From then on, the old lady of the Chen family began to visit the Buddhist hall of her family frequently. She would kneel in front of the Bodhisattva for an hour or two every day, reciting scriptures non-stop and praying for the Bodhisattva's blessing. Her younger son's trip was smooth sailing.
After reciting the sutra, she returned to the living room, put on her glasses, and carefully looked at the photos of well-matched women of the right age sent by the matchmaker one by one.
Chen Muping also began to use oceans and gold to purchase large amounts of pounds on the market in the name of a bank to raise money for his younger brother to study abroad.
Chen Muqiao, the eldest brother like his father, was the busiest. He first visited the consulates general of various countries in Shanghai to inquire about visa applications for his younger brother.
Then I went to Yingtong Jilong Travel Company and wanted to inquire about the method of purchasing international railway tickets.
But he found out a piece of news that was not so wonderful for Chen Muwu:
The Soviet Union army only completely occupied Vladivostok, the terminus of the Trans-Siberian Railway in the Far East, at the end of last year. At this time, the entire railway was still in the process of being repaired and reconstructed and the remaining remaining bandits in the surrounding areas were cleared. Passenger and mail transportation has not yet resumed.
If you want to travel to Europe overland via the Trans-Siberian Railway, you will have to wait until this summer at the earliest.
It had only been more than half a month since he returned from the north. Chen Muwu still had a deep fear of taking a ship on the sea. He had been looking forward to the early opening of the Trans-Siberian Railway so that he could reach Europe by train.
But now that he received this news from his elder brother, he hesitated again.
If he takes a boat from Sihai within a few days, and after a nearly forty-day sea voyage, he can reach Cambridge before the start of the summer semester at the end of April.
If he waits until June or July to go north to Sulian, he will not only have to stay at home for nearly three more months, but will also miss the summer semester and have to wait until the fall semester in October before enrolling.
Such a delay would result in a difference of nearly half a year.
Half a year was enough for Chen Muwu to get ahead of others and publish many papers.
What's more, Travelex people only said that navigation could be resumed this summer at the earliest.
But if it fails to recover by summer, should he wait until the railway is completed?
What's more, the longer she stays at home, the more likely she is to find her ideal daughter-in-law.
There were many great masters in the Republic of China, no matter how enlightened and progressive they were, they could never escape the clutches of arranged marriages, such as Mr. Lu Xun and Zhu An, such as Xu Zhimo and Zhang Youyi, such as He Mei Fumao.
This kind of arranged marriage generally rarely ends well, with the exception of one person, who is still Dr. Hu, whom Chen Muwu is most familiar with.
As one of the most fashionable people in the country, Dr. Hu married a wife who was one of the most conservative in the country and had bound feet. The two of them still stayed together for the rest of their lives.
No matter what other aspects of Dr. Hu are like, in this aspect, there is basically nothing to say. 【1】
After returning to Wuhai from Beijing, Hu Shi and Chen Muwu exchanged several letters. The contents of the letters were nothing more than the former urging the latter to study abroad at Cornell, while the latter rejected the former for various reasons. .
It was not until the newspaper published that Cambridge University planned to invite Chen Muwu to study in the UK and Hu Shi sent his last congratulatory letter that there was no news between them.
After discussing with his elder brother, Chen Muwu finally decided to give Dahai another chance.
He did this because he wanted to get involved in science as soon as possible, not because he was afraid that his old lady would arrange a wife from heaven for him!
Now that he had decided to take the sea cruise, his eldest brother Chen Muqiao hurried to the French Consulate in Shanghai and the British Consulate in Shanghai to help him apply for an expedited visa.
Chen Muwu hurried to Travelex and booked the André Lebon ship of the French shipping company from Sihai to Marseille on the 15th of this month.
Due to time constraints, the cheaper second-class and third-class cabins had already been booked, so Chen Muwu could only spend a huge price of 120 pounds to buy the only remaining first-class ticket.
One hundred and twenty pounds, converted into silver dollars, is one thousand two hundred dollars.
It is said that Chen Muwu's boat ticket is equivalent to one and a half Lu Xun's newly bought yard in Xisantiao Hutong.
But he didn't feel too worried about his half-year salary, because as soon as the news of studying abroad came, people from all walks of life came to rush to deliver the money to his door.
Trinity College of the University of Cambridge, which is rich and wealthy, offers Chen Muwu a scholarship of 300 pounds a year, which is 3,000 yuan converted into silver dollars. The average monthly salary is 250 yuan, which is more than Chen Muwu's current salary when he works at the Railway Bureau. Both are two and a half percent higher.
The Minister-General of Foreign Affairs, Huang Yong, takes special care of his fellow countryman. The special official fee of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is thirty pounds of living expenses per month, plus one hundred pounds of transportation expenses, and twenty-five pounds. Cost of clothing in pounds.
Chen Muwu didn't need to buy any new clothes, so the transportation and clothing expenses provided by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had already offset the entire cost of the ferry ticket.
Although Peng Yunyi, the director-general of education, was not liked by the teachers and students of Beida University, he was quite generous to Chen Muwu.
The Ministry of Education, which really couldn't afford the money, actually allocated 500 yuan to Chen Muwu every year from the money saved between its teeth.
Although the money paid was small, they sent me a study abroad certificate with the seal of the Ministry of Education, which is one of the indispensable documents for studying abroad.
After reading the news from the "Declaration" that Chen Muwu was about to study abroad (yes, this was done by Chen Muwu's second brother Chen Muping), Zhang Naiyan, the president of the Bijiang Education Association, reciprocated the favor and got a sum of money from Bijiang for him. The official expenses saved are twenty pounds per month.
Because Chen Muwu is a graduate of Jiaotong University, his eldest brother originally planned to help him apply for a subsidy from the wealthy Ministry of Transport.
But seeing that he had already received so much money, he was no longer embarrassed to go back to the ministry to collect wool. Anyway, his family was not short of money.
Adding up the above money, Chen Muwu received a scholarship of 950 pounds per year before setting off.
Although this amount of money is not as much as the monthly salary of President Li Yuanhong, who earns tens of thousands of yuan per month, it is more than one and a half times the annual salary of Cai Yuanpei, who has just resigned as the president of Beida University.
Chen Muwu tasted the benefits of being famous for the first time. He was sitting at home and money came from the sky.
But Chen Muwu himself didn't know how much of the money he could really get.
Because the official fees for studying abroad are not settled in one go, but are paid to the embassy in the UK on a monthly basis, and then distributed by the staff of the embassy on a monthly basis.
Huang Yi and Peng Yunyi will not be able to sit as chiefs of the two departments for long. When they step down and new officials take office, who knows what will happen? Will he cut off his official salary? 【2】
At present, it seems that the only things that can be obtained reliably are scholarships from Cambridge University and provincial government fees from the prosperous Yujiang Province.
Although it is nearly half less than before, it can at least allow Chen Muwu to live a relatively good life in the UK.
*****
[1] Author's note: Hu Shi had an affair once in his life, when he made his third sister-in-law's sister pregnant. After the incident was revealed, Hu Shi's wife Jiang Dongxiu picked up a kitchen knife and planned to chop her son to death first, then kill Hu Shi, and finally commit suicide. Hu Shi was so frightened that he immediately ended the extramarital affair, gave her a sum of money to have an abortion, and used his own money to send his lover to study abroad, before finally giving up.
[2] Author's note: Historically, Huang Yong resigned as Minister of Foreign Affairs in April of that year, and Peng Yunyi resigned as Minister of Education in September of that year.
