Chapter 10 of 100

Chapter 10

20 min read5,105 words

"Let's go to Gul Island. There are many fish and shrimp there, and plenty of reefs. You can't catch them with a net," Bozhu said, rowing the boat and pointing ahead. Her rowing posture was very graceful, full of vitality. Except for her feet, which were firmly planted on the boat deck, her whole body swayed with the movement of the oar, her thigh muscles tightly tensed, but her waist was very supple. Under her drive, the small boat quickly left the row of boats and advanced on the sea, riding the waves.

"Don't look at me like that!" Seeing Hongtao grinning at her, Bozhu's face turned red again.

"Let me row for a while. You're sweating!" Hongtao's face didn't thin at all from his穿越 (time travel). When he saw that he was caught, he didn't explain but instead took the initiative to approach and took over Bozhu's oar.

In less than five minutes, Hongtao returned the oar to Bozhu. This thing looked simple, just a push and a pull, but once he started, neither the push nor the pull was smooth. Even though Hongtao was stronger than Bozhu, he couldn't effectively row the boat, and his palms were sore from the friction. He couldn't help but admit that this was a matter of skill and technique.

From the row of boats to Gul Island was about five kilometers, not because the island was that far from the coast, but because it was to the west of the row of boats, less than three kilometers from the shore. Bozhu, like a perpetual motion machine, swayed her body steadily. When she started to breathe heavily, the small boat had reached the island. She then held the oar, took off her headscarf, and wiped the sweat from her forehead. Only then did Hongtao see clearly that her hair was tied up in two buns at the back of her head, like two bagels.

"Little fish, little shrimp, throw the net down," Hongtao said without much ado, directing Bo Yu and Bo Xia to throw one end of the trap into the sea. A large stone was already tied to it, and with its weight, the net would sink to the bottom of the sea. All they needed to do was hold the rope at the other end. Once the net stopped sinking, they tied a bamboo tube over a meter long to it and threw it into the water as a marker.

"Is it seven meters deep here?" Before coming, Hongtao had marked the hemp rope with knots every meter, a basic skill for fishermen. Whenever they needed to measure the depth of a new reservoir, they would tie knots on a rope, attach a large stone, and row to the spot to measure. The one-meter distance wasn't guessed; each person had their own way of remembering it. Hongtao had measured it himself, and the distance from his fingertips to his elbow joint was exactly 50 centimeters.

"Two zhang and two chi..." Bozhu also picked up a rope, tied a stone to it, and let it sink. She then pulled it up and measured the wet part on the side of the boat, giving another answer.

"Oh, this is one chi?" Hongtao quickly noticed something. On the inside of the boat's side, there were two marks carved into the wood, about half a meter apart. Could this be a chi from the Song Dynasty?

"Two chi... How long is one meter that you mentioned?" Bozhu held up two fingers and then curiously asked about Hongtao's unit of measurement.

Well, there was something to do now. They needed to understand each other's different units of measurement, which was an important issue. Not only did Hongtao discuss it with Bozhu, but he also called Bo Yu and Bo Xia to teach them the relationship between chi and zhang, and meters and centimeters. But the progress was slow. The two boys couldn't read or count, and they didn't know addition or subtraction. They could barely understand the decimal system, but the hundred system confused them.

But it didn't matter. Since they had to wait for the afternoon anyway, Hongtao decided to become their math teacher. He taught them the multiplication table and then showed them how to write their names on the boat deck with a hatchet, not caring whether it was in simplified or traditional characters, as he himself couldn't write traditional characters. They just had to make do.

The more ignorant a person is, the greater their thirst for knowledge. Although Bozhu, Bo Yu, and Bo Xia didn't say it, they valued being able to go to school and learn to read. So they sat obediently on the boat deck, listening to Hongtao's lessons without a word, being very well-behaved. Hongtao then gave them some simple arithmetic problems, such as: if one fish sells for three coins, how many coins do ten fish sell for? Twenty? Thirty? If the fish are of different sizes, with the larger ones selling for five coins and the smaller ones for three coins, and if ten fish include three large ones and seven small ones, how many coins do they sell for in total?

These simple arithmetic problems made Bozhu and the two boys dizzy. They counted their toes and fingers, and even when all three of them counted together, they still couldn't get it right. But when they used the multiplication table that Hongtao taught them, they immediately became happy. Bo Yu stood behind Hongtao, holding a broken sail to shield him from the sun, while Bo Xia held a coarse porcelain bowl, ready to offer it to the teacher when he needed water. Bozhu didn't idle either; she washed her headscarf in seawater and immediately handed it to Hongtao whenever he wiped his sweat. The three of them were busy, but they didn't neglect their studies. The afternoon passed in a flash, and they were still reciting the multiplication table on the boat, not even noticing the sun setting.

"Azhu, what are you up to again!" Suddenly, a loud shout came from the side of the boat, startling the four people on board.

"Grandpa! It's all your fault, I forgot again..." Azhu was reciting the multiplication table, and she had just passed five and was about to move on to six when she forgot everything. She was so flustered that she threw her headscarf onto the boat of Bo Fu.

"Grandpa, I can write my name! Uncle Tao taught me, come and see!" Bo Yu and Bo Xia, seeing their father, wanted to show off their learning, but they couldn't lift the boat deck, so they jumped up and down in frustration.

"Uncle Bo, Uncle Huang... Grand... Grandpa!" Hongtao turned around and saw that Bo Fu, Huang Hai, and Chen Ming'en's boats had returned together. The first few titles came out smoothly, but calling "Grandpa" was still a bit awkward.

"Ha ha ha, let me see what you wrote. Hmm... Bo Yu, that's correct! Bo... Xia? Is this the shrimp character from Australia?" Chen Ming'en, hearing Hongtao call him "Grandpa," smiled warmly, brought his boat closer, and leaned over to look at the characters on the boat deck. Some he recognized, and some were a bit different.

"In our place, we initially learned Chinese characters, but later simplified the ones with more strokes for simplicity. The original characters are no longer learned by the young, and I don't know them," Hongtao explained the principle of simplified characters, leaving it to them whether they believed it or not. It didn't matter since they weren't going to take an exam.

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