Reborn and become a Great Scientist

Chapter 389 128 American Minister Harrison

The setting sun of the British Empire still hangs in the sky, and people can still feel a little warmth from the afterglow.

Therefore, Sir Duff, the British Minister, showed no stage fright when attending the Nobel Prize dinner. He acted openly and like a host. He may have "considered Stockholm to be London."

Sir Duff might have been displeased by seeing the American Minister Harrison jumping up and down in the venue. He felt that the unworthy native Adining, who also spoke with a foreign accent, was very unhappy playing the clown in the venue, so he pretended to be a clown. With a very enthusiastic look, he grabbed the charge d'affaires of China in Sweden, Lei Bingyang, beside him, and pretended to talk nonstop about what he had and what he didn't.

At this time, he completely ignored the fact that he was a knight of the British Empire and the British minister in Sweden, while the other party was just a third secretary of China, a weak country in the Far East. There was a big gap in status between the two.

"Your Excellency, your country has shown signs of rising in recent years. In 1924, Dr. Chen Muwu was the first to win the Nobel Prize in Physics. Then three years later, Dr. Zhao Zhongyao also engraved the medal on the medal for the second time. He has a Chinese name. Congratulations!"

"Well, thank you very much for your compliment, Minister. But whether it is Dr. Chen or Dr. Zhao, they are both young talents in our country, but their success, regardless of their own efforts, is inseparable from your country's University of Cambridge. , their cultivation.

"In my opinion, their ability to win the Nobel Prize in Physics is the result of the cooperation between China and the UK. The UK has made a great contribution to this matter."

Lei Bingyang, who was attending such an important occasion for the first time, was already nervous. Faced with Sir Duff's enthusiastic behavior, he was even more at a loss.

Lei Bingyang could only ask and answer obediently. His awkward look reflected Sir Duff's "majestic appearance, feather fan and silk scarf, talking and laughing..."

Well, the Qianglu was not wiped out.

Chen Muwu did not sit next to the minister, otherwise, if he heard clearly what Lei Bingyang said to praise the British, he would definitely become dumbfounded.

How come you are the result of being trained by the British?

If he had come not from the UK, but from Germany, France, or even the Netherlands, Belgium, and Italy, he, Chen Muwu, would still have achieved results in physics and won the Nobel Prize in Physics.

But without Chen Muwu, it is still unknown whether the UK can win Nobel Prizes one after another, and whether the Cavendish Laboratory can achieve greater glory after being slightly dormant due to lack of funding.

Sir Duff was very satisfied with Lei Bingyang's answer, or the rainbow fart he was boasting about. He suddenly raised his voice deliberately and said loudly in front of all the ministers present:

"Your Excellency, as you said, both Dr. Chen and Dr. Zhao are models of cooperation between the UK and China. Both the UK and China are countries with a long history. During so many years of development, , accumulated a very profound foundation.

"China has talented people, and the UK has an excellent education system. If we continue to cooperate in the future, we will definitely be able to cultivate more physicists and scientists who are beneficial to the world and mankind, and we will never cultivate the kind of people who think about nothing but making money. Financial speculators who don’t have any!”

Sir Duff spoke louder and louder, until at last he wanted to shout.

The financial speculators mentioned at the end of his words refer to the financiers on Wall Street in the United States and the increasingly fanatical U.S. stock market.

In the final analysis, what the American Minister Harrison did at the dinner was not pleasing to the eye, and he deliberately raised the status of the United Kingdom, thus achieving the effect of secretly belittling the United States.

This is not a diplomatic occasion, it's just like a child's play playing house.

When snipe and clam fight, the fisherman wins, but the unlucky one is...

Chen Muwu.

American Minister Harrison was not a fool. Of course he could hear the ironic subtext in Duke Duff's words.

Fortunately, the minister's own sanity was still there, and he did not lose his mind and quarrel with Sir Duff because of the other party's irritating words.

Maybe that hypocritical British guy was just waiting for him to do it himself.

As long as he makes such a move, it will prove that what the British say is true. He is an uneducated person, and the United States is an uneducated country.

Harrison didn't even think about retorting. He left the dinner directly with the wine glass and went to another place in the dinner venue.

The table of Nobel Prize winners was the focus of the audience tonight. If he walked over rashly, his intention would become obvious.

So Harrison set his goal on someone else. This person was Chen Muwu, who also won the Nobel Prize in Physics three years ago.

Since the British Minister chose to start with the Chinese Charge d'Affaires, he showed his strong sense of superiority.

Then I might as well give him a blow and directly conquer Chen Muwu.

"Dr. Chen, good evening! I am Leland Harrison, the U.S. Minister to Sweden."

After developing Huang Di Xing and being interviewed by Time magazine, Chen Muwu’s attitude toward the United States was simply Sima Zhao’s heart—everyone knew it.

He has made it clear that if the unfair Chinese Exclusion Act is not repealed, he will not set foot on American soil for a day.

Of course, this also includes the United States’ northern neighbor and its little follower, Canada, which also introduced bills to exclude China, although this country still has little sense of existence.

Therefore, Chen Muwu has never taken the initiative to deal with American state officials, and he knows only a few Americans. They are either physicist Compton or astronomer Campbell, all of whom are in academic research circles.

It was the first time for Chen Muwu to face American diplomats.

But "don't hit the smiling person", Harrison had already come over to take care of him in person. Although he was not sure what he was thinking and his true intention of coming over, Chen Muwu always wanted to be polite.

"It's an honor to meet His Excellency the Minister. I wonder why you are looking for me tonight?"

As soon as Chen Muwu responded, Harrison put down his wine glass on the dining table in a familiar manner and found an empty seat next to Chen Muwu and sat down.

"Dr. Chen, you may not know that twenty years ago, at a young age, I was already a diplomat in the United States. As a low-level staff member, I traveled to many countries with ministers on missions to various countries. Of course, I also It was Beijing. It seemed to be in 1901? I can't remember clearly.

“I was deeply impressed by the country of China. The people there are simple and hard-working, but they just lack some contact with Western society.

"I think given time, this country will surely rise. Sure enough, more than 20 years later, you and Dr. Zhao, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics today, appeared." Harrison's original intention was to play an emotional card and pass He said that he had been to Beijing to quickly get in touch with Chen Muwu.

But his words were full of unconscious arrogance. If he hadn't taken the occasion into consideration, Chen Muwu's eyebrows would have been knitted together.

What does "lack of some contact with Western society" mean?

Does it mean that the Chinese people were ignorant before, and it was the sound of a cannon outside Guandong Bay that brought advanced knowledge to China?

And judging from what the other party meant, it seemed that he took most of the credit for Chen Muwu's success to Western education and universal values.

And what made Chen Muwu the most angry was the time he mentioned at the beginning of his words, 1901.

This year, if you only look at four Arabic numerals, it is just an ordinary year. At best, it can be said to be the first year after mankind entered the twentieth century.

But if this year is converted into the traditional Chinese era calendar, then this year will be the 27th year of Guangxu in the Qing Dynasty.

The corresponding chronology of the stems and branches is the thirty-eighth year among the sixty years, Xin Chou.

Last year, the Qing court, which used the power of the Boxer Rebellion to declare war on various countries, was so prosperous. This year, the Qing court hastily hunted westward.

It wasn't until Li Zhongtang and the princes who stayed in the capital finalized this unequal treaty with the largest compensation in the history of the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China with the ministers of various countries, and took Emperor Guangxu all the way to the Empress Dowager Cixi in Xi'an, that they could finally return to Come to Beijing.

The unequal treaty signed in this year was called the "Xinchou Treaty" according to the Ganzhi calendar.

The Boxer Rebellion, which reached its peak last year, and the Eight-Power Allied Forces' entry into Beijing, were also called the "Gengzi Rebellion" based on the chronology of the zodiac signs.

Correspondingly, the compensation promised in the "Xinchou Treaty" is called "Gengzi Indemnity".

In recent years, various countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom have announced that they will no longer demand compensation and will use the money for education in China. The source of funds for these overseas study funds is the almost astronomical Boxer Indemnity.

Even until the 21st century, another "Tsinghua University" on a small island in the southeast was still able to receive checks for the Boxer Indemnity every year.

American Minister Harrison said that he had been to Beijing as an attaché of the American delegation in 1901, so there must have been no accidents. He was definitely one of the people who went to participate in the negotiations on the "Xinchou Treaty".

Harrison mentioned this past incident, perhaps to show that he is very close to China.

But in Chen Muwu's mind, he didn't think so. Although he understood the true intention of the American minister, he always felt that the example Harrison gave seemed to be humiliating himself.

So Chen Muwu naturally didn't want to show mercy to him. Anyway, this is Sweden, not the United States.

Even if he scolds Minister Harrison, who represents the face of the U.S. government, and makes him lose face, is it possible that the U.S. government, which has been pursuing the isolation policy of the Monroe Doctrine, will send troops to humiliate the United States? Can Chen Muwu, who lost his face, give a lesson?

"Mr. Minister, I find it difficult to agree with your statement. Whether in the East or the West, science and technology have no national boundaries. It cannot be said that it is because Sir Newton of the United Kingdom discovered the three laws of kinematics. Then this The three most basic laws of mechanics belong to the United Kingdom and cannot be used by other countries.

“The books we use now, the newspapers we read every day, and the papermaking and printing technologies used were all first invented by China and then sent to Europe by Arab merchants through the Silk Road over many years.

“Including the compass used on ocean-going ships and the gunpowder that took away countless lives in various wars around the world, these were also invented by the Chinese.

"If you say that Dr. Zhao and I were able to achieve today's achievements and reach our current status because of our exposure to Western society, then can I also say that without the ancient wisdom of the East, the entire West would still be What about a primitive society where people eat hair and drink blood?”

Harrison never expected that when he sat at the minister's table, he would just face the eccentricity of the impoverished British ambassador.

But when he hurried to Chen Muwu's table, he encountered a warm face but a cold butt, which made him even more embarrassed than before.

He could neither advance nor retreat, he was just stunned in place.

After a while, Harrison finally found some solutions.

"Dr. Chen, I would like to ask you not to misunderstand, I didn't mean that.

"I just want to praise the wisdom of the Chinese people. In a short period of time, there have been two Nobel Prize winners in physics. I believe that this number will become more in the future."

What he said was correct, and Chen Muwu sounded very comfortable.

"So, I would like to ask your Excellency, Minister, why did you find me now?"

In fact, Harrison's original intention was to regain face from Chen Muwu because he had just been irritated by Sir Duff.

If he can chat and laugh with Dr. Chen, who is praised to the sky by the British, then he can show how pale Sir Duff's ridicule just now is.

Chen Muwu suddenly asked him what was wrong, leaving Harrison stunned for a moment.

However, his response this time was faster than before: "Dr. Chen, before I came to Sweden to serve as the American Minister, I served as Assistant Secretary of State in the United States.

"Secretary of Commerce Hoover once suggested to President Coolidge that he invite you to visit the United States to give a speech, but this has not yet happened.

"I just happened to see you in Stockholm today, so I would like to reiterate the previous invitation to you to visit the United States on behalf of the US government."

By now, Harrison is a bit broken.

Anyway, he lost face at this dinner today. If he can successfully invite Chen Muwu to the United States and accomplish what neither Coolidge nor Hoover could accomplish, at least he will be able to earn money after returning to China. To have enough face.

"Dr. Chen has fully expressed his thoughts before. He will definitely not go to the United States. Minister Harrison, I think you should not worry about this matter."

Before Chen Muwu opened his mouth, someone had already responded to the invitation for him.

It's just that this person's English level is worrying, and his tongue is a bit awkward.

(End of this chapter)