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The door had been sealed from the outside by ice and snow. Alexei banged on the door for a few minutes before deciding that the ice had probably been knocked loose enough to try pulling the door open.
Zhang Sushang, seeing his face go red from exertion, silently walked over and helped pull, which finally got the door open.
“Thanks, it would’ve taken at least ten minutes if I had to do it myself,” Alexei said gratefully.
As soon as the door opened, cold air smacked Zhang Sushang in the face and made him shiver. Outside was a field of white, with everything covered in either ice or snow. Even someone from the Northeast like Zhang Sushang thought that the temperature in Russia’s higher latitudes was outrageously low.
Their house had no heater — the only source of warmth was the stove — and to save coal and firewood, they didn’t let it burn throughout the night. If he hadn’t stayed awake all night, with just the cotton jacket he had, he might have woken from cold in the middle of the night.
Seeing his pitiful appearance with teeth chattering from the cold, Alexei handed him an old scarf. “It seems you didn’t get to know this land well before coming, the Soviet Union is cold during February.”
Naturally, Zhang Sushang couldn’t say that he was very familiar with Russia, although the one he knew was the Russia of many years later.
“Chyushka, do you want breakfast?” Alexei asked.
Of course he wanted to eat.
It was a given that two poor university students living in the early 20th century couldn’t afford flour, eggs, or meat. Their meal was brown bread soaked in the reheated potato soup from last night.
As Zhang Sushang ate, he reminisced on the chicken soup that would never enter his stomach — he wasn’t being excessive, his father truly was that good at making soup. Sometimes he would directly use coconut water as the soup base, bamboo, and meat from a freshly slaughtered chicken to make a delicious coconut chicken soup. The soup was both filling and refreshing, drinking it would warm both heart and stomach.
But his best dish was his pork belly and chicken soup, which he would stew until it was thick and opaque, then its surface was sprinkled with white pepper. When they finished eating the pork belly and chicken meat, he would add noodles and sweet potatoes to the broth and cook until the noodles were soft. It tasted amazing when paired with the chicken soup!
The more he thought about it, the hungrier he became, and Zhang Sushang had a big appetite to begin with. He finished a bowl and wanted to eat more, but found that the pot was already empty.
The leftovers weren’t enough for two big men. Zhang Sushang didn’t know Alexei’s background, but he knew that he was also a work-study student.
After breakfast was over, they went out together and walked for almost an hour through the snow before finally arriving at their destination — St. Petersburg’s Vasilyevsky Island, where Leningrad State University was located.
Fortunately, this body’s original owner left him with not only a fatty liver but also high-quality fat in other places, allowing Zhang Sushang to survive the low temperatures of St. Petersburg’s early morning.
This place didn’t have many warm days in a year.
Leningrad State University was the oldest of Russia’s universities, and would later be known as Saint Petersburg State University. Nine of its graduates received the Nobel Prize.1All true; see Wikipedia.
Grigori Perelman, who would crack the Poincaré conjecture2A mathematical theorem that remained unproven for 100 years until Perelman; see Wikipedia. and win the Fields Medal,3A prize for mathematicians under 40 years old, regarded as one of the highest honours a mathematician can receive, also known as the Nobel Prize of Mathematics; see Wikipedia. also graduated from here, although this man would be born about forty years from now in the 1960s.
For being able to be accepted into this school, Zhang Sushang acknowledged the original goods’ abilities, but he was also someone with one foot in the country’s top university; he didn’t worry that he wouldn’t be able to adapt to a new university.
Wasn’t it just changing his location of study? He was even in a Department of Medicine again.
Leningrad State University wasn’t the institute within Russia that accepted the most Chinese international students. It had only accepted four this year, and of the four, one applied for a scholarship and two others had found work with the assistance of fellow Chinese students at other universities. In this era, it was very common to work as you studied.
Alexei’s job was to clean the library, which was much warmer than outside in the wind. In addition, as long as he kept the place tidy and the books organised, he could freely borrow books. This was a good job.
He brought Zhang Sushang to a table and respectfully called out, “Aleksandr Sergeyevich, this is one of the international students joining the Department of Medicine this year.”
Russian names were made up of three parts: first name, patronymic, and surname. Patronymics could be understood like this: if someone is called Sergey, his son’s patronymic would be Sergeyevich, while his daughter’s patronymic would be Sergeyevna.
When addressing an elder with whom you were already familiar, you used their first name and patronymic together. In contrast, when an elder was addressing a junior, they would use the first name alone.
Professor Aleksandr glanced at Zhang Sushang. “Oh, I know.”
Zhang Sushang walked closer. “Hello Professor, I am Zhang Sushang, you can call me Chyushka.”
The professor looked at the young man for a while and found that he seemed quite strong. With his best student Alexei standing next to him, the two of them looked like two big bears.
He had quite a good impression of the students who came from China. These children were all hard-working people who never slacked off in their studies or work, were very polite to their teachers, and some of them could even drag a big box of translated notes from their year’s study back to their country to disseminate the knowledge. Like firewood, they could burn themselves for their country at any time, without regrets.
Zhang Sushang was the last among this year’s Chinese students to arrive. His companions had also said before that this student’s family wouldn’t allow him to study overseas, so he might not be able to come. Now he had come, but many of the jobs which allowed students to apply were already overwhelmed with applications.
But the professor couldn’t bear to see this child do laundry and hard labour outside. With the help of Alexei’s recommendation, Zhang Sushang managed to get a position that paid 25 rubles a month.
The Soviet Union’s currency consisted of rubles and kopecks, the former being paper notes and the latter being coins. One hundred kopecks made up a single ruble.
In the book My Universities by Soviet author Gorky, the protagonist Alyosha worked as a porter at the docks when he was young and earned only twenty or thirty kopecks a day. Although that was currency at the end of the 19th century which differed from currency in the 1920s, the purchasing power of rubles and kopecks were still guaranteed by the state today.
However, Zhang Sushang still felt very sad. He had never done any housework for all his eighteen years of life, but now he needed to clean up an entire library’s worth of trash.
Thank goodness Alexei took over wiping the highest windows, otherwise if he fell while weighing more than 180 kg he would be even more miserable.
This Russian guy was at least ten centimetres taller than him, who was already 1.8m tall…
Although the term hadn’t started yet, Zhang Sushang quickly got to work. He had secretly calculated it and felt that with his current salary from working at the library, if he wanted to buy stationery and assorted supplies for his studies, he would only be able to eat until he was half full after the university term began.
No, dieting was unhealthy, it would affect his plan to see his dad after living until ninety; yet if he wanted to lose weight by exercising, a high-quality diet was of utmost importance! Should he supplement calcium? Protein?
If he did high-intensity exercise while missing out on meat, eggs, or milk, maybe only his ghost would see the modern era!
Since he was unwilling to cut back, he had no choice but to increase revenue. When Alexei returned to the utility room with his bucket, ready to invite his new roommate to have lunch and then explore the campus together, he saw Zhang Sushang squatting and sorting garbage.
Zhang Sushang pulled out the dozen vodka bottles he had picked up that morning. Hearing the door opening behind him, he turned with a conspiratorial smile. “Alexei, do you know if there’s a place to hand in rubbish?”
His thinking was that if he sold a few more bottles, he may be able to buy an extra piece of bread. Anyway, he was the one who picked up the rubbish with his labour, there was no shame in it.
Alexei, looking at Zhang Sushang, suddenly felt an ache in his heart.
The kind-hearted bear slapped Zhang Sushang’s shoulder hard, causing him to almost fall to the floor despite his size.
“To celebrate you coming to the Soviet Union, I will add an extra potato to the soup tonight!” Alexei said firmly.
Zhang Sushang: …
I really thank you!
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