Chapter 161 Shen Lan
Mid-January.
The foreign language resource room is located on the third floor of the old library at USTC.
The heating pipes are always uneven these days; the first and second floors are unbearably hot, but by the third floor, the heat has mostly dissipated. The outside of the archives is a large, open area, with dozens of rows of dark green metal bookshelves haphazardly arranged, densely packed with foreign language periodicals collected from the 1970s and 80s. At the far east end of the archives is a small, partitioned room, less than ten square meters, but equipped with its own air conditioner. The air conditioner is gently blowing warm air downwards.
Su Wei sat at her desk, on which sat a computer, its case humming steadily.
The light from the computer screen shone on her face.
The screen is filled with dense matrix data and probability models, and I occasionally tap the left mouse button lightly.
On the left is a thermos, the lid is half open, and steam is coming out.
According to the school's holiday schedule, undergraduate students can officially leave campus tomorrow.
Most students went to the train station after finishing their last exam this afternoon.
Su Wei bought a ticket for the slow, green-skinned train the day after tomorrow morning. She planned to use this last day and a half to finish running the probability model she was working on, and also to collect her full attendance bonus for the archives this month. Two hundred yuan was a sum she couldn't easily give up.
A sudden noise came from outside the door.
"Thump."
It was the sound of a heavy, hardcover book being slammed onto a metal bookshelf.
Su Wei paused for a moment while holding the mouse.
The archives are rarely visited, especially on the last day of final exams.
These old foreign language journals are so outdated that, apart from a few senior professors who work on specific historical data retrospectives, even graduate students are too lazy to look at them.
"Thump."
There was another sound, this time accompanied by a slight swaying of the metal bookshelf as it was struck.
Then came the sound of rapidly turning pages, the rustling of the paper indicating a rough and impatient movement. Su Wei looked away from the computer screen and turned to look at the door.
The outer corridor was dimly lit, and dozens of bookshelves blocked the view like a maze.
The sound was coming from the Finance and Economics section on the left-hand side as you enter.
She frowned slightly.
Over the past six months, in order to receive this office staff allowance, she spent three whole months sorting and archiving tens of thousands of dusty foreign language periodicals one by one in the outer office. She had a complete mental coordinate system for knowing where each book was, which book was torn, and which book was missing a page.
The sounds of people outside flipping through books didn't seem like they were looking for information; it looked more like they were dismantling her bookshelf.
Su Wei released the mouse, pushed open the door to the cubicle, and walked out.
The moment I stepped out of the air-conditioned room, I was immediately enveloped by dry, cold air.
Su Wei didn't go back to put on her coat. Holding her thermos, she tiptoed along the aisle between the two rows of bookshelves, heading towards the source of the sound. She stopped when she reached the fifth row of bookshelves.
She saw the person flipping through a book through a row of trolleys that were about half a person's height.
That's a woman.
She looked to be in her thirties, perhaps forties. Her hair was simply pinned up at the back of her head with a black hair clip, with a few stray strands falling down, making it look somewhat messy. She wore a well-tailored khaki trench coat and black mid-heeled leather shoes. This outfit seemed out of place on the USTC campus in this era, more like that of a senior executive of a foreign company going in and out of a high-end office building in a big city.
The woman's hands were slightly dusty. She stood in front of a bookshelf labeled "Finance 1990-1995," holding a thick copy of the *Journal of Finance*. She flipped through the pages rapidly, her eyes quickly scanning the table of contents before turning directly to the last few dozen pages.
She glanced at it for two seconds, then abruptly slammed the book shut.
"Smack."
She shoved the green hardcover book back onto the shelf, and because she used too much force, several other books next to it were pushed and tilted.
The woman ignored the books that had been jostled about; her eyes quickly searched the bookshelf, then she reached out and pulled out a book from the side, flipping through it rapidly. "How could it not be here..."
The woman's voice was low, filled with obvious annoyance and confusion.
She flipped through the pages while talking to herself.
"The index clearly states that this issue includes attached data..."
She flipped to the bottom, closed the book again, and stuffed it back in.
The movement was more forceful than the last time.
Su Wei stood in the corridor, quietly watching her.
The woman seemed completely absorbed in her own agitation, utterly oblivious to the girl standing a few meters away holding a thermos. She raised her wrist and glanced at the silver metal watch inside.
"Damn it..."
She muttered a curse under her breath and reached for the next book.
You've come to the wrong place.
A calm, unwavering voice rang out in the quiet archives room.
The woman's hand froze in mid-air.
She turned her head and looked in the direction of the sound.
A young girl wearing a thin shirt stood in the aisle, holding a thermos in her hand. Her face was pale and her eyes were indifferent.
The woman paused for a moment, then withdrew her hand from the bookshelf.
"Are you the manager here?"
She looked Su Wei up and down.
"I guess so."
Su Wei answered.
The woman took a deep breath, trying to suppress the irritation in her voice.
"Excuse me, is the journal archiving here a mess?"
She pointed to the bookshelf in front of her.
"The table of contents indicates that the original data table of historical volatility of US stock options in the third quarter of 1994 was attached to the end of the September 1994 edition of the Journal of Finance. However, I have looked through all the bound volumes of this six-month period and found that they are all text and there is no original data appendix at all."
Su Wei looked at her, her gaze falling on the bookshelf behind her.
Those books that were originally neatly arranged by year and month are now mostly crammed together unevenly.
"The archives are not in disarray," Su Wei said.
The woman frowned.
"If it wasn't messed up, where did the data go?"
"That issue of the *Journal of Finance* wasn't printed in its entirety."
Su Wei took a sip of hot water from her thermos, her voice clearly audible in the dry, cold air.
The woman's brows furrowed even deeper.
"Not all of them were printed?"
"At the end of August 1994, a printing plant in Chicago went on strike."
Su Wei spoke slowly and deliberately, as if stating objective facts.
"To meet the deadline, the journal cut off all the original data charts and graphs from the last thirty-odd pages. The copy you're holding is a photocopy of the original, so it's also cut off." The woman stood there, looking at Su Wei.
She was a little surprised.
She has worked in this industry for many years.
She knew very well that in the early 1990s, American academic journals did occasionally experience reduced printing quality due to strikes or paper shortages. But these extremely obscure details, only noticeable when browsing physical books, would never be marked in current electronic indexes. How did this girl, who looked no more than a freshman or sophomore, know this?
"Where is the complete data?" the woman asked.
Su Wei's gaze passed over the woman and went to another row of bookshelves to her right and behind her.
“The complete comparative data is in another cross-disciplinary journal in this field; their data sources were shared for those months,” Su Wei said. The woman followed Su Wei’s gaze to the section for *Econometrica*. “Which issue?” the woman asked.
"Appendix B at the very end of the November 1994 issue."
Su Wei answered.
Without a word, the woman turned around and walked to the shelf of *Econometrica* in her high heels. Her gaze swept over the year labels on the back of the shelf, from 1990 to 1994.
Then she stopped.
She pulled out all the books from the second half of 1994 and glanced at them.
There is no November issue.
The woman turned her head to look at Su Wei, her tone now carrying a hint of coldness and hardness, as if she had been mocked.
"After the October issue, there will be a combined edition of the December issue."
Su Wei remained standing in the same spot, without even taking a step.
"Yes," she said.
"I checked, it's not there."
The woman slammed the book she was holding back onto the shelf.
Su Wei gently tapped the inside of the thermos with her fingers.
"A few months ago, an old employee in the school's binding room was about to retire and had presbyopia."
Su Wei's voice was as steady as an emotionless radio broadcaster.
The woman looked at her, not understanding why she suddenly brought up the employees in the binding room.
"When he was designing hardcover editions for foreign periodicals, he put a 1995 cover on the November 1994 issue of Econometrica." Su Wei looked into the woman's eyes.
"The gold lettering on the spine says 1995, but the inside pages are dated November 1994."
The archives were so quiet you could hear a pin drop.
The woman stared at Su Wei for a full five seconds.
Then, without saying a word, she turned around and walked toward the 1995 area.
"Third row."
Su Wei spoke up from behind.
The woman stopped in front of the third row of bookshelves.
"The fourth column."
Su Wei continued to report the coordinates.
The woman's gaze was fixed on the fourth column, which was filled with dark blue spines.
The bottom layer.
Su Wei said.
The woman bent over.
"The book in the right corner has a slightly lighter blue cover than the others."
The woman squatted down, reached into the bottom shelf, and found a thick, hardcover book in the corner on the right.
She pulled it out.
The year 1995 is printed in gold on the spine.
She placed the book on her lap and opened the hard cover.
On the title page, bold black lead lettering read: Econometrica, November 1994. The woman's breath caught in her throat.
She flipped through the pages quickly, the pages fluttering between her fingers, until she reached the very end.
Appendix A.
Appendix B.
Her gaze fell on the data table in Appendix B.
A densely packed matrix of numbers.
That was the raw historical volatility data for US stock options that her graduate students had been desperately searching for on their computers, and which she herself had spent two hours looking for but couldn't find. She'd found it.
The woman stared at the numbers for a while.
Appendix B, Table 4.
Su Wei's voice came from the corridor again.
The woman raised her head.
"Third row, second column."
Su Wei looked at the woman squatting on the ground from a distance of more than ten meters.
"The constant term was printed with a decimal point that the typesetter missed."
The woman immediately lowered her head, her gaze sweeping like a searchlight across Table 4, the third row, the second column.
The data in that cell reads:
"Based on the volatility derivation formula in the context, the value at that position should be 0.45%."
Su Wei said calmly.
"It's missing a decimal point; it should be 0.045. Remember to correct it when you do data cleaning, otherwise the results from your quantization model will deviate by at least three percentage points." The woman stared at the 0.45 on the paper.
As someone specializing in quantitative finance, she only needed to mentally substitute this constant into the Black-Scholes option pricing model to instantly determine whether Su Wei was right or wrong. If it were 0.45, it would mean that market volatility was high enough to bankrupt the entire Wall Street.
Only 0.045 reflects the true market situation in the third quarter of 94.
The woman slowly closed the blue hardcover book.
The closing of the book created a slight breeze, stirring up some of the dust that had settled on the cover. The dust swirled slowly in the cold light streaming in from the window. The woman did not stand up.
She squatted there, one hand on the book cover, turned her head, and looked back at Su Wei in the aisle.
The way she looked at Su Wei had completely changed.
If she had looked at Su Wei just now, she would have thought she was looking at an ordinary librarian.
Now, the way she looked at Su Wei was like that of a gold prospector who had been starving for a long time and suddenly spotted a huge, natural gold nugget among a pile of scrap metal. She stood up, dusted off the hem of her trench coat, and walked towards Su Wei, holding the misbound book in her hand.
The high heels clicked crisply on the ground.
She stopped less than a meter away from Su Wei.
"I am Shen Lan, a visiting professor at the business school."