The Fiery Era: Starting from Longxugou

"Da—Nie—Sibaxi—Ba—Davari Shi… Haha, it really does sound a bit like an old monk chanting sutras. Shi'an, you really know how to describe things!"

Listening to his friend's complaints, Wang Zhijie tried to spell out a few sentences in Russian, laughed heartily, and walked into the classroom with his arm around Zhao Shi'an's shoulder.

"Hey! I was just describing it, don't make things up!"

Zhao Shi'an quickly gave a few instructions, afraid that the Russian teacher would hear him. Otherwise, if the teacher called on him to answer questions every day in class, he would be in big trouble.

He can't even learn English well, let alone Russian.

Russian is the sixth most difficult language to learn in the world, which shows how challenging it is.

Before his time travel, he had seen scenes of shouting "Hurrah" on short videos, knew the meaning of "Davarishi," but did not know how to write it, and knew nothing about other Russian languages.

"Don't worry! I'm tight-lipped! It's not just us who find Russian difficult; everyone in the class says so!"

Seeing his friend's worried expression, Wang Zhijie immediately made a promise.

"Then I'm relieved!"

Zhao Shi'an felt much relieved upon hearing this. After sitting down, he glanced at the blackboard and noticed that the first class in the afternoon was history, and the third class was Russian.

Seeing the class schedule, Zhao Shi'an breathed a slight sigh of relief; he was really afraid that the first class would be Russian.

Before class started, I quickly tidied up my desk and found that besides books, all my belongings consisted of a fountain pen, a few pencils, half an eraser, and a bottle of blue-black ink.

Zhao Shi'an saw the fountain pen that the original owner had treasured so much, picked it up casually, opened the cap, examined it, and felt its heavy weight in his hand.

The pen in front of me is called a Dazhong brand fountain pen, which was produced by the Shanghai Dazhong Fountain Pen Factory.

This pen was bought by his family at great expense when he was admitted to junior high school. To prevent it from being lost, he specially carved the character "世" (world) on the black hard rubber barrel with a knife. The carving was not deep and could not be seen unless you looked closely. If it was lost, he could recognize it by applying blue ink to the barrel.

Other fountain pens in the same price range, such as Huafu and Jinxing, are more expensive. Mass-market fountain pens are the kind that most students from poor families can afford. Although there are cheaper fountain pens, their quality is much worse, and very few people buy them.

Popular fountain pens became a nationwide sensation and a trend among students because of the catchphrase, "Popular pens, for everyone, easy to use and cheap!"

After examining it carefully for a while, Zhao Shi'an realized that the pen in front of him was almost identical to the pen he would use decades later.

They all have exposed nibs, meaning the nibs are completely exposed and ink is applied by squeezing the rubber tube.

After writing a few words, Zhao Shi'an noticed that even the thickness of the characters was very similar.

The difference is that the pens of this era are made of more substantial materials, with thicker barrels, making them much more durable than the cheap plastic pens he used as a child.

This fountain pen has never had its nib replaced since its original owner started junior high school, and it still writes very smoothly.

After fiddling with the pen in his hand for a while, the school bell rang. Zhao Shi'an capped the pen and took out his history book to start reading.

Soon after, the teacher entered the classroom and began the lesson.

"Class, last lesson we learned about the Northern Expedition, and this lesson we will learn about the Long March..."

While listening to the lectures, Zhao Shi'an occasionally flipped through the textbook and discovered that there was only one textbook for the first year of high school history. The first semester started with the Opium War, followed by the Taiping Rebellion, the Hundred Days' Reform, the Boxer Rebellion, and finally ended with the Xinhai Revolution.

This semester begins with the May Fourth Movement, followed by the founding of the Party, the Northern Expedition, the Long March, the War of Resistance Against Japan, and the War of Liberation, culminating in the founding of the People's Republic of China and the recovery of the national economy.

Looking at the contents of the catalog, I've learned about everything except for the national economic recovery.

Although I haven't studied the section on national economic recovery, the book mentions stabilizing prices through the silver dollar war and the rice and cotton war, which explains the severe price surge in the early days of the People's Republic of China.

In class, the history teacher drew on a wide range of sources, effortlessly recounting various anecdotes about the Long March. The students listened with great interest, and even after the class ended, they were still somewhat reluctant to leave.

After class, Zhao Shi'an put away his history book and, seeing that the second period was math, took out his math book and started reading.

There are two textbooks for high school mathematics: one is "High School Algebra" and the other is "Plane Trigonometry".

When he saw the title "Plane Trigonometry," he wondered, "Isn't this something you learn in junior high school? How come it's a high school textbook?"

Unconvinced, he carefully studied the textbooks and discovered that they were all published by the People's Education Press and compiled according to the Soviet ten-year textbook system.

Upon seeing this, Zhao Shi'an recalled the "Publisher's Note" on the title page of his chemistry textbook that morning, which mentioned at the outset that high school algebra, plane geometry, and analytic geometry all used Soviet ten-year textbooks.

Thinking about all this, and then seeing the information on the cover, Zhao Shi'an opened the table of contents and started reading. The table of contents read: Plane Geometry (Part 2), Plane Trigonometry, Algebra (Continued).

Upon seeing this, he became even more certain that this was knowledge he had learned in junior high school.

He then looked up the math textbook from the first semester of his first year of high school and found that the textbook covered algebra and plane geometry (Part 1).

After reviewing the entire table of contents for first-year high school mathematics, Zhao Shi'an was convinced that the mathematics taught in modern junior high schools was more in-depth than that of this era.

He became even more convinced when he saw rational numbers, irrational numbers, real numbers, algebraic expressions, polynomials, rational expressions, radicals, quadratic equations in one variable, systems of quadratic equations in two variables, and inequalities in the algebra section!

In addition, there are lines, angles, and parallel lines in plane geometry.

Congruence, similarity, and the Pythagorean theorem in triangles; center, radius, chord, and arc of quadrilaterals, polygons, and circles.

Upon seeing this content, Zhao Shi'an found it both amusing and exasperating.

Even though he had graduated many years ago and his knowledge and abilities were far from their peak in his senior year of high school, he still found it incredible when he learned that this was a high school math textbook.

After reading both math textbooks, I felt like I was just reviewing junior high school math.

The only slightly challenging parts of the entire textbook are the exponents, logarithms, quadratic functions and quadratic inequalities, and sequences in Algebra (continued).

Zhao Shi'an flipped through the textbook and found that the difficult points were explained in a very simple way. The exponent and logarithm were explained in a very basic way, and the arithmetic and geometric sequences involved in the sequence were also very simple!

Although the math curriculum for first-year high school students in modern education is relatively simple, it is still several times more difficult than the math curriculum for high school students in this era.

After finishing the math book, Zhao Shi'an felt like looking at books for other subjects.

First-year high school math was too basic for him, the morning chemistry was also very simple, and the history class wasn't difficult either. If the other subjects were at this level...

Then there's no need to waste any more time; skipping a grade as soon as possible is the right thing to do!

His original plan was to take the college entrance examination this year, and after getting into university, he would conduct related breeding research to provide his family with high-yield fruit and vegetable seeds.

The money earned by his family and the agricultural cooperative also brought him many benefits.

With good results, he will receive preferential treatment from the school's resources. It is believed that as he continues to produce results, he will be able to access and mobilize more resources.

In this way, we can also contribute during difficult times!