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Not only did Zhang Sushang return, he brought with him two thin pieces of iron to help them break the ice around the door. Thinner ice could be broken off directly, while thicker areas could still be weakened by chipping off pieces.
Alexei held the iron piece in his hands happily. “I’ve never thought of such a good idea before,” he said.
Zhang Sushang: You only need a few minutes to get your frozen door open, you don’t need to bother using your brain at all, unlike me, who’s torn between waking you up or finding another way out myself when I want to go outside.
Their landlady, Aunt Anya, also had to knock ice loose from her door every morning to buy groceries. It was evident that warrior nations often solved problems with their own personal strength.
According to Alexei himself, he wasn’t an alcoholic, only enjoying a cup or two once in a while, but last summer he accidentally drank a bit much and used too much force while trying to open the door, causing the key to break off while inside the keyhole.
Later the landlady knocked it off with a hammer and installed a new lock. Before the new lock was installed, he lived in an apartment with a front door unable to close, yet didn’t feel there were any security issues at all.
Not everyone had the guts to rob the home of a thickly built man almost two metres tall. Alexei was fearless.
Zhang Sushang: …
As they walked, he sneaked glances at Alexei’s face. This 20 year old Slavic young man actually had a very handsome face, with a bone structure so fine that even a plastic surgeon wouldn’t dare to do anything with it, and his smiles had a child’s cheer. He had the type of face that would gain a million fans with a single photo if he lived in the modern era.
Unfortunately, the current environment wasn’t conducive for people to pay attention to their image, and Alexei himself was also quite careless about it – shaving twice a month was about the extent of his care. With the addition of his body shape, he managed to present himself as an intimidating, strong man with a childlike babyface.
God was in a good mood these days, the snow on the ground hadn’t continued to accumulate and it only took them twenty minutes to walk from the Universitetskaya Embankment to Leningrad State University.
The sky was still overcast. It may have been his illusion, but he felt as if the wind brushing past his ears carried the ocean tides. St. Petersburg was a coastal city; when the weather turned warmer, they may be able to see seagulls. It was a bit embarrassing to say, but he craved meat, to the point that he often saw chickens, ducks, geese, and other birds in his dreams.
The main gate of Leningrad State University was wide open to allow streams of students carrying books and luggage inside.
Zhang Sushang had once watched the Soviet director Dziga Vertov’s 1920s silent film Man with a Movie Camera, which let him see this era through black and white pictures. But now, as he looked at the newly poured concrete, the students’ expectant expressions, and the vitality in the air, everything felt far more vivid than through a screen.
Workers were already shovelling snow on the street, revealing tram tracks underneath. Some people had set up open horse carriages to transport people on the cleared roads. The pedestrians consisted of both men and women, but all wore thick clothes.
Looking at Leningrad State University’s gate, Zhang Sushang thought, If I didn’t come here, I’d be at Tsinghua University’s opening ceremony right now.
“Chyushka? Chyushka!”
He jumped at his flatmate’s call, and turned to see a pair of worried blue eyes.
Alexei scratched at his blond hair, looked around, then leaned in. “I have faith that one day, your country will also have a school as good as Leningrad University, and everything will get better. Isn’t this why you came here despite how hard it was?”
Zhang Sushang looked at him blankly, he actually… never had the thought of comparing the current Soviet Union with his own country, because as someone from the future, he knew very well that his motherland would one day stand proudly atop the world again. Even if there were countless hardships during this period, that time would come.
But Alexei didn’t know that, he just respected Zhang Sushang, his flatmate who left his poor and weak homeland, respected Zhang Sushang’s motherland, and respected his will to travel thousands of miles to learn.
His kindness and respect for others may be the reason why his blue eyes were so clear and pure; Zhang Sushang suddenly understood why he liked Alexei’s eyes so much.
“Thank you, Alexei,” he laughed, patting Alexei’s outstretched hand.
Seeing that his despondent air had dissipated, Alexei let out a sigh of relief and grinned. “You can call me Lyosha, don’t I already call you Chyushka?”
They had lived under the same roof for over a month, their temperaments were compatible, and they were good friends, so they should have already moved on to calling each other by nicknames.
For Russians, whether you called friends by diminutives or not implied completely different intimacy levels!
Going with the flow, Zhang Sushang and Alexei threw their arms around each other’s shoulders as they walked into the campus; from behind they looked like two bears1Specifically, referencing a Chinese cartoon featuring two bears and a logger; see Wikipedia. trespassing in Leningrad State University.
Although, Zhang Sushang was visibly smaller than his companion — with his technical skills as a former professional athlete and significant weight loss regimen, he had gone from 180 kg to 168 kg and now looked much smaller.
But frankly, although there was still quite a bit of fat on his waist, many 1.8m tall boys in the 21st century weighed this much.
Any orientation process was more or less the same in any era. Those who lived in dormitories would arrive a few days in advance to put away their luggage, go through the admission procedures, then everyone gathered in their classrooms on the first day of school, the professor said a few words, and people got to know each other.
Except for stepping foot into the classroom, Alexei had already accompanied Zhang Sushang to do everything else, including a tour of the campus.
Compared with the university towns of later generations which could easily hold tens of thousands of people, today’s Leningrad State University wasn’t particularly large despite being the top university of the Soviet Union. They only needed a couple days to know it well.
Thus he declined Alexei’s offer to take him to his classroom, and found his way there himself.
Despite his height, Zhang Sushang still shamelessly sat next to a window in the front rows of the room. His father had told him before that it didn’t matter for other subjects, but when studying medicine, he had to sit somewhere close to the professor, so that he could see any dissections clearly.
Sitting behind him was a young man with black hair and blue eyes, who had his attention on a book. Sunlight filtering through his eyelashes cast long shadows on his cheeks.
Zhang Sushang turned around and waved at him. “Good morning, my name is Zhang Sushang, you are?”
“Susan?” The young man looked up and examined Zhang Sushang from head to toe.
Leningrad State University began accepting female students in the 19th century, and in addition, they had the world’s first female dean of the Faculty of Science2The IRL university doesn’t have a Faculty of Science (it’s split into faculties of biology, chemistry etc. instead) and I can’t find anything about female deans, first or otherwise as well as multiple female professors. They could be said to be a pioneer in improving access to higher education for women in the Soviet Union. This foreign student looked fair and tender, had youthful facial features, and wore a thick coat due to the weather, so it was hard to tell their gender — could they be a girl who accidentally walked into the wrong classroom?
Zhang Sushang quickly corrected him. “It’s Sushang, not Susan, you can also call me Chyushka. What’s your name?”
This person smiled as he spoke and seemed exceedingly friendly. The one sitting in the back row was silent for a few seconds but still introduced himself. “Danil Valeryevich Terniuk.”
Despite being in Russia for so long, the only person whose full name he remembered was Alexei — Alexei Andreevich Shubin.
By the way, before the 19th century, many lower-class people in Russian did not have surnames. When everyone gradually began to have surnames, they simply used the familiar objects around them.3This is how we get surnames like Smith (as in blacksmith) or Thatcher in English
For example, ‘Shubin’ was derived from the Russian word for fur coat — one of Alexei’s ancestors must have been very good at making fur coats.
Obviously, it wasn’t the most polite thing to call people by their first names when they just met, it being much more reasonable to call each other by their surnames, however Danil didn’t argue with this foreigner in favour of lowering his head to keep reading.
Zhang Sushang wasn’t the only foreigner. After a while, a thin young man wearing a felt hat with a strong Northeastern style ran in.
He looked around, as if he was searching for someone, before his gaze fell on Zhang Sushang and his face went from befuddlement to confusion to distress, then he rushed over.
“Qiupu, thank all the gods that you’re here, I knew you wouldn’t desert us!”
His voice wasn’t very loud due to being in a public space. Qiupu was this body’s courtesy name.
After thinking a bit, Zhang Sushang called out the young man’s name. “Jinghu.”
This Jiang Jinghu attended the same high school as the original goods, though not the same class. They weren’t very close, but did exchange letters and share a meal before leaving the country because among the four who came to study in Russia, they shared a hometown.
Jiang Jinghu, at sixteen years old, was the youngest of the four exchange students and couldn’t speak Russian fluently. However he had the passion, the support of his family, and the fact that his family ran the best pharmacy in the city; he was the most enthusiastic of the exchange students and was the first to be prepared to go.
In contrast, the original goods was the son of a landlord, for whom his family had even arranged a child bride. When he expressed an interest in travelling to Russia, he was beaten twenty times with a board and disowned; if it weren’t for his already-married sister who stuffed him with a little money on the eve of his departure, he wouldn’t even have been able to reach St. Petersburg.
Side note: as far as the beating was concerned, if the original body’s layers of fat wasn’t enough or his defence slightly weaker, Zhang Sushang suspected that he wouldn’t have been able to last until he transmigrated over.
“Yeah, it’s me.” Jiang Jinghu sat next to Zhang Sushang while looking at him in distress. “Gods, why are you so thin? It was already so hard for Wu Yeming, Li Yuan, and I to come here together, but you were by yourself, it must’ve been even worse. How’ve you been?”
Zhang Sushang warmed at his concerned expression. “The university doesn’t have enough dormitories, so they arranged for me to homestay with one of our seniors. He’s really good, he looks after me a lot and we’re already friends. You don’t have to worry so much, I’m doing pretty well.”
“But you’re so thin now!” Jiang Jinghu refused to believe it, he only needed to see how his old classmate’s belly was only a third of its previous size to know that he was trying to be strong. Although he himself wasn’t so well off, he decided to buy a few more meal tickets for Zhang Sushang tomorrow.
He also had to sneak it to him secretly, he thought.
They chatted for a while and Zhang Sushang learned that Jiang Jinghu, Wu Yeming, and Li Yuan who had come before him had all moved into the dormitories. Jiang Jinghu also studied medicine, same as him, while Wu Yeming studied engineering and Li Yuan studied chemistry; and even Jiang Jinghu, who had the wealthiest background among them, found a job sweeping the dormitories to save a little money.
As long as these people finished their studies and returned to their home country, they would be talents worth their weight in gold.
As Zhang Sushang chatted, he gradually felt a little guilty, feeling that his ideological awareness wasn’t nearly as good as these students who really risked everything to go to a foreign country.
His biggest goal was only to live to 90 years old – which, although it sounded grand, had nothing on fighting for the country. Zhang Sushang had also thought that if he wanted to help people in the future, the prerequisite was that he had the ability to do so.
Alexei’s encouragement should be directed towards these people instead.
Right then, an old man with curly grey hair and a neat beard walked in, wearing a green coat and a serious expression. He opened a book and uttered a string of rapid Russian words.
Jiang Jinghu, still unused to the language’s tongue trills, frowned as he listened then tugged on Zhang Sushang’s sleeve. “Qiupu, do you know what he’s saying?”
“Professor Yevgeny is the dean of the Facility of Medicine and will be our principal supervisor for the next few years, besides the rector,” Zhang Sushang translated.
Jiang Jinghu nodded rapidly. “I see I see. Hey, your Russian is really good!”
“I’m good at languages,” he replied shyly.
Before he time travelled, when he trained in Russia, it only took him one year to get his reading and writing skills high enough that he was able to write his own short stories in Russian. He didn’t need subtitles when watching Japanese anime either.
Hearing this, Jiang Jinghu was clearly jealous. “That’s amazing, none of us are that good at Russian yet so everything is hard to do. Before we came, Li Yuan said that he wanted to translate all the chemistry books here into Chinese and take them home — recently, he’s staying up all night studying children’s textbooks.”
It wasn’t that industries within China weren’t developed, but that they still weren’t as advanced as in other countries. They wanted to bring more knowledge home.
“But it doesn’t matter,” Jiang Jinghu said, clenching his fist, “we can always learn more as long as we work hard.”
Zhang Sushang’s heart moved at his words, but just as he was about to reply, he felt a tap on his back. “Can you guys stop? The professor is about to look over here,” Danil whispered from behind them.
He didn’t speak very quickly so Jiang Jinghu could also understand him. The two of them shut their mouths and obediently looked towards the podium, where, as expected, they met Professor Yevgeny’s cold green eyes.
Zhang Sushang shuddered. No matter what era, teachers all had intimidating glares.
“Now I will start calling names. When you hear yours, stand up and let everyone get to know you,” Yevgeny said slowly.
Yet by the time the class was finished, Zhang Sushang could only match names to faces for Danil and Jiang Jinghu. On a related note, Western countries had a high rate of duplicate names, which was especially obvious this time for some reason. In their class alone there were three Sergeis and four Ivans, so when calling them they had to be distinguished by their patronymics.
Not to mention Zhang Sushang, even the other students had issues remembering their names.
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- 1Specifically, referencing a Chinese cartoon featuring two bears and a logger; see Wikipedia.
- 2The IRL university doesn’t have a Faculty of Science (it’s split into faculties of biology, chemistry etc. instead) and I can’t find anything about female deans, first or otherwise
- 3This is how we get surnames like Smith (as in blacksmith) or Thatcher in English
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