50s: Starting with a storage ring

Chapter 226 Searching for a Teacher from All Corners of the World
Because much knowledge is scattered among different people, even though Director Xu has a wide circle of friends, he still had to rack his brains to find a suitable teacher to teach Sun Zhiwei.

Sun Zhiwei learns very quickly; he learned everything a teacher taught him in just a few days.

For the next six months, Sun Zhiwei could only focus his main energy on learning foreign languages. Occasionally, when a new teacher came, he would take a few days off to learn the new skills.

By the third month, he was already able to help the translation department translate documents from four countries: Russia, France, Germany, and Japan.

Before summer arrived, the city government helped the department find an office location, a gray building facing north at No. 225 Chaoyangmen Inner Street.

Photo: After the Ministry of Foreign Affairs moved to the new building in 97, this place became the offices of four departments.

The building was big enough that all departments could work together, so Sun Zhiwei started helping with the move again.

This time it was even more outrageous than the last, because the intelligence department had even more documents, all of which were classified. For security reasons, many documents had to be locked in cabinets, and the cabinets had to be moved together, without any outside help.

They say you have to share the good times and the bad. Sun Zhiwei was new here and didn't know anyone except the department head, so he was very enthusiastic about the move.

As a result, he gained recognition among his colleagues because of this move.

The large cabinet filled with documents, which was carried by four people, was moved by Sun Zhiwei all by himself. His efficiency was many times higher than that of the others.

As a result, every department in the office asked him for help, and now everyone in the office knows Sun Zhiwei.

Director Xu was pleased to see him become familiar with his colleagues, since the intelligence department was also responsible for the collection, organization, and analysis of intelligence.

Because no one is proficient in all intelligence projects, it has been impossible to select a teacher specializing in intelligence, so he can only learn from his colleagues piecemeal.

Once he gets to know his colleagues, he will be able to learn a lot about intelligence from them.

Sun Zhiwei quickly understood Director Xu's intentions and began to wander around the various departments within the office.

Clearly, this was with the director's permission; otherwise, he wouldn't even be able to enter the doors of any of the departments within the office.

Since moving to the new building, each branch of the intelligence department has had its own gatekeepers, and you can't get in without a pass.

Furthermore, the passes for each department are not interchangeable, which maximizes the confidentiality of the intelligence department.

Sun Zhiwei was able to enter every department, which means that the pass he had was special.

Each pass that grants access to multiple departments is personally issued by the department head, and those who hold such passes are not ordinary people.

Soon, he learned various methods of intelligence collection, classification, and analysis in different departments, whether it was economic, military, political, or technological.

Some of the intelligence was collected from newspapers outside the company, and some even came from ordinary toy designs.

For example, that American toy that greatly promoted the design of our H submarine.

There are also some news items collected from newspapers, which, if analyzed comprehensively, can yield a lot of intelligence.

For example, if the prices of certain strategic materials in a country's domestic market soar, and this is corroborated by other intelligence, it can be deduced that the other side is preparing for war.

The methods of intelligence gathering and analysis greatly benefited Sun Zhiwei. He gradually absorbed the experience of his colleagues, took notes, and summarized and analyzed the information himself. By November, after nearly half a year of learning, he had mastered 15 of the 20 skills he had initially listed. His instructors came from various industries.

For example, "Business Thinking" was taught by a successful businessman who was undergoing a transformation; "Psychological Coping" was taught by a university psychology professor; "The Art of Makeup" was taught by a makeup artist from a Peking Opera troupe; and "Key Knowledge" was taught by a Western medicine surgeon.

Some programs only teach a small part of the material, like "Wilderness Survival," which is supposed to cover all environments of wilderness survival.

But now that he's in the capital, he can only learn wilderness survival skills for the northern environment from an old hunter in the suburbs.

There is a lack of wilderness survival training in various environments, including the extremely cold climate of Northeast China, coastal island environments, desert environments, mountainous environments of Northwest China, and tropical rainforest environments.

The sheer scale of the project sent chills down his spine.

There was also training in "climbing," including "urban climbing," which was taught to him by a thief that Director Xu found in prison. It is said that the thief's master was Yanzi Li San.

However, "Wilderness Climbing" requires a high-altitude environment, and such an environment and such teachers cannot be found around Beijing.

Sun Zhiwei pondered that he could probably only go to the southwest to look for old hunters or to the southern coast to find those who harvest swallows.

In other words, our great China is vast and rich in resources, and we can find all kinds of geographical environments and people living in them. Otherwise, it would be hard to even imagine. Now it's just a matter of time.

The driving training is only halfway done, and there are still training programs related to airplanes and ships that have not yet been implemented.

However, this kind of training is essential; proficiency in using air and sea transportation is a necessary skill.

However, the cross-service deployment of equipment and personnel is not something that Director Xu can accomplish with just a few words.

There are also some skills he has no idea who to learn from, such as "disguise," a skill that requires a spy to quickly blend into a new environment and be seen as a local.

This is not easy. To perfectly integrate into a new environment, one must not only resemble a local in terms of appearance, hairstyle, clothing, behavior, and dialect.

You should also learn about some local stories, legends, and even rumors.

Otherwise, you might not understand the subtle jokes in the local language during a normal conversation, and everyone else might laugh while you don't, which would be quite jarring.

As seen in some online jokes later on, phrases like "Even if the odd sign doesn't change, the sign depends on the quadrant" and "Imperial Jade Liquor, 180 yuan a cup" were used to find hidden spies.

If this leads to the discovery of a spy, it means that the spy's disguise was incomplete.

There is a legend that before the War of Resistance against Japan, Xiao Rizi had built a village in a remote place where all the Japanese people were disguised as Chinese.

The village lived according to the customs of rural China every day, using this simulated environment to train spies.

Sun Zhiwei didn't know if this was true or false, but this method was worth learning from, at least it could simulate the living environment of various Asian countries.

He had discussed the skill of "disguise" in depth with Director Xu. It's really hard to find a teacher for this skill unless you go to the CIA or KGB to teach it.

(End of this chapter)