Li Yu is currently with Fan Xiren in Rongbaozhai, which specializes in selling the Four Treasures of the Study.
He originally wanted to ask him about a place to buy some manuscript paper, but he didn't expect Fan Xiren to directly drag him here!
What an international joke, how can I afford this!
Li Yu had seen Rongbaozhai when he went to Liulichang with a wealthy classmate before. It occupied almost half of Liulichang West Street. The things inside can be said to be quite high-end, and any Chinese painting would be counted in tens of thousands.
Speaking of which, Rongbaozhai has been operating the Four Treasures of the Study for three to four hundred years. It is an absolutely time-honored brand. Its original name was Songzhuzhai.
During the Opium War, Songzhuzhai was severely damaged by the war, but the emaciated camel was bigger than the horse, and it had a lot of traffic in the literary circle. So the original store name "Songzhuzhai" was changed to "Rongbaozhai", and Lu Runxiang, the great calligrapher of the Tongzhi period, was invited to come up with three characters for the store name, and soon the business was booming.
The stuff at Rongbaozhai is good, but it’s so expensive!
Fan Xiren is a kid from a rich family and doesn't care about money. When he walked in, he took a fancy to the rice paper placed on the shelf.
"Boss, how do you sell this ream of paper (500 pieces)?"
The receptionist replied: "Sir, you have good eyesight. The rice paper you are holding is produced in Jingxian County, Anhui Province. It just arrived yesterday. It is the best rice paper in our store. It only costs 1,300 yuan per order."
Fan Xiren touched the paper and said, "It is indeed a good thing. Is the price still negotiable?"
The clerk had a sharp eye, and he could tell at a glance that Fan Xiren definitely wanted it, so he immediately started selling: "Sir, the land transportation is not smooth now, and there are not many Haosheng brochures that can be shipped. If you don't take it with me today, , maybe it will be gone tomorrow.”
Fan Xiren only took a few seconds to make up his mind: "Okay, I want this paper."
Really bad at bargaining!
The clerk immediately wrapped him up and said sweetly: "I wish the guest officer will improve his studies and go to high school as soon as possible."
"High school or middle school. I'm not going to take the imperial examination now. If I can get into the Capital University, it's high school."
Only then did Fan Xiren realize that Li Yu was standing next to him and didn't move at all, "What's wrong, Brother Li, this is the best store in the capital."
Just because this is the best store!
Li Yu thought to himself that 500 pieces of paper would be close to one tael of silver, which would be enough for him to eat mutton noodles for a month! His current net worth is only 2 taels of silver, but he asked Ding Haoliang to advance it in advance. He can't spend half of it just to buy some paper.
He instantly understood the reason why Zeng Guofan spent 4,000 yuan to buy "The Complete Book of Zhu Xi".
Of course, the diary master also records the huge expense of paper. In his diary, he once recorded that he spent 2,000 pieces of paper to buy a post.
——What about "poor" scholars? It was not easy to be a scholar in ancient times!
Li Yu hesitated and said, "I...want to buy smaller and thicker manuscript paper."
The clerk was very clever and said immediately: "Sir, do you want letter paper? Of course we have it in our store! Look at this, it is high-quality letter paper, produced in Tianjin, Zhili Province, and costs 1,400 pieces per ream."
Well, this one is more expensive because of its smaller size.
Li Yu looked confused: "Is there any manuscript paper with smaller grid spacing and arranged horizontally?"
"The guest wants paper from foreigners!" said the waiter, who seemed to be less enthusiastic than before. "We don't have anything from foreigners in our store."
Li Yu was relieved, and he didn't know the price, if any.
Fan Xiren felt it was a pity and advised: "Brother Li, actually the thickness of the letter paper is also acceptable. After all, it belongs to Rongbaozhai..."
Li Yu waved his hand quickly: "Thank you, brother, I'm just used to it."
The two of them visited a few more stores, but couldn't find one that sold this type of manuscript paper. Not only the manuscript paper, but also the pens were not for sale.
There was no other way, so Li Yu had to take advantage of the time when the Tongwen Library was empty and went there to find some. Most of them were used by foreign teachers in the past, so I picked up a small stack of them.
As for the pen, fortunately I still have a pencil.
Returning to the Third West Courtyard of Prince Qing's Mansion, Li Yu sat at the table and began to think carefully about what kind of article he wanted to write.
Last year, in 1901, the first-ever Nobel Prize had just been awarded. The physics prize was awarded to Röntgen for his discovery of X-rays.
Nowadays, the most popular thing in Western academic circles is rays. Almost all universities and laboratories have built X-ray machines. Take pictures of this and that.
It's so interesting to pat people and swipe them to reveal a skeleton!
Li Yu decided to start with it and get a wave of traffic!
Spreading out the manuscript paper, Li Yu held the pencil and quickly started writing in beautiful English handwriting:
"X-rays were discovered six years ago. As a pioneer discovery of radioactivity, they are great. Here, I would like to make the following analysis of the properties of X-rays from my personal point of view."
"..."
Even though everyone knows about X-rays now, the top scientists at that time didn't know what X-rays were, or even whether they were electromagnetic waves or particles.
Moreover, at this time, the atomic model had not yet been released, and even the original plum pudding model had not been born, so it was impossible to fundamentally explain the cause of X-rays. Li Yu could only write about its related properties in a popular way.
In the article, he first discussed the principle of X-ray imaging, which is because the density of human tissue is different and the degree of absorption of X-rays is different.
Then I wrote in detail how to make a simple X-ray equipment and made a sketch.
These are acceptable to everyone and are defensible.
Then he used the "existing theories" at the time, such as Maxwell's equations and the theories of Faraday and others, to conduct deductions and predicted that X-rays were an electromagnetic wave!
Li Yu also calculated the frequency and wavelength of X-rays, and gave a method on how to verify his theory: Since the extremely high frequency of X-rays results in extremely short wavelengths, he proposed that the neatly arranged atoms in the crystal can be used to conduct diffraction experiments.
Finally, Li Yuze focused on explaining the harm of X-rays, because at that time no one really knew how harmful its powerful energy could be to the human body.
He strongly appealed to all scientific researchers to control the direction of rays as much as possible to avoid irradiating the human body!
All in all, it was so eloquent that I had written twenty or thirty thousand words without even realizing it.
Fortunately, these things are not difficult for him. After all, any high school student now knows that X-rays are electromagnetic waves. However, it is more troublesome to verify and derive them. He also has to avoid the atomic model theory as much as possible, so it took a lot of time. A lot of space.
After Li Yu finished the manuscript, he was very satisfied with the article in his hand. He copied it again in beautiful continuous printing. It was almost evening when he finished it.
