest,

The five men pinned Chen Luyang to the table.

"Xiao Chen, can you help us check if there are any other mistakes?"

As Tao Runze spoke, he peeled two oranges for Chen Luyang and placed them beside her.
"We don't know the original text, so please help us correct any mistakes we made."

"Yes, yes, Xiao Chen, please take a look."

Several older brothers surrounded Chen Luyang, half pleading and coaxing her to correct her mistakes.

None of them had any background in economics, and the few notes they had were entirely based on their class notes and notes from older students.

If you learn something wrong and it affects your future studies, it would be a huge waste.

"Let me take a look."

Chen Luyang did not refuse.

He picked up a pencil and opened the original text of "Economics".

Like a teacher grading homework, they reviewed the original text while circling and correcting each student's notes.

While we were making changes, the dormitory doors were knocked on.

Then, meteorologist Zhao Lixin pushed open the door and walked in: "Come on! We agreed to go to the grove to practice our foreign languages ​​tonight, why aren't you coming out?"

Upon hearing this, Chen Luyang stopped using her pencil to correct mistakes and asked curiously, "What kind of activity is the grove?"

Zhao Lixin said, "Le Gen'er found out that English majors go to the grove to practice their spoken English at night, so we thought we'd go and learn from them tonight... wait, what are you guys doing here?"

"I was just about to come find you!" Jiang Feng put his arm around Zhao Lixin's shoulder and said, "We're not going to practice English tonight. There were some mistakes in the notes we copied before, and Xiao Chen is correcting them for us!"

Zhao Lixin immediately became serious: "Wrong? What's wrong?"

He looked down at the contents of the notes with suspicion, and then at the explanations in the notes that Chen Luyang had revised.

Then, Zhao Lixin pulled out a professional English dictionary from his bag, which he had prepared for memorizing in the grove.

A quick check revealed...
"Thank goodness I came!" Zhao Lixin said, and immediately rushed out like a whirlwind.

When he ran back, a small group of students from the Economics Department (1) followed behind him.

Chen Luyang: ...?
Tao Runze and others: ...?
What the hell are you doing?

The medical team doctor, Luo Jianmin, chuckled sheepishly: "Well, we heard from Lixin that the Literature Committee is here grading everyone's notes. We thought we'd come over and ask the Literature Committee to help us with that too!"

Chen Luyang was stunned.

He could manage to revise the notes a few times, one, two, three, four, five, six times.

With over a dozen people coming, how is he supposed to sleep?!
Seeing Chen Luyang's concerns, film projectionist Han Zhihui quickly said, "Wenwei, we're all copying from the same notebook. If there's a mistake, just tell us, and we'll correct it ourselves."

Zheng Zhe squinted his small eyes and nodded: "Yes, we'll change it ourselves."

Chen Luyang: ...Okay!
Seeing that Chen Luyang had agreed, the group of people immediately squeezed into the house happily.

Little Fatty Zheng Zhe is someone who never suffers a loss.

Despite his chubby appearance, he is surprisingly agile.

Almost the instant Chen Luyang agreed, he turned around and grabbed the stool in front of the dormitory desk, plopped down on it, and secured a convenient spot for himself to write.

Those who were quick on their feet rushed to sit on the bed.

There was no room on the bed, so I stood up.

If there's nowhere to stand and you can't get inside, just stick it to the doorway.

Looking at the people in the room, Chen Luyang was momentarily at a loss.

How did it suddenly become like this?!
Fortunately, Professor Lian only covered the first chapter on price elasticity, so everyone didn't take many notes and there weren't many mistakes.

More often than not, the errors lie in the copying of technical terms and words.

“The ‘perfectly elastic’ is completely inelastic. As soon as the price moves, the demand changes infinitely. But ‘perfectly inelastic’ is ‘buy regardless of whether the price goes up or down’.”

As Chen Luyang spoke, she opened the original text of "Economics," read out a series of English phrases, and explained:
"The core definition in Samuelson's economics is that a perfectly elastic demand curve is horizontal, meaning that even if the price increases by only a small amount, the quantity demanded will drop to zero. A perfectly inelastic demand curve is vertical, meaning that the quantity demanded remains constant regardless of price changes."

Before he could finish speaking, a shout came from outside the door:
“Wenwei, speak slowly, I didn’t write it down.”

(End of this chapter)