After borrowing a newspaper to read at the People's Commune, he was only slightly surprised before returning to normal.
"So there really was an earthquake the night before last, and two of them at that. The legend about earthquake fish is true..." Secretary Chen, beside him, had also just finished reading the paper.
"Yes. Luckily, our area wasn't affected. There was a magnitude earthquake out in the Taiwan Strait that triggered a tsunami, and another magnitude earthquake actually struck southern Taiwan at the same time. Luckily, it was daytime."
"Who knows when the tsunami will settle down. Wait until the waves are gone before going out. I heard you even risked going out during a typhoon."
"Ahaha... just the once. I won't do it again, haha... staying alive matters."
Secretary Chen nodded and said with a smile, "When did you learn to read? I thought you couldn't."
"I attended the Literacy Class for a little over a month and learned some characters. With some guessing, I can understand about half of it."
"It certainly makes things easier to know some characters. I have some old newspapers here too. Would you like to take them home?"
"Sure." He could use them to learn about past events too. "Secretary Chen, could you help me subscribe to a newspaper as well?"
"Of course. I'll have the mail carrier deliver it straight to your house."
"Thank you."
Ye Yaodong left the People's Commune carrying a big stack of newspapers and headed straight home.
He ran into his eldest nephew outside his house and even got teased by the brat.
"Third Uncle, what are you doing with all those newspapers? Using them to start fires?"
"Can't I read them?"
"Holy shit... no way... if you can read newspapers, I can score a hundred on a