Far away in Moscow

Chapter 98
As one of the most senior professors at Friendship University, Sergey has his own independent office in the main building.His exams are not conducted in the classroom, but ask students to come one by one in the office and ask questions face to face.

The first one to go in was an Israeli girl with excellent grades. She stayed inside for 10 minutes, and when she came out, she was surrounded by everyone and asked questions.

"The question itself is not too difficult." The Israeli girl replied calmly: "The content involved is what was taught in class, but the professor asked us to explain it according to our own understanding, and there may be questions and discussions in the middle."

Afterwards, several Chinese students from the same class came in one after another. They were of high or low level. After they came out, some looked relaxed and talked freely;

Other students also entered one after another, and there were fewer and fewer people queuing outside.The North African mixed-race girl went out after the exam, and smiled at Hu Yi and Wuga who were left outside the door: "Next."

Hu Yi poked Wuga: "It's your turn."

"No, I'll wait until the end." Wuga walked around behind Hu Yi nervously: "You go in first."

Hu Yi snorted lightly, controlled his nervousness, adjusted his appearance and knocked on the door: "Hello."

"Hello." Sergey sat at the desk and turned his head with a smile, then he was taken aback for a moment: "Uh...do you have anything to do? I'm taking the exam now, please come back later."

Hu Yi felt a little embarrassed, and quickly walked to the opposite side of the desk: "I'm also here for the exam."

"You?" Sergey pushed his glasses on the bridge of his nose: "A first-year language major?"

"Yes." Hu Yi forced a smile with apology: "I am also your student."

Sergey held his forehead and thought for a while, then reached out to take the roster: "Oh, I seem to have a memory, is that Mr. Miracle Enthusiast? What's your name?"

"Yes, yes." Hu Yi leaned forward and pointed out his name to the professor on the roster: "This is me."

"This? This Hu...is you?"

"My Russian name is Anton, do you remember? It's the same as Chekhov's."

"Yes, I remembered." Sergey took off his glasses and rubbed his face lightly: "However, to be honest, I don't think you should be allowed to pass the exam."

Hu Yi was stunned for a long time, and after confirming that he had heard correctly, he said in amazement: "Why?"

"You should be very clear." Sergey shrugged. "You seldom come to class. I even forgot about you. How can I let you pass? You didn't study at all."

"No, what you said is not entirely correct." Hu Yi blushed slightly, and argued forcefully: "Although sometimes I couldn't come to class, I also studied your course content by myself."

Sergey looked at him fixedly: "Is that so? Then tell me, what did you learn in my course?"

"It's mainly about... um... the relationship between language development and changes, historical processes, social changes, and cultural customs."

"Please explain in detail your understanding of this issue."

"Well..." Hu Yi thought he was smart and gave Sergey a general answer just now. He wanted to adapt to his follow-up questions, but he didn't expect the old professor to throw this question back intact. He couldn't help but be speechless for a while , hesitated and said: "This, this... is very complicated, and needs to be explained with specific examples..."

"Yes, please."

Hu Yi's mind was spinning wildly, but he couldn't remember the specific content that the professor said in class, so he could only scratch his head tongue-tiedly: "That... um... a specific example... let me think about it..."

"Failed!" Sergey opened Hu Yi's grade book and started to write without hesitation.

"Wait! Please wait!" Hu Yi shouted repeatedly, and suddenly saw his name on the grade book, and a flash of inspiration flashed in his mind: "I thought of it!"

"Please speak." Sergey kept his pen in his hand.

"My name." Hu Yi pointed to the grade book: "It's a very bad swear word in Russian, isn't it?"

Sergey took a deep breath: "I must apologize for what I said next - but it is true, your name is very bad."

"You see, this is the misunderstanding caused by the differences between different cultures." Hu Yi quickly organized his own language: "My name is very good in Chinese."

"Maybe." Sergey raised his head and stared at Hu Yi: "But this should be a difference between different languages, which is a very common phenomenon and has nothing to do with historical and cultural customs."

"Yes." Hu Yi quickly changed his words: "What I want to say is that my name itself deeply reflects Chinese cultural customs. And...it also involves some...some exchanges and cognition between China and Russia."

"Huh?" Sergey was dubious: "Tell me."

Hu Yi cleared his throat vigorously: "My surname is 'Hu'. In ancient China, this word refers to the north... some peoples riding horses on the northern grasslands, and it is also used to refer to all foreigners and foreign things. For example, Hu people, Peppers and carrots all have the word 'Hu' in front of them, which means that these are imported from foreign countries."

"Oh!" Sergey straightened up and reinserted the pen into the cap: "Your surname is 'Hu'. Could it be that your ancestors also traveled to China from other countries?"

"Well..." Hu Yi had never considered this question before, so he had to answer honestly: "I don't know, maybe some of them are really from the northern horse-riding peoples."

Sergey seemed a little interested: "You just mentioned the communication between China and Russia, please explain."

"Yes. In Russian, the pronunciation of the word 'China' is very similar to that of 'Khitan' in Chinese, probably because Russians first learned about China through the Khitan people in ancient times, so they used this word to call China from then on."

"It seems that some linguists have indeed proposed this theory, but I haven't verified it in detail." Sergey nodded slowly: "Does this have something to do with your name?"

"It's very relevant!" Hu Yi explained solemnly: "The Khitan at that time was 'Hu' to China. Therefore, 'Hu' was a foreign country to China, but to Russia, um, it could be regarded as China! "

"Wait a minute, let me think about it." Sergey frowned in confusion: "You mean, 'Hu' can be both Chinese and foreign?"

"That's right, not only that - please lend me a pen and paper." Hu Yi picked up a pen and wrote a big "Hu" character on the paper, and said nonsense: "The left side of this word is 'Ancient', use to describe time; on the right is '月', the moon is in the sky, so it can be seen as a ... um ... space concept."

The old professor carefully stared at the words on the paper: "Ancient? Moon? Time? Space?"

"That's right!" Hu Yi tapped on the table with his middle knuckles: "Look at the word 'Hu', it has a long time, a vast space, it can be China, it can be a foreign country, one word covers ancient and modern times China and foreign countries, heaven and earth, isn't it a little...a little..."

He had been talking nonstop for a long time just now, but at this moment he suddenly ran out of words. Sergey didn't care, and frowned and asked in doubt, "How can a mere word contain so many meanings?"

"Of course!" Hu Yi felt proud for a while.He didn't give the old professor time to think about it, and continued, "It's really nothing, my name is 'Yi', but... hehe, it's a more powerful and connotative Chinese character!"

(End of this chapter)