The Fiery Era: Starting from Longxugou

After reading People's Pictorial, Zhao Shi'an picked up a few more newspapers and flipped through them. He found that he had gotten used to the vertical traditional Chinese characters of the newspapers quite well, and he believed that it wouldn't be long before he could fully adapt.

After putting the newspaper back, I continued walking inside and came to the second row of bookshelves. The old-fashioned wooden bookshelves were filled with Soviet books, including "How the Steel Was Tempered," "The Story of Zoya and Shura," and "The Young Guard," which occupied most of the shelves. The spines of the books were yellowed from being touched, and some of the pages were curled.

Of these books, he had only read "How the Steel Was Tempered." The original owner, on the other hand, was very familiar with these books. "The Story of Zoya and Shura" and "The Young Guard" were both based on true stories from the Soviet Patriotic War. The former tells the story of a heroic brother and sister who died on the battlefield to defend their country, while the latter tells the story of a group of Komsomol members participating in the anti-fascist struggle. Both are essential reading for contemporary youth.

At this point, only a few books remained on the bookshelf, indicating their popularity among the students.

Beyond the shelves of Soviet literature, further in, you'll find shelves displaying works by Lu Xun, Mao Dun, Lao She, Zhao Shuli, and others.

Upon seeing "Dragon Beard Ditch" on the bookshelf, Zhao Shi'an picked it up and began to read.

Now, the renovation of Longxugou has been completed for more than two years, the movie of the same name has been released for more than a year, and even this middle school, to some extent, is a supporting facility after the renovation of Longxugou.

After a quick glance, I put the book back in its place and continued walking. The fourth and fifth bookshelves were filled with classical literature, with excerpts from works such as Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, Journey to the West, and Dream of the Red Chamber neatly arranged. Among them, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, and Journey to the West were the most borrowed, and their covers were all a bit torn.

After looking at these, Zhao Shi'an continued walking inside, where the sixth row of bookshelves was filled with popular science books.

Among them are Soviet translations of works such as "100,000 Whys", "Never Sleeps", "Black and White", and "What Time Is It?", all of which were written by the Soviet author Mikhail Ilyin.

"100,000 Whys" needs no introduction; it's still a household name today. I hadn't heard of the other three books, but after picking them up and reading them, I discovered that "Never Sleeps" tells the history of lamps, from campfires and oil lamps to electric lights, illustrating how humanity gradually illuminated the night.

"Black and White" tells the story of words, paper, and books, from ancient stone carvings and bamboo slips to modern printing, recounting the origin of books.

"What Time Is It?" tells the history of clocks, from sundials, water clocks, and hourglasses to mechanical clocks, and explains how humans keep time.

There are also many popular science books in China, such as "Scientific Inventions in Chinese History" written by Qian Weichang, which covers the Four Great Inventions, agriculture, water conservancy, astronomy, mathematics and other topics. It is richly illustrated and easy to understand.

In addition, there is "Astronomical Knowledge" written by astronomer Dai Wensai and "Industry and National Defense" written by Zhou Jiji. Both of these are small blue-covered books published by the All-China Association for Science Popularization. Most of the gold foil on the spine has been worn away, which shows that they were very popular.

As Zhao Shi'an walked and looked around, he discovered that the books from the 1950s were not as scarce as he had imagined, although there were quite a few he had not read.

At the far end of the library, this row is filled with reference books: teaching reference books, Russian-Chinese dictionaries, math and physics handbooks, and geography atlases are all neatly arranged, and there are also several science infographics on the wall.

After browsing around, Zhao Shi'an was about to leave when the setting sun shone through the window, casting a dim, golden beam of light onto the bookshelves. This scene instantly captivated him.

Upon closer inspection, he was surprised to find that it contained first-year high school math.

Zhao Shi'an thought he was seeing things, shook his head, and looked closely before realizing it was a book on high school algebra.

Seeing this, he picked up the "High School Algebra" book from the bookshelf and carefully opened it, only to find that the table of contents was exactly the same as the one he was currently studying.

Upon seeing this book, a thought suddenly popped into his head: Could all the bookshelves be filled with textbooks and teaching reference books?

Although this idea is somewhat absurd, if it were true, wouldn't we no longer need to go to bookstores to read books for free?

Thinking of this possibility, Zhao Shi'an began to search diligently. Soon, he found the complete set of textbooks for the second and third years of high school on the bookshelf. In addition to the high school textbooks, he also found the complete set of textbooks for junior high school.

Seeing that his guess had come true, Zhao Shi'an was excited but also a little amused. What school library uses textbooks as its collection? Isn't that just filling a vacancy with inferior materials?

However, upon seeing the old-fashioned bookshelf, he suddenly realized something.

The entire library has only fourteen bookshelves, each with seven shelves, and each shelf can hold one or two hundred books. At most, each bookshelf can hold a little over a thousand books.

Some bookshelves are not yet full, and the total collection of books is only a little over 10,000, a large portion of which are duplicates.

The bookshelf is filled with complete sets of junior and senior high school textbooks, along with various teaching reference books and other tools, making up more than half of the shelf.

Having so many textbooks and teaching reference books together makes it easier for teachers to prepare lessons and write lesson plans.

This era is different from modern times. With more than 10,000 books, it is considered a relatively large library in the southern part of the city.

Zhao Shi'an didn't hesitate much. Now that he had found a complete set of high school textbooks in the library, he was saving himself the trouble of shamelessly going to the bookstore to borrow books.

What's most surprising is that there are also teaching reference books in the library, which allows him to understand high school knowledge while also keeping track of the teaching scope and the direction of the college entrance examination.

This is much better than going to a bookstore to borrow books!

In the afternoon, he was still worrying about how to obtain a complete set of high school textbooks. Unexpectedly, a trip to the library provided the answer—truly a case of finding something without much effort! It seems he didn't even put in much searching; it should be called: effortless success!

With the teaching materials secured, Zhao Shi'an was very excited. He first pulled out his math textbooks from the second and third years of high school and started reading them.

The math curriculum for the second year of high school is similar to that for the first year, but it goes into more depth.

The second year of high school math still consists of two books: the second volume of "High School Algebra" and "Plane Geometry".

Senior year mathematics covers Solid Geometry and Analytic Geometry.

I did a quick look, and it's clear that mathematics in this era is far less extensive and in-depth than what we learn in modern times. Apart from analytic geometry, which is similar to high school mathematics today, the rest are much simpler just by looking at their names.

Seeing that math was simpler than he had imagined, Zhao Shi'an picked up his physics book again and discovered that the second-year high school physics curriculum included vibrations and waves, and thermodynamics.

The subjects covered in the physics curriculum for senior high school students are: electricity, magnetism, electromagnetic induction, optics, and atomic physics.

After reviewing the physics content for the second and third years of high school, Zhao Shi'an felt much more at ease. If he weren't worried about not having enough time, he would like to read through the entire high school textbook now and then buy a set of past college entrance examination questions to test his level.

Thinking of past college entrance exam questions, Zhao Shi'an started searching carefully on the bookshelf again. The library already had a complete set of textbooks, so finding past college entrance exam questions wasn't an unacceptable thing.

With that in mind, he searched the bookshelf from the top shelf to the bottom shelf several times, but he didn't find anything related to the exam paper.

After searching unsuccessfully multiple times, they finally had to give up.

Although he was somewhat disappointed, Zhao Shi'an was much happier when he thought about finding the complete set of high school textbooks, since the textbooks alone saved him the most time and money!