Chapter 315: Urban Card-Drawing System (21)

On the day of the graduation dinner, Xie Yang arrived at the Four Seasons Hotel across from the school, carrying the two bottles of wine that Comrade Lao Xie had insisted she bring for the teachers.

This hotel was not star-rated; if one had to describe its tier, it was roughly between three and four stars. Because it was located around the Fine Arts Academy, it was particularly lively during every start-of-semester and graduation season.

The start-of-semester season was, of course, because new students were arriving to register.

Jiangcheng could be considered a medium-sized tourist city. Parents from other provinces would bring their children to register early and take the opportunity to travel, so the hotel's guest rooms were almost fully booked every day from mid-August to early September.

And the graduation season was for the farewell dinners of the various schools and departments.

The hotel had two banquet halls: the Spring Splendor Hall was smaller, having been converted from the original conference hall, and could accommodate at most six large round tables of ten; the Autumn Harvest Hall was a formal banquet hall that could set up twenty tables.

Today, both of these halls had been booked by the graduating classes of the Fine Arts Academy.

The Cultural Relics Department, which had the fewest students in the entire school, had naturally booked the Spring Splendor Hall.

In fact, the teachers and students of the department didn't even fill the small Spring Splendor Hall; they had only booked four tables. Even with these four tables, it was estimated they wouldn't be full.

Across the way, the Autumn Harvest Hall, with its front and back double doors, was for the Fine Arts Department, which had the highest employment contract rate in the school. Nameplates were placed on all twenty tables, and a few tables even had an extra chair added, otherwise, they wouldn't have been able to fit everyone.

Teachers and students arrived one after another. The male teachers who arrived early, after using the restroom, could not help but smoke a couple of cigarettes in the smoking area to satisfy their cravings. Since they all knew each other, they inevitably chatted while puffing away.

"Lao Liu, what's the employment rate for the class you're leading? Has it hit 80% yet?"

"How can you ask that, making it hard for Lao Liu to answer? Just hitting the passing line would be good, right, Lao Liu?"

"Even the passing line would require burning high incense, right? Cultural Relics Restoration—which unit would you have them apply to? And they can't outperform those 985 or 211 students in the civil service exams, tsk!"

"..."

Liu Ping lowered his head and smoked, remaining silent, letting the teachers from the Fine Arts Department mockingly disparage the abysmal employment rate of the students in his major.

He had been teaching the Cultural Relics Restoration course at the Fine Arts Academy for six or seven years. Based on his academic qualifications, years of service, and the number of papers published, it should not have been difficult to earn an intermediate title.

But because the employment rate for this major was truly not high—one could even say it was quite poor—the number of students applying each year was extremely low. It could be called the most niche of niche subjects, so the quota for teachers to be promoted was naturally pitifully small.

And so, there were several excellent lecturers with longer service records than him waiting in line ahead of him; how could it ever be his turn?

Amidst the small talk, the teachers and students arrived one after another. Students from both sides sent representatives to invite them to take their seats and, incidentally, to notify the waiters to start serving the food.

Teacher Wang from the Fine Arts Department was a bit of a foodie and was invited here by graduating classes almost every year, so he was quite familiar with the catering at the Four Seasons Hotel. Seeing a waiter pushing a food cart over, he glanced at the dishes and could tell roughly how much this table was worth, and a sense of competitiveness arose:

"Not bad, our department's students are quite polite; one look at these dishes and you know it's the 650-per-person tier. Lao Liu, what about your department? What was the meal budget you booked? Although the employment situation isn't great, you shouldn't be too stingy when treating your homeroom teacher to a meal after graduation, right? Yo, is that also a student from your class? What's that in their hand? Wine? Hahaha! With so many teachers, why only bring two bottles? I say, classmate, which teacher do you intend to treat with these two bottles of wine? Your Teacher Liu is a genuine Shandong man; he can down two bottles of white liquor all by himself."

Xie Yang, who was suddenly called out: "..."

She looked down at the wine in her hand and handed it to the waiter: "Let it breathe first, then send it to the teachers' table in the Spring Splendor Hall in a moment."

"Understood."

The waiter took it to prepare it, and the manager, who was patrolling, caught sight of this scene, his pupils shrinking sharply: "Wait, wait, wait! Whose big shot is this wine for? How can you use a regular decanter! Quick, quick! Go to my office and get that crystal decanter from the top shelf of the wine cabinet!"

"..."

The teachers, who had been led by students to enter the banquet hall to take their seats, were stunned. Teacher Wang from the Fine Arts Department recognized the manager and couldn't help but ask: "Manager Ma, is this wine very high-end?"

"One sip could drink away a year of your salary; you tell me if it's high-end or not?"

"!!!"

"Holy crap!"

The league branch secretary of Xie Yang's class almost dropped their glasses and hurriedly adjusted the frames, sighing in their heart:

So Xie Yang is an invisible rich woman; no wonder she never participated in the complaints about employment difficulties in the group chat—she doesn't care at all about whether she can find a job.

Unlike them, after eating this farewell meal, where to go remained a problem. They weren't willing to just find any job to make ends meet while abandoning their major, but there were really too few positions that matched their major. Sigh...

The other teachers and students also looked at Xie Yang in disbelief.

Xie Yang: "..."

Dad, you've set me up!

If she had known this wine was so expensive, she would have kept it to savor slowly herself.

She never even got to drink that bottle of wine of Xue Ling's that had been on the auction block, and she still felt a bit of regret when thinking about it even now.

Because of these two bottles of wine, the subsequent dinner was exceptionally lively. Teachers and students from the Autumn Harvest Hall, and even the department leaders, all held their wine glasses and came to the Spring Splendor Hall to toast, and the small Spring Splendor Hall was almost packed to the point of being impassable.

The waiters serving the food had to shout at the top of their lungs—

"Excuse me, please! Serving food!"

"Pardon me!"

It took several shouts before they could successfully deliver the dishes to the tables.

Services like refilling wine and changing plates required squeezing into every available gap to be carried out.

The girls at Xie Yang's table watched a group of boys excitedly flooding the class group chat and said, livening up the atmosphere: "Xie Yang, you alone heated up our entire venue, hehe!"

"..."

Once the conversation started, everyone began to eat and drink freely, watching the excitement of the teachers at the main table while eating:

"Look at Lao Liu, being toasted by several teachers from the Fine Arts Department in turns; his face is all red from drinking."

"They aren't here to toast; they're clearly here to mooch wine."

"A red wine where one sip costs a Fine Arts Academy teacher's annual salary—who wouldn't want to taste it? If it were me, I'd also shamelessly go over to mooch."

"Hey, our group meal doesn't seem to have Australian Blue Lobster, right?"

"Yeah, why would there be Blue Lobster?"

"Is the soup served to each person also the wrong one? This seems to be Buddha Jumps Over the Wall... I've seen the menu the league branch secretary sent to the group; the soup for the 300-tier meal is Cordyceps Flower Silkie Chicken Soup, definitely not Buddha Jumps Over the Wall."

"Where's the class monitor? Where's the branch secretary?"

"Look, they're all surrounding the teachers, watching them taste the wine; they probably haven't realized the wrong food was served yet."

"What should we do? Eat it and see, or find a waiter and ask?"

"Ask, what if they make us spit it out after we eat it?"

"..."

Spitting it out was impossible.

Even if you spat it out, others wouldn't want it.

But it might just make them pay for the meal.

As it turned out, when they called the waiter over to ask, the waiter said a Mr. Xie had ordered extra dishes for his daughter, raising the meal standard from 300 per person to 1,000, and had already paid the bill in advance, requesting that the teacher and classmates please eat and drink well.

In fact, Xie Yang's father's original words were: serve the best dishes, never mind the per-person cost.

But even if all the best dishes at the Four Seasons Hotel were served, it wouldn't exceed six or seven thousand per table.

Xie Yang's father felt it wasn't high-class enough and wasn't enough to express his gratitude to the teacher, so he temporarily brought in a few signature dishes from the hotel next door to make it reach 1,000 per person.

But how could the hotel staff bring themselves to say this truth? Don't they have their reputation to maintain?

Upon hearing the surname Xie, the teachers and students all looked at Xie Yang in unison, surprise surging in the depths of their eyes.

Xie Yang: "..."

You probably won't believe it if I say it, but my family might have a bit of a spendthrift gene.