Chapter 50 – Cla.s.smate Lin Lin (Part 1)
Early morning quickly went by while the students survived through the b.u.mps on the road during the whole journey. They also used military tents, sleeping bags, kettles and other things, which were all military supplies, but only of temporary usage.
Fortunately, the army was very generous to the young freshmen and supplied them with ne equipment. Once they were done with them, they could be reused by being handed over to the young soldiers.
The army paid special attention to efficiency. It only took 20 minutes to pack everything. 20 minutes later, they had breakfast and started the morning training.
The training period wasn’t completely determined by one’s major, and boys and girls were trained separately. In Lin Mumu’s group, there were their two girls from the religious studies department, several liberal arts girls from the preparatory cla.s.s, and some students from the Chinese Language Department. Every group had more than 40 people.
“h.e.l.lo, everyone. My name is w.a.n.g Chong, I will be your military training instructor during this period. We’ll now begin the roll call.” Afterwards, they took care of all the procedures, and although it was a novelty, it quickly became somewhat boring.
After calling more than a dozen names, w.a.n.g clashed suddenly shouted, “Lin Lin, which one of you is Lin Lin? In the end, is there no cla.s.smate Lin Lin?”
No one replied.
Instructor w.a.n.g Chong shouted again: “Cla.s.smate Lin Lin from the Religious Studies Department?”
“My name is Lin Mumu.” Lin Mumu had no choice but to make a sound.
The list that the instructor was holding was printed and not handwritten. There was an empty s.p.a.ce left between each of the three characters composing every name. There was such a clear distinction between the two ‘tree’ characters behind the ‘forest’ character. To read it as Lin Lin instead of Lin Mumu, the instructor was either deliberately picking fault, or she had a brain problem.
“You should have answered my earlier call by saying ‘Reporting’. Why didn’t you answer to the roll call?” The instructor’s authority was challenged and she instantly got angry.
(TN: Here’s a little Chinese lesson: this 木 means tree and is read ‘Mu’, while this 林 means forest or wood and is read ‘Lin’. You’ll notice the forest character looks like two tree characters stuck together. The name on the list was written like this ‘林 木 木’ but the instructor read it as if the 2 tree characters were stuck together like this ‘林 林’ Which is read as Lin Lin. She completely ignored such a big blanck s.p.a.ce, no wonder Mumu called her and idiot.)