It wasn’t that Shan Chong was exceptionally cultured; his English was just quite good. This wasn’t due to any extraordinary talent, but rather because snow sports were a common topic. Compared to Asia, the Western systems were indeed more comprehensive and mature. So when he was still on the national team, they often hired foreign coaches to give them lessons and guidance.
Although the team had interpreters, there were always differences in expression between languages that could lead to misunderstandings, especially with someone in between. Relying on interpreters was never as effective as understanding directly, so everyone on their team had decent English skills.
Not to mention Dai Duo, who grew up abroad.
At this moment, after listening to the two foreigners chattering for a while, Shan Chong’s expression remained neutral. He didn’t seem angry or upset; he just stood there listening until they finished, then turned to enter the park.
He walked rather slowly.
Just in time to see Dai Duo lazily jump down for his second run, doing a lackluster backside 1800. This time he landed steadily, but it was rather unremarkable…
It was indeed ordinary, just reaching the high-basic level of a professional athlete. Even so, people from all around were applauding. After all, it was a big air jump. For an average person, even landing a straight air would be worth celebrating on social media.
Amidst the enthusiastic applause, Dai Duo bent down to remove his bindings. As he looked up, he accidentally caught sight of someone who wasn’t clapping…
He picked up his board, turning away with undisguised disdain.
Shan Chong glided over, with a wobbly little tail following behind. He stopped in front of Dai Duo, blocking his path.
The little tail following him slid up, her braking not very skillful. Her face “puffed” into the man’s back, and her board edge also bumped him, but he didn’t even sway. He even had time to reach back and steady her, preventing her from face-planting right into his crotch in front of everyone…
He didn’t even criticize her for not mastering straight runs after three months of practice.
That was nice of him.
Wei Zhi, gripping the hem of the man’s clothes, peeked out from behind him to look at Dai Duo.
At this moment, the young man holding his board wore a lazy expression. He scanned the two people in front of him up and down and said, “A good dog doesn’t block the road.”
Wei Zhi: “…”
Wei Zhi wanted to ask them if there was even one person on the national snowboard big air team who was used to speaking like a normal human being.
At least the backstabbers from the professional team didn’t talk like this.
…Although their way of speaking wasn’t much better either.
But pigs fear comparison, and people fear contrast.
Shan Chong removed his bindings and picked up his board: “You should go listen to what those two international friends outside were saying after your double cork landing… After hearing it, you probably won’t dare come back to the mid-mountain park for three months.”
This statement seemed to imply two things.
If it was embarrassing, it would still be remembered after three months. Moreover, by then it would be April and the snow season would be over, so why come back? Might as well wait until next year.
Wei Zhi was inwardly grumbling when she heard Dai Duo ask, “What’s wrong with me?”
“You call that a landing?” Shan Chong said. “Even beginners on the easy slopes engage their core better than you.”
Dai Duo was impatiently listening to him talk. Keeping his core tight all afternoon was tiring, and he got caught the one time he relaxed. With Wang Xin not around, how could they send a clone to keep tabs on him?
He frowned slightly and looked back, indeed seeing a few people gathered who didn’t want to eat.
They were here for the competition.
The amateur competition jointly organized by several brands recently had been making a lot of noise.
At the FIS points competition held earlier in Altay, several professional snowboarders had come for the points despite injuries. These people usually didn’t act alone but brought along three to five non-professional apprentices or followers…
Now international flight tickets were hard to come by.
They were temporarily stuck here unable to return home, or felt that the snow season only lasted a few months and didn’t want to waste time on quarantine, so they hadn’t planned to go back yet. Hearing there was a competition here, they were all eager to participate.
Those people were just itching to take part.
Like Lao Yan’s position, learning from professional (or retired professional) snowboarders, having some skills themselves, and indeed having seen the world, they were in a state of being neither here nor there…
A bit cocky, not necessarily capable if you let them compete, but looking down on everyone else. Quite normal.
Dai Duo didn’t take this person seriously.
He withdrew his gaze, with obvious contempt on his face, and glanced at Shan Chong: “You came just to say this? I’ve been annoyed listening to them babble these past few days at the mid-mountain resort. A bunch of people think no one understands English just because they can’t understand Chinese, it’s sick… What’s the use of telling me this? If you want to show them up, shouldn’t you enter the competition?”
Shan Chong slowly “Oh” -ed.
“It’s an amateur-level competition,” Dai Duo said. “Can I go incognito and piss on their heads from above?”
He paused, looked Shan Chong up and down again, and added: “You won’t go if I tell you to.”
Shan Chong pondered for a moment and understood—
He thought, how could Dai Duo have eaten the wrong medicine or gone crazy? Even Wang Xin couldn’t order him around. Coming to the summit just to give me a flyer…
So it was because of this.
He thought for a moment but still felt it wasn’t appropriate for him to compete: “Would it be justifiable if I went?”
“Aren’t you already a retired old-timer for some time now?” Dai Duo said. “They didn’t say retired athletes couldn’t participate. Who knows if you’ve been secretly practicing every day.”
His voice gradually became quieter.
The words “secretly practicing” were said with a hint of dissatisfaction. Probably after battling with Shan Chong at Yunding Resort last time, he went back and was scolded by Wang Xin again, saying it wasn’t right that he was evenly matched with a retired old-timer.
So he held a grudge.
Shan Chong couldn’t be bothered to waste words with him. He neither confirmed nor denied his attitude towards the competition, directly skipping the topic and saying: “I have other business with you.”
Dai Duo: “?”
Shan Chong: “Did Shan Shan try to add you as a friend again, and you didn’t accept?”
Suddenly hearing another name, the young man was stunned for a few seconds, then his face darkened. He was about to brush past the man with his board when he was stopped. Only then did he turn his head impatiently: “Don’t tell me you came all the way down from the summit just for this…”
“Yeah,” Shan Chong said expressionlessly. “If she can’t walk, can’t I?”
This man was too cunning.
After so many years, he showed no hesitation or taboo about his sister’s situation, and at critical moments, he knew how to use it for moral blackmail. Sure enough, as soon as the words came out, Dai Duo’s arrogant expression instantly froze, his face becoming quite colorful.
Ignoring Wei Zhi’s warning tugs on his clothes from behind, Shan Chong took out his phone from his pocket and dialed Shan Shan. She answered with a “Hello,” her voice hoarse, sounding a bit tired, indeed as if she had been crying.
No wonder Shan Chong had remained unmoved by various advances from ladies all around for so many years—
Mainly because his sister was deeply versed in women’s tactics. Even though she was confined at home and couldn’t go out, she had at least won over Dai Duo and possibly that street punk from DF Snow Equipment. If she could go outside, who knows how many people might be singing with guitars under their house every day?
It wasn’t until he met Wei Zhi later.
The two were equally good at being coquettish.
His wife was more naturally so, while Shan Shan’s tricks seemed all artificial to him, making him want to sneer when he heard them.
But how could Dai Duo and the others understand this? Now, hearing just one “Hello” from Shan Shan, his temple twitched, and he regretted stopping to talk with the man. He turned to leave but was quickly caught by the collar by Shan Chong, who pulled him back with a half-smile: “What’s the hurry? Say a few words.”
Dai Duo didn’t speak. Instead, Shan Shan asked on the phone: “Who are you talking to?”
Shan Chong: “What did you have Mom call and scold me about?”
Shan Shan calmly “Oh” -ed, not guilty at all, and asked in her hoarse voice: “Is Dai Duo next to you?”
Shan Chong: “He is.”
The person mentioned didn’t like hearing his name called in this situation and with that voice. He glanced uncomfortably at the phone in Shan Chong’s hand, unable to leave, struggling and making an impatient clicking sound with his tongue.
Shan Shan heard it,
On the other end of the phone, the young girl’s breathing seemed to soften. After a long pause, she finally said, “Then tell him I didn’t delete him as a friend on purpose. My brother threatened me, and I had no choice. It wasn’t some prank I was playing…”
Towards the end of her sentence, her voice became nasal again.
Shan Chong listened to her accusations without even a twitch of his eyebrow. His dark eyes held a hint of indifference as he waited for Shan Shan to finish her rant.
Sure enough, she wasn’t done.
The girl on the other end suddenly sniffled and choked out, “I had no choice but to delete him, but I added him back immediately. If he’s angry and doesn’t accept, that’s fine too. Maybe he doesn’t need me as a friend.”
With that, she abruptly hung up.
Shan Chong stared at the green WeChat interface for a few seconds before looking up at Dai Duo.
The latter’s face had turned ashen. “Your sister is crying like that, and you’re not going to do anything?”
“That’s my sister, not my wife,” Shan Chong replied, hands in his pockets. “How am I supposed to manage that?”
Dai Duo looked like he wanted to scold him but, being a naive young man, couldn’t find the right words. After struggling internally, he finally turned and left with an ugly expression on his face.
Back at the jumping platform, Shan Chong, having achieved his goal, didn’t bother following. Instead, he turned and took his wife to play in the U-shaped pool, holding her hand as they swung from one side of the pool to the other, letting her experience the joy of terrain features…
No need to always fixate on carved skis. That stuff is just for snow touching, and you get bored after two years.
Meanwhile, some people were still gathered at the jumping platform’s starting point. They had seen Dai Duo and Shan Chong crouching and talking for a while at the bottom of the platform without coming to blows. When Dai Duo came back up with a sour expression, they reasonably assumed he had once again hit a wall with Shan Chong.
“What happened?” someone asked. “Did Shan Chong lecture you again?”
“Just ignore him,” another person consoled. “That guy’s always acting high and mighty because of his age.”
Dai Duo was looking at his phone. He glanced at WeChat, hesitated for a moment as Shan Shan’s tearful voice echoed in his mind, and felt utterly annoyed. He decisively opened his contacts, copied and pasted her phone number, and sent a friend request on WeChat.
“That’s right, Shan Chong might not even be able to jump himself. What right does he have to order Dai Duo around?”
“Exactly!”
“He thinks he’s all that.”
The friend request was instantly rejected.
Dai Duo’s face stiffened.
He looked up at the people around him, whom he barely knew, and asked expressionlessly, “Do you complain about a broken fridge not cooling by itself? When Wang Xin taught me a 2360, did anyone ask if he could do a 2520 himself first?”
The atmosphere suddenly became quiet.
At the big jump starting point, people looked at each other in bewilderment, clearly not understanding where this unprovoked outburst aimed at everyone had come from.
…
That day, Wei Zhi accompanied Shan Chong as they tinkered around the mid-mountain ski area until sunset.
The golden sunlight hung on the edge of the nearby high mountains, not quite setting. The snow trails, which had been dazzling during the day, were now covered in a layer of orange light, resembling an orange-flavored slushy.
Sitting on the edge of the U-shaped pool, Wei Zhi looked up at the sunset in the distance. It seemed that the northern sun was different from the southern one—
The southern sunlight was scorching, and the evening always seemed to accompany the hustle and bustle of traffic or the chirping of cicadas in midsummer.
But in the north, there was just a solitary, pure sun hanging on the horizon, rising and falling, unrelated to anything else.
The sound of a snowboard sliding across the snow surface came from beside her. With a soft “thump” and a flurry of snow dust, the man on the snowboard crouched down next to her. “What are you looking at?” he asked.
Wei Zhi wanted to say “the sunset.”
Then she remembered that Jiang Nanfeng and Lao Yan had done this ages ago. Now they had not only watched the sunset in Zhangjiakou but also gotten together and even broken up—
Now that’s what you call keeping up with the plot.
Feeling somewhat wistful, she hugged her knees and gazed at the fiery red sun until the man’s large hand suddenly covered her eyes. “Stop looking. They still have work tomorrow,” he said.
With her vision blocked, Wei Zhi was momentarily confused and asked, “Who?”
The man picked her up and placed her on his board. With one arm around her waist and the other holding her board, he took her down from the U-shaped pool. As he bent down to remove the boards, he said expressionlessly, “The sun.”
Wei Zhi: “…”
Wei Zhi: “Let me ask you something.”
Shan Chong: “Go ahead.”
Wei Zhi: “Have you ever been romantic in your life?”
Wei Zhi: “Romantic, do you understand?”
Wei Zhi: “Romantic.”
The man didn’t answer. He raised his hand and pressed down on her head, almost slamming her face into the ground.
They removed their boards and walked towards the ski equipment hall. By now, it was almost completely dark. As they approached their destination, Wei Zhi noticed from the corner of her eye that the man put on the face guard he hadn’t worn all afternoon.
She was puzzled.
Then she saw Shan Chong suddenly turn, dressed all in black and unrecognizable, carrying a carved ski board. He walked over to the activity registration booth that he hadn’t even glanced at when passing by earlier in the day.
The staff member was packing up when he looked up and saw someone approaching. Startled, he exclaimed, “Oh!” thinking it was just another ski enthusiast. Snow circle people are always polite, so he casually asked, “Hey brother, are you here to register?”
Shan Chong looked at the registration form and asked, “Do I need to provide my ID?”
“No need. Look, we even have someone registered as ‘Naruto Uzumaki,'” the staff member chuckled. “Even if they were Japanese, no one’s ID would have that name!”
The man responded with an “Oh.”
He took the pen and, under the shocked gaze of the young woman beside him, quickly came up with a stage name and registered himself.
Then, perhaps due to male pride, he tossed the pen as if he were throwing a grenade and turned to leave.
Wei Zhi just managed to catch a glimpse of the stage name he had given himself.
Wei Zhi: “What kind of name is ‘Mountain Has Wood’?”
Shan Chong: “The mountain has wood, and wood has branches.”
Wei Zhi: “…”
Shan Chong: “Romantic enough?”
Wei Zhi: “…”
Ro…
Romantic enough to make one want to die.
Shaun White is watching you. May he bless you and prevent you from winning any place. It would be too embarrassing 🙂