Volume 1 Chaos Comes Chapter 5: Pork and Fennel Flavored Love
When we walked out of the south gate, we saw a deep pit half the size of a basketball court. A senior student told me that it was an ancient site discovered during the subway excavation not long ago, and it is said to have a history of more than a thousand years.
The deep pit is surrounded by busy workers and archaeologists, and traffic police outside are doing their best to direct the paralyzed traffic.
I remember that an excavator used an electric drill to dig up the road surface in the middle of the night, and the dormitories along the street kept complaining.
Unlike the Northeastern dumpling restaurants that fill the streets, eating Spanish mackerel dumplings requires a lot of trouble. We took two subway stops, passed through several neighborhoods full of bicycles, and finally arrived at a store in a small bungalow.
This small house filled with mist is filled with wooden dining tables and benches. Tall peonies grow in the cool corners, and one of the four walls is covered with a huge menu and colorful photos of dishes.
It's dinner time now and the room is extremely crowded. If you don't make an appointment in advance, you may have to wait a long time.
"Hey, you're here." The boss who was serving dishes non-stop greeted me. I had contacted him on WeChat before I left, so I had a seat as soon as I arrived at the restaurant.
This store has always been understaffed, and the boss has to do several things himself.
We walked sideways to the reserved seat, and just as we sat down, the store manager ran over like the wind and said:
"Half a pound of pork and fennel, a pound of Spanish mackerel, and some kelp salad? What would you like to drink?"
He was typing rapidly on the ordering machine, not even waiting for my reply.
"Yes, just like before. Just drink hot water."
The tacit understanding between the store manager and I was once again tested.
After the dishes were served, I secretly observed Ai Bishui's expression. The size of the food on the plate was beyond her expectations.
I saw her pick up the chopsticks, carefully pick up one, and take a small bite from the edge of the dumpling.
"Be careful, there's soup in it."
"Delicious!" She obviously let go of the second bite, it seemed that she was not caring about her image before.
While watching her eat happily, I was thinking about what topic to talk about.
"There's an article saying that the big pit at the school gate was an ancient scientific research institution. Today's experts are really bold in saying anything."
Why does he sound so bossy? Maybe it was the familiar atmosphere in the store that made me relax.
"Maybe it's really a scientific research institution, but it's also a media hype." Ai Bishui dipped the Spanish mackerel dumplings in a little garlic paste and took a big bite. Hot steam came out of her mouth and condensed on the table.
"This logic of summarizing nature through experiments and summarizing laws is probably something that only emerged in modern Europe."
I recalled what I learned in the introduction to physics. There was a section in the textbook called the relationship between modern science and philosophy. Did ancient my country have a philosophical basis for the development of natural science? Even if there was a theory, there was no practice.
"It's possible that there were some attempts and ideas but no records were left, or the authorities destroyed the records. It's not difficult to come up with a reasonable explanation." While speaking, she had finished eating two plates of dumplings.
"After dipping it in garlic paste, the taste is completely different from before."
"This... More is different... You really like Spanish mackerel dumplings. Would you like another plate?"
If you eat meat without garlic, the taste will be reduced by half. Fish is also meat.
"No, no, I'll go get some dumpling soup. Do you guys drink soup after eating dumplings?"
She walked towards a one-meter-high stainless steel thermos bucket with a tap, on which were small stainless steel jars for customers to freely take. I remember when I was a child, the tricycles selling tofu pudding pushed this kind of bucket through the streets.
I sat in my seat and stared at her in a daze, watching her stick out her tongue when she got burned while taking the water. I realized that I wanted to know more about her, and the flame of curiosity burned in my heart.
People like to use fruits or sweet drinks to describe first love, and wine and coffee to describe mature love. But what about college love? At least for me, it smells like pork and fennel.
Ai Bishui held the iron vat that was about to overflow with water in both hands and returned to her seat in a happy mood.
The shortened distance made me feel more strongly the desire to peek into her past and daily life. This desire and the resistance to speaking were fighting fiercely in my mind until both were destroyed by a sudden voice.
"Cheng Lao!" A big hand pressed on my shoulder, which scared me.
A tall figure appeared behind me on the left, and he was greeting the girl across the table. It was my classmate Mai Ge, followed by his two roommates.
The opportunity for us to meet was when we sat together in the first mechanics class of our freshman year. During the discussion between classes, we found that we were from the same city. Later, we often had meals together and gradually became familiar with each other. Now we can joke around with each other.
Although Mai Ge is a bit abstract, he is a real person with many friends. I wonder if I can rank among them.
"Ah Mai Shen, everyone in your dormitory is here."
"Yeah, right... let's go order food first." After saying that, he hurriedly pulled his roommate away, leaving me behind as I wanted to say a few more words to him.
A few minutes later, a message came on the phone: "Steady (funny)."
I looked at Ai Bishui, she seemed very happy and had a very natural smile.
"You guys call each other so funny."
Indeed, she was the only one who could be called a "god" here. The social defense between Maigao and I by praising each other seemed ridiculous with this person around.
"That person is now working as a handyman in the magnetic materials lab." I ate all the pork and fennel dumplings on the plate. "It's not a popular field now. It seems that people who work on condensed matter are working on graphene ."
"I think magnetism is very interesting and has great potential."
I felt a little unhappy, and it was a bit like the feeling I had when they greeted each other just now.
When did these two people become familiar with each other?
"How did you get to know Mai Ge before?"
"I spent some time in the lab next to his, and it was actually quite interesting to do experiments there."
She took a sip of the soup, swished it gently in her mouth and swallowed it.
"You've learned about so many directions... I feel like this has nothing to do with the article we're reading now."
"No, magnets can also show various states between chaos and balance from a microscopic perspective."
I remembered... my teacher mentioned it casually in the electromagnetism class before.
"Magnetic materials generally have a lattice structure inside, and each lattice contains an equivalent small magnet. The external magnetism of the material is the macroscopic effect displayed by countless small magnets inside, and the magnetization process is the process of transforming them from disorder to consistent orientation."
Ai Bishui held two chopsticks in the middle of the table in opposite directions, and while speaking, she turned one of them 180 degrees, which was to indicate the magnetization process. There were countless chopsticks in a real magnet, and they were bound by invisible forces. Gently moving one would cause ripples in the array.
She talked on and on about the principles, not giving me any time to think.
"That is to say, if we intentionally control the external field used for magnetization, we can also control the input signal of this complex system, and make the small magnets inside the magnetic material exhibit very complex behaviors through interaction."
It seems that each small magnet is a pigeon in the flock, and the external magnetism is the movement trajectory of the pigeon flock. However, the magnet has no life and cannot intentionally pay attention to the changes of other companions.
"Those small magnets actually have a name called spin. Their interaction will produce many phenomena. Chaos is actually just one of them. I am actually more interested in their self-organization..."
The boss came over and quietly told me to pay the bill, after all, the entrance of the dumpling restaurant was already crowded with people waiting in line for seats. At the counter, I wanted to pay all at once, but she didn't want to, so we ended up splitting the bill.
"The little guy is very handsome." The boss said in dialect in my ear, and then I realized that it might be misunderstood if a man and a woman went out to eat together.
On the way back, I walked diagonally behind her. Some of the small shops on both sides of the road had already hung up New Year decorations, and the two-lane road was full of black mud after the snow melted.
"By the way, do you have any hobbies, like sports?"
This conversation should develop naturally. Sports, pets, food and travel are universal topics.
"Hobbies... Let me think. I liked swimming when I was in middle school, and I often went to the city's swimming pool on weekends."
I couldn't help but imagine her in a bathing suit.
"I want to try diving when I have time. Do you people who live by the sea often have the opportunity to dive..."
During the 20 minutes from the hotel to the school, Ai Bishui and I talked a lot, but in the end it turned into an academic discussion. When she talked about physics, she didn't sound like a college student discussing her homework, but like a little girl introducing her school life to her parents.
There is a classic line from an old movie -
She never grew up, but she never stopped growing.
"Can we have this discussion more often before we go home for the New Year? I figured out a lot of things today."
The atmosphere of this conversation is quite pleasant. My intuition tells me that I should take advantage of this situation to create conditions for a future meeting.
"Oh, that's not possible. I have other work to do."
At that moment my heart rate doubled.
"Uh...what kind of job is that..."
"I don't want to spend any more time on CUTs. I talked to my teacher before and he said he still needs to think about what to do next and may give me an answer after the new year."
A tall tower seemed to appear on the ground, slowly lifting her up to a place where I could not reach.
The gap between people is much bigger than that between people and dogs. All life is reasonable, and we don't have to understand each other.
"And I'm going to continue doing experiments soon... But if you have any questions you want to discuss, just send me a message."
When she said these words, all I could think of was Mai Ge’s silly face.
From that day on, my time going to the library changed from 9 am to 7 am.
