Jia didn’t want to wait until the new semester to meet again. He felt the situation was serious and anxiously asked the third-place student: “What does the father of that new guy do?”
“He’s from Beijing, some kind of specialist. I’m not quite clear, maybe in the military. Don’t you know? There are several large military factories near the mountain. I’ve been there.”
“Are people from Beijing very capable?”
“Of course! It’s all elites there!”
Jia thought for a moment, left the school, arrived at the transmission room at the school gate, first turned on the radio, and then rummaged through the pile of newspapers on the desk.
The old driver didn’t know what he was looking for and said, “These are all ordered by the principal, he’ll come back to collect them.”
“I’ll take them for him,” Summer took the newspapers and put them under his arm, saying, “Old driver, are there different sizes of newspapers?”
The old driver said, “Of course! <Xinhua Evening News> is smaller than <Yunnan Daily>, and <Yunnan Daily> is smaller than <People’s Daily>.”
Jia pulled the newspapers from under his arm and looked through them. The old driver took the initiative to find <People’s Daily>, and raised his voice: “Look, this is the editorial page! In the past, it was the emperor, this is the editorial, other newspapers can’t compare!”
Jia thought that the editorial page would definitely contain important content. He discovered a photo on the top. The photo was a group photo of middle-aged men.
The principal brewed tea, went downstairs to get the newspaper, so he happened to see Summer sitting on the stairs looking at the newspaper. Summer was looking at the front page of <People’s Daily>. The principal was somewhat skeptical – in this mixed residential area, a young second-year student was actually reading <People’s Daily>, which seemed strange.
“What are you looking at?” the principal asked.
Jia pointed to the photo in the middle of a military-uniformed older man of not very tall stature and said, “He came to our place, my father later went to work in Beijing with him.”
The principal almost fell from the stairs.
That low-statured military-dressed man was extraordinary.
