Zixia said, "If one excels in office, one should study; if one excels in study, one should enter office." Originally, it meant that if one still had spare energy after studying, one could become an official. Later, it broadly came to mean that anyone who studied well could become an official.
This conclusion had endured in China for thousands of years. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, it had even produced the extreme case of people reading themselves into bookworms who could not tell the five grains apart.
Even in the new era, this situation still existed, only it was more practical than in the Ming and Qing dynasties. At the very least, one needed one's own understanding of real society.
Unlike the high officials of the Ming and Qing dynasties, who needed no professional knowledge to preside over court cases—knowing how to wield the paddle was enough.
Take Zhang Qiyan, for example. He was a core figure among the reformists in mainland economics, and now that the spring breeze was at its strongest, transferring from a school to the economic management system counted as putting his learning to use.
And the people in government offices were the sharpest. The moment Zhang Qiyan was promoted into Ruan's Father's work unit, the other party began taking a roundabout route through Li Ye to establish connections.
After all, Zhang Qiyan was a heavyweight in the field, with a group of students supporting him in the Economic Committee. He was the leading figure of a whole faction, and the position he had been promoted to was probably quite important as well.
So when Ruan's Father asked Li Ye whether he knew Cai Minying, he was actually probing whether Li Ye was close to Zhang Qiyan.
Because Cai Minying was already the student closest