Courtyard House: Initial Donation of 50 Million

While Sha Zhu was busily preparing for his wedding, immersed in the joy and busyness of starting a family with Yu Li, Wang Huanbo in the west courtyard was quietly driving a technological revolution that would profoundly change the country and even the world from another dimension. Two lines, one leading to the most simple human life and family happiness, and the other pointing to the most cutting-edge technological wave and future blueprint, ran parallel in the courtyard of No. 95 Nanluoguxiang, Beijing, in the late summer and early autumn of 1958, yet they subtly intersected.

Let's start with Sha Zhu.

Ever since Yu Li officially visited the Yu family and received their approval, Sha Zhu has been like a clockwork toy, full of energy. The wedding is tentatively scheduled for early November, when the weather is pleasantly cool. Although the time seems ample, Sha Zhu can't wait to bring his wife home tomorrow. He has begun to devote himself to the wedding preparations with unprecedented enthusiasm and meticulousness, and his earnestness has amazed He Yushui.

"Brother, this isn't just about getting married, it's more like you're working on a technical breakthrough at the factory!" He Yushui couldn't help but tease Sha Zhu as he checked off the items to be purchased one by one in a small notebook.

"What do you know? This is a once-in-a-lifetime event, how can you be careless?" Sha Zhu didn't even look up, his slightly rough fingers, used to holding a spatula, carefully ran across the paper. "A bicycle, we have to buy one! Forever or Phoenix, new one! A sewing machine, Bee brand, Yu Li said her mother can sew, this will be convenient! A watch... Shanghai brand, all-steel waterproof, one for men and one for women! A radio, Red Lantern brand, with a record player, so we can listen to operas!" These are the most sought-after "three turns and one sound" (bicycle, sewing machine, watch, radio) or their variations, the "hard currency" that young people dream of getting married, and also a symbol of family strength.

Besides these large items, there were even more miscellaneous things. How many new quilts did he need, and what patterns? How many sets of new clothes did he need, and what fabrics? Pots and pans, thermos flasks, washbasins, chamber pots… the list filled several pages. Sha Zhu had a high salary and savings, plus the "little treasury" He Daqing had secretly saved for emergencies, so while buying these things was painful, he could manage. Every few days, he would take his coupons and money to department stores, trust shops, and even the black market, bringing back items one by one. His grass-green Red Star car gradually filled the back seat and trunk with enamel basins with double happiness symbols, thermos flasks printed with peonies, and bright red silk quilt covers…

The neighbors in the courtyard reacted in various ways to the sight of Sha Zhu's grand construction project. Uncle Yan Bugui, the third uncle, counted on his fingers that Sha Zhu's spending would easily cost seven or eight hundred yuan, equivalent to two years of his salary. He felt a mix of envy and sourness, but outwardly praised him to everyone he met: "Sha Zhu is serious this time! Look at this, he's going to treat his wife like a goddess! Good thing, now that she's married, things will be stable."

Xu Damao's sourness practically overflowed the courtyard. He was also preparing for his National Day wedding, but compared to Sha Zhu's extravagant "three turns and one sound" (a complete set of luxury appliances), his preparations seemed rather meager. Qin Jingru was a country girl, and her dowry wasn't high, but Xu Damao loved to show off. He originally wanted to get a bicycle to make a good impression, but bicycle tickets were too difficult to obtain. Although his father, Xu Fugui, was an old projectionist with some connections, he couldn't get one anytime soon. Seeing Sha Zhu driving back with gifts every day, Xu Damao felt like he was being scratched by a cat. He could only console himself: "Hmph, stupid fool, all he does is squander his money! Is getting a wife really that big of a deal? Once I'm married, I'll take Jingru for a drive every day and make him so jealous!"

Inside the Jia family house, Jia Zhangshi's face was as long as a donkey's. Watching the laughter and sounds of things being moved emanating from Sha Zhu's room in the middle courtyard, and then looking at her own family's still impoverished state despite a glimmer of hope (Jia Dongxu was about to graduate from vocational school), a surge of anger rose within her. Especially when she saw Yu Li occasionally come over (Sha Zhu would pick her up), dressed in new clothes, carrying a box of snacks, chatting and laughing with Sha Zhu as they entered the house, Jia Zhangshi couldn't help but mutter curses from inside: "Pah! That slut, she's not even married yet, and she's already sneaking into a man's room! Shameless! Sha Zhu is heartless too. Before, when he had some good food, he would at least help us out, but now that he has a wife, he's forgotten his mother (even though Sha Zhu isn't her son), he's completely wasted on that vixen! Dongxu, you'd better strive to become a technician soon, earn a high salary, and let your mother enjoy life, and make those two dogs furious!"

Qin Huairu listened to her mother-in-law's curses, silently washing clothes by the door, her heart filled with mixed emotions. It would be a lie to say she wasn't envious. Yu Li was young, educated, and beautiful; now she had found a man like Sha Zhu, who was well-off, and was about to live the good life Qin Huairu had once longed for but could never attain. As for herself, although Dongxu had a promising future, it hadn't yet materialized; her family was still poor, her mother-in-law was still mean, and she still had a half-grown son, a young child, and a baby in her belly to raise… She shook the water droplets from her hands and continued scrubbing the clothes vigorously, kneading all her resentment and bitterness into the soapy foam.

Yi Zhonghai now lives in an apartment most of the time. When he occasionally comes back and sees Sha Zhu busy at work, he always smiles with satisfaction and sometimes gives him a few pointers: "Yu Zhu, have you found a carpenter to make the furniture? I know an old master craftsman who is very skilled, but he's a bit stubborn. However, his products are of high quality." "For curtains and bedding, you can ask your aunt for advice. She has a good eye." He genuinely hopes that Sha Zhu can settle down and get on the right track, which would at least alleviate some of his past guilt.

Liu Haizhong, acting like an old man, would stroll around Sha Zhu's house with his hands behind his back. Whenever Sha Zhu bought something new, he'd offer his critique: "This sewing machine, the Bee brand, is alright, just not as famous as the Butterfly brand. This radio, with its record player, is good; you can listen to the news and have some entertainment. Sha Zhu, now that you're married, you're an adult. You should set a good example at the factory, stop laughing and joking all the time." Sha Zhu would usually just grunt and agree, but in his heart he'd think: Is it any of your business?

Sha Zhu ignored all the envious, jealous, concerned, or lecturing glances and comments. His heart was burning with a warm fire, filled with anticipation for Yu Li and their future life together. He worked tirelessly in the cafeteria during the day and then devoted his free time to wedding preparations, brimming with boundless energy. Yu Li wasn't idle either. Besides her job, with her mother's help, she began sewing their wedding clothes and bedding, and learning household chores. They saw each other less frequently than before, but their feelings for each other deepened and solidified as they worked towards their shared goal.

The gaze shifts to the west courtyard. The atmosphere here is completely different from the mundane bustle of the wedding preparations in the central courtyard; it is a quiet yet passionate atmosphere belonging to the pioneers.

Wang Huanbo's room was no longer that of an ordinary residence; it resembled a miniature laboratory and command center for cutting-edge technology. The bookshelves against the wall were crammed with technical books, blueprints, and internal documents in both Chinese and English. A large drawing board was covered with enormous blueprints filled with complex symbols and connecting lines. On the table, besides the iconic Red Lantern brand radio, modified with "American technology," lay a massive machine—the prototype, or rather, a simplified version, of the "Dragon Soaring No. 1" electronic computer produced by the Red Star Factory.

This machine differed slightly from the standard "Dragon One" distributed to various research institutions. It was more "exposed," with the side panel of the chassis open, revealing neatly arranged transistor modules, a hand-crafted "Loongson" processor (its clock speed even slightly exceeded the mass-produced version's 550Hz, reaching an experimental 600Hz), an expanded 128MB memory module, and several flashing indicator lights. Connected next to it was a larger 18-inch color monitor (prototype), also from the Red Star Electron Tube Factory, displaying constantly scrolling green code and geometric shapes. The keyboard was specially made, featuring some function keys that would later become common. The entire system ran the more advanced "HarmonyOS 1.1" beta operating system.

Wang Huanbo sat in front of the machine, his brow slightly furrowed, his fingers rapidly tapping on the keyboard. Lines of code flowed like a waterfall on the screen. He was debugging a complex communication protocol conversion program.

The emergence and mass deployment of "Longteng-1" has caused a minor "earthquake" in China's top scientific research fields over the past year. When those 150 computers, embodying cutting-edge technology, were secretly and rapidly distributed to research institutes related to the "Two Bombs, One Satellite" project, aerospace departments, key universities, and military research units, they were initially met with curiosity, but more often with suspicion and even resistance.

Scientists and engineers accustomed to abacuses, slide rules, hand-cranked calculators, and even mental arithmetic found themselves somewhat bewildered by this "iron box" with a color screen, requiring keyboard input, and running the unfamiliar "HarmonyOS" operating system. Its operating logic and its programming language (a simplified instruction set and high-level language developed based on the Chinese language) were vastly different from the machine languages ​​or early lexical languages ​​that were popular internationally at the time.

However, when the first batch of urgently trained technicians successfully ran the first program to calculate the trajectory on "Longteng-1", and compressed the amount of calculation that originally required dozens of people to spend weeks or even months to complete into a few hours to obtain more accurate results, all doubts turned into shock and ecstasy.

At a top-secret base in Northwest China, Mr. Deng Jiaxian, responsible for the theoretical calculations of the atomic bomb, stroked the warm chassis of the "Longteng-1" supercomputer. Staring at the results displayed on the screen, which perfectly matched the data he had manually calculated and verified countless times, he was so excited his hands trembled slightly. He said to his colleagues, "With this 'magic calculator,' we can at least advance our original schedule by a year! No, maybe more! This is a national treasure! It's the best 'charge' Comrade Wang Huanbo has given us!"

In his report to higher authorities, Mr. Qian Xuesen specifically mentioned: "...The deployment of the 'Longteng-1' computer has greatly improved the efficiency and accuracy of our department's aerodynamic calculations, ballistic simulations, and control system analysis. Its graphical display function is remarkably effective in visualizing complex flow fields and structural stress distributions. Comrade Wang Huanbo's contribution is no less than adding a top-notch, tireless mathematics and engineering team to our team. I suggest increasing support for the Hongxing Factory and Comrade Wang Huanbo's subsequent research work, as this technology is crucial to the nation's destiny and the future."

Beyond cutting-edge defense, "Longteng-1" has begun to shine in data processing for oil exploration, hydrological calculations for large bridges, model simulations for weather forecasting, and even grid dispatching for large power plants, propelling China's research in these fields forward significantly. Its stability and relatively "user-friendly" interface (compared to other computers of its time) also accelerated the adoption of it by researchers. Although there are only 150 units, each one has become a "computing power core" in its respective field, and new working models and ways of thinking are emerging around them.

But Wang Huanbo's gaze had already turned to a much greater horizon. No matter how powerful a single computer is, it remains an information silo. How could these "Dragon One" computers, scattered across the country and undertaking different missions, be connected to share data, collaborate on computing, and communicate remotely? This idea burned like wildfire in his heart. This was the prototype of the "Internet"—a concept of connecting independent computers into a network. In the original history, ARPANET in the United States wouldn't be fully established until 1969. Now, it was 1958. Wang Huanbo was determined to ignite the spark of the network age in China.

The difficulties he faced were immense. On the hardware front, there was a lack of specialized data switching equipment (the concepts of routers and switches didn't even exist yet). On the software front, a completely new network protocol needed to be defined (a simplified, advanced version of TCP/IP). Most critically, there was the infrastructure—long-distance, stable, and reliable communication lines. At that time, China's telephone network was still very underdeveloped, with low long-distance call connection rates, high noise levels, and narrow bandwidth. Using such telephone lines to transmit computer data? It sounded like a pipe dream.

But Wang Huanbo had his "foundation." His basic network communication knowledge from the Resident Evil world, while severely out of touch with the times, retained the core principles—packet switching, protocol stacks, and addressing mechanisms—which were universal. What he needed to do was design an extremely simplified yet usable network solution, taking into account the actual technological conditions in China in 1958 (primarily analog telephone lines).

On the blueprints in front of him was a preliminary topology diagram: centered on Beijing, it attempted to connect several key units—such as bases in the Northwest, industrial hubs in the Northeast, and research institutes in Shanghai—through existing long-distance telephone trunk lines. Each node required a "Dragon Soaring No. 1" as the host, equipped with a black box (modem prototype) he was designing, called a "signal data machine," to "translate" the computer's digital signals into analog signals that could be transmitted over telephone lines, and then "translate" them back at the other end.

"The signal conversion efficiency is too low... the bit error rate must be frighteningly high." Wang Huanbo rubbed his temples, writing lines of formulas in his notebook, calculating the possible data transmission rate (bps, bits per second) under the current telephone line quality. "I'm afraid initially it can only transmit the simplest text commands and highly compressed numerical data... Graphics? Forget about it. Real-time communication? Even more of a pipe dream. But... as long as the first step is successful, proving that two computers thousands of miles apart can exchange information, that will be a historic breakthrough!"

He could almost see it: in the near future, researchers at the Northwest Base would be able to send computational tasks directly to a computer center in Beijing with even greater computing power (if such a system exists in the future), and the results would be transmitted back. Meteorological data from various locations could be aggregated and analyzed to create more accurate weather maps. Even… in the more distant future, ordinary people would be able to access information from afar through terminals…

The thought made his heart race. He pushed aside the blueprints, walked to the window, and gazed at the old locust tree in the courtyard. The moonlight, like water, poured onto the blue brick floor. The lights were still on in the east wing of the courtyard, and he could faintly hear the laughter of Sha Zhu and He Yushui discussing their marriage, along with the clanging of a carpenter at work (Sha Zhu had hired a carpenter to make new furniture). A mundane, passionate, and vibrant happiness was just a wall away.

Wang Huanbo smiled. What he pursued was a different kind of happiness, a grander possibility concerning the fate of the nation and the future of the people. These two are not contradictory. Sha Zhu built a warm home with delicious food and genuine sincerity; he wove the future of the nation with code and circuits. Both were efforts to make life better.

He returned to his desk and resumed his work. The crisp, resolute tapping of the keyboard rang out again, mingling with the faint sounds of activity coming from next door—the sounds of people busily preparing for a new life—creating a unique, hopeful duet in the autumn of 1958 in the courtyard of No. 95 Nanluoguxiang. On one side were the mundane realities of daily life, weddings and funerals, the most basic human joys and sorrows; on the other, the cutting-edge trends of the times, the interplay of zeros and ones, electricity and magnetism. Together, they formed a vivid portrait of this ancient nation striving forward amidst hardship, creating amidst scarcity, and yearning for connection amidst isolation. And what connected these two ends was perhaps that deep-rooted, undying yearning for a "better life" and a "powerful nation," ingrained in the national blood. Sha Zhu's wedding was imminent, and Wang Huanbo's dream of the internet was also sprouting. This autumn was destined to be extraordinary.