Chapter 83: I don't want to go
"I've never been much good at anything in my life, and my travels in pursuit of learning have lacked direction. In my scholarship, the one thing I've relied on is my photographic memory. I heard that speech during an inspection visit to Xiahai last autumn. It struck me as wonderfully fresh: no lofty platitudes or empty formulas, just complexity distilled into simplicity, with an optimism beneath the humor and teasing. It cleared up a great many things that had weighed on my mind. Sometimes I wonder, what is all that stubborn persistence for? I'm not even as broad-minded as the young." Chu Zimiao shook his head.
The others rarely saw him reveal this side of himself, and naturally, the looks they all directed at Su Can grew even more incredulous.
"That speech came from Su Can?" Mu Xuan turned back, unsure what to feel as she faced the flowers and the boy. Life was like several trains colliding, seemingly unrelated lines crashing together in one place.
The middle-aged women reacted differently. Some considered it carefully, while others maintained their usual indifference, simply because they had no interest in it at all.
The middle-aged people at the table now had something to remember Su Can by, and they expressed their appreciation and praise one after another. Some of the men even told their children to take him as a role model. Su Can thought that it was only because someone of Chu Zimiao's standing, a celebrated scholar, had said it that they overlooked the surface vulgarity and found it thought-provoking and worthy of applause. Had those words actually come from his own mouth, these people might well have dismissed them with disdain again. Fan Wei and Guo Degang would have to forgive him for