Chapter 456
Chapter 456: Chapter 69: The Girl from Twenty Years Ago_2 Chapter 456: Chapter 69: The Girl from Twenty Years Ago_2 The two of them arrived at the milk tea shop, scanned QR codes to place their order, and then sat by a small table waiting for their number to be called.
Lin Xian estimated that it would likely take about fifteen minutes before their turn came.
So, he stood up:
“An Qing, I’m going to use the restroom in the mall.
You wait here for the milk tea, don’t wander off, I’ll come back and find you soon.”
“Sure, senior.”
Chu Anqing smiled and waved at Lin Xian:
“Don’t get lost yourself!
Don’t be unable to find your way back or find me!”
“Don’t worry.” Lin Xian was also amused by the childlike instructions:
“I’ll definitely find you.”
…
After leaving the milk tea shop.
Lin Xian’s expression immediately turned serious:
“VV.”
“I’m here.” the long-awaited voice came through the headset, reporting:
Source: Webnovel.com, updated on ɴονǤօ.сᴑ
“The elderly couple, the man’s name is Zhang Shi, 68 years old from Qufu, Shandong; the woman is named Yan Qin, also from Qufu, Shandong, and she’s 65 years old; both of their places of birth and hometown are Qufu, Shandong, and they’ve grown up, gone to school, gotten married, and had children there, all in that city…”“They had a daughter in 1980, named Zhang Yuqian.
According to the limited scanned record, Zhang Yuqian died in a car accident in January 2000.
The specific details of the accident could no longer be clarified.
𝑛𝗈𝘃𝘨𝗼.co
According to what Zhang Shi said, it wasn’t a case of a traffic incident, but rather Yan Qin, Zhang Yuqian’s mother, who died in a car accident due to fatigue driving at night, crashing into a tree…
This is all that I’ve been able to find out.”
“Unfortunately, around 2000, the internet was not yet well-developed in China, especially in terms of governmental affairs, which largely remained in the era of paper-based office work and paper archives.
Electronically stored materials were very limited, and many things are now untraceable unless one checks the paper archives from back then.”
“Later, due to the country’s repeated promotions of a paperless, electronic archive policy, those old paper archives were reclassified, scanned, and turned into electronic archives.
But during this process, many old records were lost, especially minor incidents like traffic accidents, usually without any detailed records.
I could only find a hand-written death certificate from the civil affairs system’s death certificate issuance system, where I found these minor pieces of information.”
“Afterwards, that elderly couple never had any more children.
The old lady developed severe mental illness, and the old man sold all their assets in Qufu to come to the Imperial Capital for her psychiatric treatment…
Actually, that old man was quite wealthy; a family that had a car in 2000 was indeed doing quite well.”
“Then, probably to not stir up memories in the old lady, to live in a new environment, they settled down in the Imperial Capital.
They’ve been living here for over a decade now without any issues, nice and stable.
If it hadn’t been for today’s chance encounter with Chu Anqing at the Xidan Shopping Plaza…
They probably wouldn’t have had the incident that just happened.
In this vast world, meetings are actually very hard to come by.”
“Is there a photo of Zhang Yuqian?” Lin Xian asked the question he was most concerned about.
2000…
Indeed, too early.
Back then, there weren’t any cloud storage services or QQ spaces, and the internet was probably still dial-up, which I heard was billed by the minute, costing quite a bit per minute, with home computers being a rarity.
But after 2000, in the following two to three years, was precisely when China’s internet industry soared rapidly.
Personal computers, broadband, internet cafes sprang up like bamboo shoots after a rain; electronic computers burst into households, and the promotion of QQ along with the release of the game ‘Legend’ produced China’s first generation of netizens.
But obviously.
Zhang Yuqian did not catch up with the splendid 21st century.
In the era she lived, 1980-2000, mobile phones capable of taking photos were rare, and people were still using pagers and brick phones.
So the only way to leave behind photos was to use film cameras, then take the film to a photo shop to develop it into paper photos to be placed in an album.
Even with VV’s vast capabilities, there’s no way to bypass the networks and directly invade Zhang Yuqian’s family album…
Not to mention, the old man, Zhang Yuqian’s father, also said that in order not to trigger the old lady’s memories and affect her mental health, he had gotten rid of everything.
So it goes.
The internet is indeed a double-edged sword, with its good and bad sides.
Nowadays, people can casually store photos in online spaces, cloud storage, and even corners of the internet like online forums.
Although privacy has some security risks, at least the past memories can be easily retrieved if one wishes to find them.
In 2000, when the internet was not yet officially off the ground and QQ was just in its embryonic form, let alone fashionable things like QQ Show or QQ Space.
Lin Xian vaguely remembered, during his elementary school years, every day the first thing Gao Yang did when getting to school was to question Lin Xian:
“Did you visit my space?”
“Did you leave a message?”
“Don’t just run around in the classroom!”
“Do you think my avatar looks cool?”
…
Anyway, Lin Xian also understood the difficulty VV faced in collecting information in that special era dominated by paper archives.
It would be best to see the photo; if not…
after the mission of capturing space-time particles with the Skyspace aircraft was over, why not personally go to Qufu, Shandong to look through the paper archives?
“Yes, there’s a black and white photo from the first generation ID card.”
VV told Lin Xian.
China began using the second generation ID cards with various advanced features starting from 2004.
Before that, the first generation ID cards had fewer functions than a meal card, merely a plain plastic card that couldn’t be swiped or read electronically, with only a 15-digit ID number, and even the photos on the first generation ID cards were in black and white.