鲁迅选集/高老夫子

After a morning spent in front of the mirror, flicking through A Textbook of Chinese History and Yuan Liaofan's Chronology,1 he began to feel that books truly were the root of all evil, and that life was most unfair.

First he reflected how very little thought his father and mother had given to their children.

As a small boy, what he liked best was climbing mulberry tress to steal mulberries to eat; but they paid no attention at all.Once, when he fell off a tree and cracked open his head, they hadn't give him the right medical treatment, so that to this day above his left eyebrow remained an indelible wedge-shaped scar.

Even though he'd grown his hair, then parted and combed it to cover the scar, it remained visible at the tip: a blot on his otherwise flawless countenance that a female student (should she - perish the thought! - happen to glimpse it) would inevitably hold against him.

Heaving a sigh of complaint, he set the mirror down.

In the second place, whoever compiled A Text-book of History had shown too little consideration for teachers.

Although this book corresponded to some extent with the Outline , whole passages were different, and this partial conformity made it impossible to know how to piece them together in a lecture.

But when his eyes fell on the slip of paper inserted in the textbook, he transferred his resentment to the history teacher who had resigned in the middle of the term; because on it was written:Start from Chapter 8, “The Rise and Fall of Eastern Jin.”

If only the swine had left him some of the Three Kingdoms, the bit just before the Eastern Jin, he wouldn't be having such trouble preparing now.

The Three Kingdoms period was the one he knew best.For instance, the stories of how the three heroes became sworn brothers in the Peach Orchard, how Zhuge Liang borrowed an arrow, Thou Yu was enraged three times, Huang Thong killed Xia Houyuan at Mt.Dingjun, and so on he knew them all by heart.He might have held forth on these for a term or more.

Or the Tang dynasty, he knew that, too: about Qin Qiong selling his horse, and other nuggets of reliable historical fact he had grasped from close readings of popular fiction.

With another indignant sigh, he took up Yuan Liaofan's handiwork once more.

“Hey, haven't you done enough reading outside, without burrowing in here to read?”“

A hand had reached round from behind him to grab his chin.

He did not move, however, knowing from the voice and action that it was his old friend Huang San, with whom he played mahjong, who had tiptoed in.

But though Huang was his old friend, with whom a week before he had played mahjong, watched operas, drunk and chased after girls, ever since the Dazhong Daily had published his much acclaimed article “On the Duty of All to Revise the National History, after which he had received a contract from Xianliang Girls'School, he had consid-ered Huang San a nonentity and rather contemptible.

So without turning his head, he pulled, a long face and answered seriously:“Don't talk nonsense!

'I thought you told Bo you were only after a job up at the school so you could subject the learned lovelies to a closer "examination".+Ha-ha-ha!”

“You can't believe that farting dog Old Bo!”

Huang San sat down by his desk, glanced at it and promptly spotted, between the mirror and the clutter of books, a scarlet invitation card which was open.

Respectful InvitationMaster Gao Erchu is hereby invited to teach history in our school for four hours a week, for an honorarium of thirty cents an hour.

'"Gao Erchu"?”

Our learned friend honoured Huang San with a supercilious smile; he had indeed changed his name.

The problem with Huang San was that he had no talents beyond the mahjong table; he'd never bothered to apply himself to the progressive disciplines of modern culture.