I Got Roasted Online for Smoking a Huazi: Should Scientists Really Be Dirt Poor?

Celebrities = money.

Scientists = poverty.

In this society, many people hold researchers to impossibly high moral standards.

They can accept celebrities living in the lap of luxury, even when they make hundreds of millions a year.

But they will never tolerate scientists driving luxury cars or living in mansions.

Because in their minds, scientists should be content with a life of poverty.

Song Chen, China's most gifted scientist,

was exposed smoking at the National Defense University, and what's more, he was smoking Zhonghua cigarettes.

He was subjected to a vicious online backlash.

And yet...

Not a single person bothered to look into the truth of what had happened!

As the controversy escalated,

many people were stunned to discover

that China's four major aircraft design institutes were practically at each other's throats, all trying to get cigarettes to Song Chen.

The National Defense University even quietly amended its campus rules.

No one but Professor Song Chen was allowed to smoke on campus.

Who, exactly, was Song Chen?

Then one day...

Everyone was moved to tears...

"Professor Song Chen, we'd like to offer you a cigarette."

This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is purely coincidental. Do not imitate.