Zhou Yi had real business of his own to attend to, so he had intended to leave it at that after reading the articles. After all, Master Wen had already fled to that place where the little Japs... where people lived rather well. He could hardly pay the man a visit and seek his wisdom face-to-face, so he would let it go and consider it an accidental contamination of his eyes.
As for the uproar those two articles had caused online, with a bunch of public intellectuals launching fierce attacks under the banners of literary freedom, freedom of speech, and freedom of everything else, even calling the ban on Wen Mosheng's works a "literary inquisition," he remained unmoved.
He found it offensive and infuriating, but as a public official, he was hardly in a position to roll up his sleeves and argue with them as he had in his previous life.
Specialized work should be left to specialists.
Zhou Yi figured that sending star reporter Lin Fang into the fray would be more than enough!
What he had not expected was that the star reporter in whom he had placed such high hopes would fail to gain any advantage, either in forcefulness or in argument, during a fierce clash with one particular public intellectual.
Zhou Yi took note of that public intellectual's name-Sun Yuan-and realization dawned. No wonder. Lin Fang really had met her match.
In his previous life, "Sun Yuan of the South" and "Lin Fang of the North" had been known as the Yuanfang Duo, or the Fangyuan Duo, universally recognized as towering figures in public intellectual circles. One in the south and one in the north, they echoed each other from afar, fighting year after year on the front lines of biased spin and narrative manipulation.
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