Reborn and become a Great Scientist

Chapter 373 112 The Enemy Envoy

The Solvay Conference was able to be held and has been held every three years until now because Solvay, the Belgian alkali production king, also wanted to leave a name in history after making a lot of money.

He originally wanted to create a prize under his surname to be awarded to the best scientists in the world.

Unfortunately, the Nobel Prize comes first. Even if Solvay creates a Solvay Prize, its popularity around the world may not exceed that of the Nobel Prize, and it will also be blamed for plagiarizing Nobel's ideas. of infamy.

So later Solvay listened to other people's suggestions. He established this special Solvay Foundation to provide money and venues so that the world's top physicists can gather together regularly to discuss today's world. on the most cutting-edge physics issues.

The Solvay Foundation earmarked funds to buy land and build a building, and what it got was the magnificent Solvay Palace in Leopold Park in Brussels.

Solvay Palace was the main venue of the Solvay Conference. After World War I, the Solvay Conference was divided into two. The physics conference was held first in 1921, and then the chemistry conference was held in 1922 the following year. .

——Generally speaking, if the discipline is omitted and collectively called the Solvay Conference, it refers specifically to the physics conference. Only the chemistry conference will be additionally emphasized in the name.

Although conferences are held in two out of three years, the duration of each conference is only about one week to ten days, so the Solvay Palace has much more free time than it is used every year.

No matter how much money you have, you can't waste it. In order to keep the foundation running smoothly, the managers of the Solvay Foundation will let the Solvay Palace be rented out in their free time, and undertake some conferences and banquets to earn venue fees for maintenance. The daily operations of the entire building.

Except for the third Solvay Conference in 1921 and the fourth Solvay Conference in 1922, which were held in spring and April, all other conferences were held in October or November at the end of each year.

This time happens to be the same as the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announces the list of Nobel Prize winners for that year every year.

Therefore, the staff of Solvay Palace already have a lot of experience in preparing banquets, and have prepared several Nobel Prize celebration dinners. These things are familiar to them.

After the nouveau riche get rich, they always like to be arty and emphasize a tradition that has no other use except trouble and tormenting people.

Therefore, the format of the dinner that night was very similar to that of Trinity College’s daily dinners. Except that they did not need to wear the traditional robes that have been passed down for hundreds of years, all the people sat in a row and could not see the end. long dining table instead of a format that would allow people to move around the banquet hall more freely.

Before sitting down at their respective seats and before the dinner officially started, Zhao Zhongyao and Chen Muwu met with several uninvited guests.

All this was due to Zhao Zhongyao, who lost his documents after coming to Brussels. A few days ago, he went to the Republic of China's embassy in Belgium to apply for a new document, informed the other party that he was coming to Belgium to attend a meeting, and pointed out that Chen Muwu would also come. Attend this meeting.

Because he mentioned Chen Muwu's name, he got his new passport quite smoothly, and was entrusted by the staff of the legation to invite Chen Muwu to visit the legation when he had time.

Chen Muwu was not angry with the people at the embassy because he was indifferent to them last time he came to Belgium and asked for help this time. He just simply didn't have time, so he didn't reply to the embassy.

Today, the news that Zhao Zhongyao won the Nobel Prize in Physics was published in the newspapers. After it spread throughout Brussels, of course the embassy also received the news.

Now they had a legitimate reason to come to Solvay Palace to meet Chen Muwu, and they paid a visit in the name of celebrating Dr. Zhao Zhongyao's winning of the Nobel Prize.

So Zhao Zhongyao and Chen Muwu appeared in the reception room of the Solvay Palace before the dinner started, and met several staff members of the Republic of China Embassy in Belgium who had been waiting here.

When he saw them for the first time, Chen Muwu felt a little weird when he saw the clothes they were wearing.

The memory in his brain made him think that the Mao suit was a piece of clothing that was popular in China before the 1970s and 1980s, and that it was a bit weird when it first appeared in the Republic of China.

But then he thought that the Mao suit was the national uniform formulated by the first interim president of the Republic of China at a meeting in Tongjing, and Chen Muwu smiled heartily. He had almost been deceived by the stereotype in his mind.

No wonder Chen Muwu was stunned when he saw the Mao suit. It was because when he dealt with the Republic of China's envoys and consuls abroad, they basically wore suits and ties in formal occasions.

It was the first time for Chen Muwu to see overseas staff wearing Mao suits overseas.

Looking closely at the left chest of the leader's tunic suit, Chen Muwu suddenly discovered that there was a round badge pinned on it. In the center of the blue badge, there was a white central symmetrical pattern embedded in it.

The visitor is not good.

This was Chen Muwu's first thought after seeing the badge pattern clearly.

The Chinese people's ability to identify Chinese people is much better than those foreigners who think that all people with black hair, black eyes, and yellow skin look the same.

Photos of Chen Muwu often appear in newspapers around the world, and Zhao Zhongyao went to the embassy to apply for a replacement document a few days ago.

So after seeing the two of them arrive in the reception room, the person in charge of the embassy quickly stood up to greet them.

"Dr. Chen, I have long admired you. Dr. Zhao, we have met again. I am Wang Jingqi of Fujian County, who is currently the minister to Belgium."

do not know.

It was the first time he traveled across the ocean and came to England. In order to prevent his third brother from being bullied by others in an unfamiliar place, Chen Muqiao had found a bunch of information for Chen Muwu before leaving. So after Chen Muwu arrived in London, he knew that The temporary representative in London is called Zhu Zhaoxin, whose nickname is Dingqing.

Later, Chen Muqiao went to Sweden to attend the award ceremony where Chen Muwu won the Nobel Prize. He also established a relationship with the Minister to Sweden in Stockholm early and introduced him to Dai Chenlin at the banquet, another person named Yunong. Jiang people.

But before coming to Belgium this time, Chen Muqiao felt that his little brother had grown up and he didn't need to worry about such little things.

Chen Muwu felt that he would not be able to deal with the embassy, ​​so he did not check the names of relevant people in Belgium at all.

So much so that after the Minister to Belgium took the initiative to reveal his name, there was a brief silence in the reception room of Solvay Palace for a few minutes.

Sensing some embarrassment, Chen Muwu finally reacted: "Mr. Wang, Minister Chen of France once mentioned you to me."

Chen Muwu's reaction was quite clever. Although he didn't know Wang Jingqi, he had heard of the place name Min County.

By coincidence, the minister stationed in France, Chen Lu, was also from Min County.

Among the diplomats and those who studied and worked abroad in the early Republic of China, people from the forced provinces accounted for a large part.

Among the people who were forced to establish the province, a large part were from Min County and Houguan County, both of which belonged to the forced state. On the one hand, this is because this place was originally the residence of aristocratic families with heirlooms of poetry and calligraphy. Rigorous scholarship is naturally a basic skill that goes without saying in the family tradition.

The most famous people in Minhou County in the late Qing Dynasty were Lin Zexu, the Wenzhong Gong who sold cigarettes in Humen, Yan Fu who translated "Tianyan Lun", and Lin Shu who translated Sherlock Holmes into "Holmes" in Bizhou dialect. people.

On the other hand, because it was forced to build a coastal province, it has been a famous hometown of overseas Chinese since ancient times.

Of course, there is a third thing, which is related to those bourgeois Westernizationists in the late Qing Dynasty who advocated "learning from the barbarians and developing skills to control the barbarians."

In 1866, Zuo Wenxiang, one of the representatives of the Westernization Movement and the governor of Fujian and Zhejiang, founded the Bizhou Shipping Bureau in Mawei and the Bijian Shipping School under the Bureau.

This is the first Western-style school built in Bizhou in modern times. It has cultivated many talents for Bizhou and neighboring state capitals.

Although Chen Lu did not mention Wang Jingqi to Chen Muwu, they were both from the same hometown, ministers of the Republic of China to European countries, members of the diplomatic department of the Beiyang government, and France and Belgium were land neighbors.

Because there are so many connections between these two people, Chen Muwu guessed that their relationship should be pretty good.

Unexpectedly, his words not only failed to flatter him, but also touched the tiger's tail.

After shaking hands with Chen Muwu, Wang Jingqi took his hand back with a smile on his face.

He snorted softly, frowned and said, "That Chen Renxian must not have said anything good about me. Dr. Chen, please don't take it to heart."

It's strange that these two people are both fellow villagers and colleagues, and they both work in places thousands of miles away from their hometowns. It stands to reason that they should be close to each other.

But why did Wang Jingqi suddenly become cold-faced when Chen Lu's name was mentioned?

The reasons behind it can be said to be simple or complex.

The current relationship between the Beiyang government and the South is incompatible, but in the early days, the relationship between the two was still a state of one-in-one and one-in-one.

For example, when the young emperor of the Qing Dynasty abdicated, after the provisional government moved from Tengjing to Beijing in 1912, it still retained many positions in the previous team.

For example, Cai, who was also a member of the steamed bun party, became the first director-general of education in the Republic of China during the Tengjing Provisional Government. When the government moved to Beijing, he still remained in this position.

Later, because Cai personally boycotted President Yuan Da, he resigned from the post of Director-General of Education in Beijing.

Wang Jingqi's situation should be similar to Cai's.

Although he was a diplomat of the Beiyang government, it did not prevent him from also participating in the steamed bun baking party.

The relationship between Wang Jingqi and Chen Lu is far from being as simple as fellow villagers.

In 1915, China, Russia and the so-called "Bokd Khanate" in Mongolia held a negotiation in Kyaktu to discuss the ownership of Mongolia.

At that time, Chen Lu's position was that of Minister to Mexico. Before going to South America to perform his duties, he was first sent to Kyactu by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and was regarded as one of the plenipotentiary representatives of the Republic of China.

This meeting can be regarded as the highest-level meeting that the Republic of China government sent a delegation to attend before the Paris Peace Conference, so the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the entire Beiyang government behind it paid great attention to it.

Chen Lu did not forget Wang Jingqi, a fellow from Fujian County, and arranged for the latter to have the title of counselor to attend the meeting together. This was also the first time that Wang Jingqi, who had just transferred from the agriculture and forestry department to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, carried out an initial mission on behalf of the Republic of China.

Since then, Wang Jingqi has gradually stepped onto the diplomatic stage, and eventually rose to the position of minister to Belgium.

Chen Lu was kind to Wang Jingqi. Although Chen Muwu didn't know this, his guess should not be wrong.

The quarrel between Wang Jingqi and Chen Lu occurred in the 1920s when they both went to Europe to serve as ministers.

At that time, because the First World War had just ended, the number of young and middle-aged men in France had suffered heavy losses, and factories across the country needed a large number of workers to resume production.

China saw this opportunity and launched the largest semi-official study abroad activity, the Work-Study Movement in France.

Because the organizers of this event, the people behind the Beijing Chinese French Education Association and the Work-Study Society in France, are basically related to the steamed bun party, so the young people who were sent to France in batches were basically standing On the side of progress - of course the progress here is relative to the Beiyang government.

Wang Jingqi is a person with a relatively high position in Europe in the Baked Steamed Buns Party. He first served as the minister to Belgium and served as the director of the Baked Steamed Buns General Branch in France. Later, he was ordered to upgrade it to the General Branch in France on the basis of the General Branch in France. Headquarters in Europe and serves as the head of the execution department.

Because it was the first time that Roasted Buns and Erhu were cooperating, this small branch in Europe was full of dragons and tigers.

As the direct leader of those people, Wang Jingqi has always had a good attitude towards them. Every time someone returns to China, he will hold a farewell banquet.

In contrast, Chen Lu played a negative role in the work-study movement in France.

On behalf of the Beiyang government, he colluded with the French government and repeatedly persecuted these young people who studied in France.

Every time a young man is detained by the French government, Wang Jingqi, an official figure, is basically responsible for the rescue work.

It seems absurd that a dignified minister to Belgium must travel to places such as Paris and Lyon every three or five days.

But at that time, the facts were so absurd.

During the rescue process, Wang Jingqi will inevitably have conflicts with the French government and Chen Lu, who represents Beiyang.

Later, because domestic organizations such as the Chinese-French Education Association could not raise enough funds to support students studying abroad, the work-study movement in France came to an end.

However, the differences and frictions between Wang Jingqi and Chen Lu not only did not dissipate, but instead grew larger with the passage of time.

(End of this chapter)