Book 1: Chapter 115

Book 1: Chapter 115

At this time, I remained very calm and backed up all of the data on the phone. Other than the photos and recordings, I also found a lot of files in another folder. I took a preliminary look at them and found that many of them were short journal entries. Uncle Three had never been in the habit of keeping a journal, so there was a high probability that this information had been specially typed into the phone for me to read.

After that, I went to check the monitoring system, but the footage of this good being entered into the warehouse had long been erased.

After I finished backing up the files, I began to read the journal entries. By this time, almost a week had passed and I was completely dumbfounded. The information in these journal entries was absolutely incredible. There seemed to be more information hidden in the sequence of events at that time than I originally thought.

The journal started with Uncle Three and Chen Wen-Jin going on a meteorological expedition in the countryside. In Uncle Three's words, people in the mountainous countryside at that time didnt see any distinction between archaeological teams, the agricultural college, and meteorological teams. They could only tell the difference between those who were there to film movies and those who werent.

Uncle Three and Chen Wen-Jin were doing some fieldwork for their organization at that time, so the locals took them to the work site of the previous weather station. A temporary weather station had been set up in that place, but there was no one there.

The locals only took them there because they thought that Uncle Three and Chen Wen-Jin were members of the previous meteorological team.

The locals told them that the meteorological team came there, set up the weather station, and then left. After that, they would come by once a year, bringing some food coupons (1) to the commune. The locals then asked Uncle Three and Chen Wen-Jin for food coupons.

Uncle Three found it very strange at that time, because the meteorological team was conducting a country-wide climate survey, which was a national project that had been carried out since liberation. By that time, the geological survey and population census were almost complete, so it was strange that a meteorological team would go to the countryside.

Uncle Three was completely baffled. The villagers wanted to tear the weather station down, but Uncle Three stopped them. He decided to catch the meteorological team when they came to the village again and ask them what they were doing. He was already certain that they must be kindred spirits; maybe not grave robbers, but something weird and crazy.

Uncle Three returned to the village half a year later and got into position. At that time, the weather station had been demolished by the panicked villagers, but Uncle Three felt that the meteorological team didn't know yet, so he stayed in the village and waited for the strange team to arrive. Uncle Three recorded in the journal that when the team first entered the village, they all gave off the feeling like they were attending a funeral. Every one of them was pale and walked like a ghost.

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TN Notes:

(1) Coupons for food, grain, and other goods used in a PRC economic program c. 1955-1993. Also called liangpiao. I guess you can kind of equate it to modern-day food stamps. Brief article here.

(2) Its also called a Stevenson screen or instrument shelter. Its a shelter or an enclosure to protect meteorological instruments against precipitation and direct heat radiation from outside sources, while still allowing air to circulate freely around them. More info here but it looks something like this:

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I think this is super loosely based on Season 2 episode 2 around 30:28-40:45 (will probably go into the next chaptermaybe). Honestly, it's so loosely based that I almost didn't bother hunting through all the episodes for it lol.