Song Die wasn’t on his side, so naturally ignored him.
“Such is the attitude when it’s free,” Jiang Ran said, sitting down on a nearby chair. “You can learn or not, it’s up to you.”
Beijiao didn’t even glance at her, let alone be intimidated by her threats. He continued pestering Song Die instead—
He was someone who could easily start or stop a conversation whenever he wanted to.
“The paid service isn’t necessarily much better either,” Beijiao said to Song Die. “When you fell just now, she didn’t even help you up. You got up by yourself before she gave you a symbolic pat to brush off the snow.”
Song Die: “….”
Jiang Ran: “….”
Jiang Ran thought that with Beijiao’s talent, if he ever got involved in a grand豪门 drama full of schemes, he could probably manipulate his way into causing the deaths of a truckload of people and still emerge unscathed by the final episode.
If he said a couple more sentences, she’d lose her student for sure.
Jiang Ran bent down, picked up a clump of snow, rolled it into a ball, and casually threw it at him: “Where’s the board Huang gave you?”
Huang was the serious name of the talkative older brother.
Beijiao dragged a snowboard over from the side, and upon closer inspection, realized that the board he held was the same model as the one in Song Die’s hands—
His focus was entirely on “Why do I have to use the same board as him?” He completely missed the fact that the two people in front of him were staring at his board in stunned silence.
He was just a beginner, who had only just watched Jiang Ran attach her snowboard bindings and adjust the bindings—
That was all the knowledge about skiing he had at this point.
All the terms she and Song Die discussed—“opening the shoulders and hips,” “regular stance,” or “duck stance”—he didn’t understand at all and didn’t even bother to memorize.
Previously, Beijiao had always considered this a strength: he never rushed to master things outside his knowledge base, nor did he obsess over them. If he didn’t understand something, he didn’t think it was a big deal.
—He would never have guessed that this kind of open-minded tolerance might one day harm him.
That day was today.
He didn’t know that beginners usually stick to more standard rounded-nose beginner boards, nor did he know that most people start with a duck stance. He just felt something was off.
When Huang handed him the board, he said, “Let Ran help you adjust it.”
So.
Adjust what?
Where?
Beijiao wasn’t blind.
Holding the snowboard, he rode the magic carpet up to the beginner slope and pointed at a similarly clueless newbie next to him who was bending down and fastening her bindings. “Why do her bindings look different from mine?”
What could Jiang Ran say?
She said, “You don’t know anything. They’re exactly the same.”
…
Huang also had his right foot forward, so the board he gave Beijiao didn’t even need the bindings readjusted.
Jiang Ran had Beijiao sit on a bench halfway up the hill, designed for beginners who couldn’t easily stand while attaching their boards. She patiently taught him how to fasten the bindings—
Snowboard bindings are divided into two parts: the larger strap secures the top of the foot, and the smaller strap secures the toe. With traditional bindings, you open both straps, insert the snowboard boots into the bindings, then tighten the straps.
“See the buckle on the left side of the strap? It’s like a car seatbelt—just push the strap into the buckle,” Jiang Ran’s hand touched one side of the binding. “There’s a component here; once the strap is in, press down.”
As she described, the binding straps gradually tightened. Each time she pressed, the buckle made a “click” sound.
Beijiao could feel his feet being secured by the binding straps, gradually becoming one with the snowboard…
He looked down as Jiang Ran fastened one side for him, then bent down and fastened the other side himself. Standing up, he stared at her and said, “That girl’s bindings were clearly in a duck stance. Why are mine facing the same direction?”
The more he thought about it, the more off it felt.
Jiang Ran hadn’t expected this kid to be so persistent about it.
She patted his shoulder with a conciliatory tone: “You’re tall. Taller people usually face the same direction… Look at Song Die and me—our bindings face the same direction as yours, right? Would I lie to you?”
Beijiao looked at his snowboard, then at Song Die’s and Jiang Ran’s, and indeed found them the same…
He remained skeptical.
Jiang Ran, however, spoke with complete confidence—
She wasn’t lying either. Snowboarding, a sport emphasizing balance and agility, often attracted those who could perform tricks or ride in the park smoothly and quickly, and they tended to be shorter…
They were more agile.
So where did taller people go?
They could only go for carving turns.
Because of their height, their weight would also generally be higher. According to basic physics knowledge, the greater the mass of an object, the greater the force and pressure generated during movement. Under the same techniques, they could slide faster and more steadily—
Exactly what carving required.
So taller riders had an advantage in carving. For example, national team athletes competing in parallel giant slalom were generally tall.
…This was a fact, and of course, no one would say that an 1.8-meter-tall person attempting park jumps was equivalent to murder.
He could jump too, it’s just that he wouldn’t be as effortless or safe as shorter riders with lower centers of gravity.
—But Beijiao, completely unaware, had no choice in the matter and was forced onto a specific path.
At this moment,
After securing the board, he stood up. Since both bindings were set to the right, his shoulders naturally aligned perpendicular to the board, and his hips twisted in response. His legs were positioned on the board like the character “人,” making him feel quite awkward.
…He himself felt it was odd.
Earlier, he had observed others skiing at the resort, and most beginners had their shoulders and hips parallel to the board, unlike him, whose shoulders and hips were twisted perpendicular to the board.
But the direction of his bindings meant that when he stood naturally, he had to twist in this strange way to feel comfortable.
If he tried to mimic other beginners by aligning his shoulders and hips parallel to the board, his ankles would twist, feeling even stranger.
“Isn’t this stance wrong?” He asked Jiang Ran. “My waist’s going to break.”
“How easily would it break?”
“It hurts.”
“You’re the first male creature I’ve met who actually admits his waist is bad.”
“No big deal,” he replied calmly. “Whether my waist is good or not doesn’t depend on your rumors making it worse.”
“Then just stand like this and don’t move around.” Jiang Ran gave him a casual glance, then turned to call Song Die. “Take a look. You should learn from him and relax naturally into this twist—open the shoulders, lock the hips.”
Song Die had hoped to see Beijiao make a fool of himself but didn’t get his wish, and now he was being used as an example by a beginner.
It kind of annoyed him.
He looked at Beijiao, who was holding his waist while standing on the board, and indeed achieved the “open shoulders, locked hips” stance Jiang Ran mentioned…
It just looked like his waist really wasn’t great.
Otherwise, he wouldn’t keep holding it.
Song Die bent down to fasten his own board and tried to imitate Beijiao’s twist.
Jiang Ran stood beside the two boys, both taller than her, realizing that although she was supposed to be teaching Beijiao, she ended up explaining more to Song Die: “‘Open shoulders, lock hips’—go home and copy it a hundred times… Stop thinking about the duck stance position all the time. You’ve only been skiing in duck stance for a few days. Take this chance to change before muscle memory sets in—”
She was speaking in terms Beijiao couldn’t understand again.
He only understood one thing—
It seemed that just standing on the board correctly, he did better than Song Die…
Wasn’t that absurd?
If you can’t even stand properly, how did you get into college?
He called Jiang Ran, and the woman turned her head upon hearing her name.
“Who are you teaching?” He asked.
“You,” Jiang Ran said. “And I’m helping him a bit. Don’t be so petty.”
Randomly accused of being petty.
After talking a bunch of nonsense to Song Die, the woman finally turned back to Beijiao under his disapproving gaze, threw her snowboard casually aside on the slope, and prepared to teach him how to heel-side traverse.
This time, she didn’t need to look up anything online—she was already an expert. She started with the theory.
“Press the heel edge into the snow, lift the toe edge up. Keep the board at a fixed angle to the slope, and it will naturally move downward smoothly and controllably.” Jiang Ran said, lifting her eyelids to glance at the person in front of her. “Then what?”
It wasn’t hard to understand.
After all, they were on the beginner slope, filled with people slowly and unsteadily learning to traverse. A quick glance around offered the answer.
“The larger the angle, the slower the speed. The smaller the angle, the faster the speed.”
“When braking—”
“Maximize the edge angle—try to lift the board away from the snow as much as possible, and dig the heel edge deeply into the snow.”
“…You’re actually pretty smart.”
“This is common physics knowledge.”
Praised, the boy showed no pride.
Jiang Ran still didn’t rush him into traversing. She asked, “One last question for you: in your current basic stance, when you need to brake, how do you plan to apply pressure to the heel edge as you just described?”
As Beijiao held onto the chair meant for sitting and started to squat, Jiang Ran was already surprised into silence.
When he squatted down, his back knee naturally bent, his front leg straightened, his butt pulled inward toward the board, and his hips pushed backward toward the heel edge—
He held onto the chair.
The snowboard on his feet had already tilted vertically, almost at a 90° angle.
His hips were nearly touching the snow.
…He had assumed one of the very, very standard carving frontside pressure stances.
Jiang Ran thought, this guy either secretly practiced at home and was pretending to be clueless, or he was a pure natural talent destined for carving.
As she was pondering, a few freestyle snowboarding masters came up the beginner slope.
They looked up and saw Jiang Ran standing there like a stone statue, with the boy holding the chair in a frontside pressure stance, and they burst into laughter.
“Oh, Ran!” One of them threw his board aside. “This afternoon I saw you with someone on the advanced slope practicing carving basics. Now you’ve got another one? Business is booming!”
Jiang Ran: “….”
She honestly didn’t know what to say.
The freestyle rider didn’t think anything was wrong and kept chatting happily: “More people have started learning carving recently, right?”
The innocent passerby continued talking while circling around Beijiao.
Then, he leaned in close to Beijiao and asked a brutally awkward question that plunged everyone into complete silence—
“This frontside pressure stance is great! Standard as if straight out of a textbook! Big bro, how many months have you been snowboarding?”
Beijiao: “?”
Jiang Ran: “….”
To answer the question, it had only been ten minutes.
Ten minutes ago, he was still at the bottom of the hill asking how to put on the boots…
And even then, he couldn’t do it himself. She had to help him put them on.
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