NOVEL WEB
Chapter 335
Xiao Qi finished teaching after two hours, then left. Li Weijin insisted that his family driver take her home. In fact, if Xiao Qi didn't have another tutoring session tomorrow, Li Weijin would have wanted to go back to campus with her. The drive was quite long - two hours of work, three hours on the road.
However, Xiao Qi didn't waste her time in the car. She felt that her Japanese translation work was rejected because she didn't have a certificate, so she should take an exam to get certified. After all, at the beginning stage, with a certificate, whether you can actually do it or not is hard to say, but having an exam certificate makes it clear.
So on the ride back, Xiao Qi used the time to study Japanese and Korean. Her Korean was still only at a basic level, with lots of room for improvement, so she alternated between studying the two languages.
The one driving Xiao Qi back was the same elder who had gone to the temple to pick up Li Weijin last time, a steady old gentleman. Even in the hot weather he was dressed neatly in light green Chinese-style clothes. Xiao Qi had bought her dad a set of Chinese-style clothes before, quite expensive ones, and the elder's crisp clothes seemed like they would be even more expensive.
In front of unfamiliar people, Xiao Qi was still very introverted, basically not saying anything. If she forced herself to make small talk it would feel very awkward, so she focused on her own things without feeling awkward.
Seeing this young girl who started studying as soon as she got in the car, the steward somehow felt she was very well-behaved.
When Xiao Qi arrived at school, she could still make it for lunch at the cafeteria.
Li Weijin actually wanted Xiao Qi to stay and eat at his home, but thinking of his own eccentric parents, he decided against it.
He was worried that Xiao Qi would misunderstand him if she met his parents, thinking he was just as eccentric as them...
The 18-year-old Li Weijin felt his parents were very embarrassing at this moment, and was ashamed to let Xiao Qi meet them.
And when Gao Cuihua and Li Qianmen saw that their son not only studied in the morning today but also continued to study in the afternoon instead of going out to play, they were shocked. If their son wasn't still so handsome, they would have wondered if he had been replaced.
The power of love was indeed great.
"That young girl looks quite pretty, I secretly took a peek this morning," Gao Cuihua said with a laugh.
Li Qianmen nodded with a serious expression but gloating heart: "Our son has taste like me."
Gao Cuihua laughed even more gleefully, her plump cheeks flushed red.
Li Tangsong, who came back home on time for lunch: ...
Being bullied daily, used to it.
After eating, Xiao Qi went back to her dorm room, really wanting to complain to her roommates about her tutoring student.
But Honey was at the student council, Wei Cheng went to the equestrian field, shut-in Yunshu was also not there, gone to the tea ceremony club. With a belly full of complaints and no one to vent to, she felt pent up.
Oh well, she was in university now, she had to learn to spend time alone too.
Xiao Qi practiced calligraphy in the dorm for half an hour, then went to take a nap.
Having slept longer than usual, she woke up after 3pm.
Dawdling in the dorm room, it would be nighttime soon. Her roommates still weren't back yet, and her desire to complain had lowered to 30%.
Should she keep lounging around or go out? Eventually Xiao Qi decided to go to the library.
On a lazy weekend afternoon, going to the library was also nice.
Plus the scenery along the way was good too, solving a large portion of her step count for today.
Going to the library on the weekend felt too un-weekend-like, so Xiao Qi decided to relax and read some leisure books there...
Previously when taking Applied Statistics, Xiao Qi suddenly thought of Yunshu's jade pendant, finding it very pretty. She heard Yunshu say it was expensive, not really understanding why. There were ones sold on the street for tens or hundreds of yuan, as well as jade. She had seen someone in town selling jade by laying out a mat with carvings of Buddha, Guanyin, leaves and such, small ones for 10 yuan, big ones for 20 yuan, with average craftsmanship, but still quite nice-looking, and some green ones too.
It didn't seem to have a big difference from the jade pendant around Yunshu's neck that could supposedly sell for tens of thousands. Xiao Qi felt she was still too young, with so much more to learn.
So she found some miscellaneous books - "Appraisal of Hetian Jade", "How to Identify Top Grade Jade", "Stories of Historical Figures and Jade", "The Complete Guide to Genuine and Fake Ancient Jade"...
Xiao Qi hugged four books in one go. The school library was very big, finding books one by one was tedious, grabbing five or six books at once was common. As long as you didn't take dozens in an exaggerated way, no one would usually stop you.
The library attendants were also students working part-time, quite easygoing.
The state of reading leisure books was liking to flip through randomly.
With so much knowledge now, learning could happen anywhere. Knowledge was exploding. How to screen for useful knowledge, read it, and integrate it into yourself was what made learning meaningful.
It was very possible she wouldn't actually need these books at all, or would only understand half of them rendering them useless. But all knowledge started from zero, from barely understanding anything, to slowly understanding more and more, until you slowly became knowledgeable in that area.
Although completely unrelated to her current life, Xiao Qi still read them seriously.
She believed no useful knowledge would be wasted.
But because these were leisure books, Xiao Qi didn't read from beginning to end, as that would be inefficient. Picking up a book, she would first flip back and forth to get a feel, and read carefully if she found it interesting. If she found it boring, she would skim selectively and try to remember the parts she did read.
In short she could read them incompletely, but any content she did read needed to be remembered as much as possible.
"Appraisal of Hetian Jade" had mostly pictures. Just looking at the images, the jade all seemed quite nice. There were so many varieties of Hetian jade - Qinghai material, Korean material, mountain stream water material, Russian material, and under each variety there were further classifications, yet all could be called Hetian jade. Xiao Qi felt she definitely wouldn't be able to distinguish them now. She would probably be fooled many times before gaining some basic understanding.
As for "How to Identify Top Grade Jade", there were even more types covered - alarmingly, some used beer bottles to fake jade convincingly. There were also Xiu jade, water grass agate etc. But jade was only produced in Myanmar, a hard gemstone, seemingly easier to authenticate compared to the many materials of Hetian jade.
These two books had a majority of pictures, finishing them quickly.
"Stories of Historical Figures and Jade" was more interesting, mostly fabricated legends. Qianlong, Cixi, and Soong May-ling all loved jade very much. Being minor stories of dubious veracity, it was still an enjoyable read, not taxing on the brain.
As for the last book, "The Complete Guide to Genuine and Fake Ancient Jade", Xiao Qi felt like she was reading a foreign language. Too difficult.
From the previous two books she had some basis to attempt identifying Hetian jade materials and top grade jade. But ancient jade - they all looked real and all looked fake to her.
Knowing genuine from fake ancient jade required not only specialized knowledge, but also extensive historical knowledge, being intimately familiar with the smallest historical details. Like spotting the fake seal of so-and-so official, those familiar with the historical details would know what kind of seal was used in that official's position and dynasty, the customs and restrictions, the appellations used in that dynasty, and so on. After reading a few pages Xiao Qi felt she had regressed back to illiteracy, lacking so much knowledge, full of blind spots. She felt rather uncultured.
After basically flipping through the four books, she had built up some foundational knowledge. At least she wouldn't mix up Hetian jade and jadeite now. But specific authentication still seemed rather difficult to Xiao Qi. It still felt like textbook knowledge far from actual application. She would need to see more real objects.
Outside the window had turned golden, the sun setting with dusk lingering in the sky. Tomorrow would be another sunny day.
Xiao Qi checked her phone's roommate WeChat group, her roommates were all back but they would still eat dinner separately tonight. Feeling hungry herself now, food was on Xiao Qi's mind before every meal these days. She felt a huge appetite, needing lots more to eat.
Putting the books back, Xiao Qi packed up and headed back.
Still going to the cafeteria to eat. Today was a pleasant surprise since it's the weekend. There was actually braised pork ribs with fermented bean curd, and the greedy Xiao Qi took two big pieces for herself eating alone. She took out her phone to watch videos while eating.
She scrolled Douyin (TikTok) for a bit, and unexpectedly came across herself - it was the Douyin video of her horse racing competition. It had over 200,000 likes; so surprising! She opened the comments section to take a look. There were all kinds, and Xiao Qi found them quite amusing.
It reminded her that Jiajia also had a Douyin account, so she followed it. Flipping to the “Following” page, she also saw a post related to horse racing, edited differently from the official Enhua website. Jiajia preferred to flaunt her looks - it was a set of photos with her own voiceover and text. It also had over 40,000 likes, quite impressive.
Then she continued scrolling through some condensed movie videos, introducing movies in three clips per episode. But by the second episode it suddenly got locked.
She only had a one hour Douyin limit every day. Since she already watched some after waking up this morning on the weekend, her time was up for now.
Having the movie cut halfway through left her hanging and craving for more, but she stuck by her own rule without unlocking it.
Instead she opened up the school forum to take a look. She previously applied for three part-time jobs - one got approved, one rejected, and there was still no news about the last. As soon as she logged in, there was a private message.
It was from the auction house, sent last night. She didn’t have notifications on, but the message showed her application was approved. It said to gather at the Meng City Jinghai Grand Canal Hotel, 26th floor, this Sunday at 2pm. There was also an attached document with specific task requirements, asking her to reply to confirm receipt.