Looking for the full text of Lu Shuxiang's "On Basic Truth" from the middle school text

On "basically true" (Lv Shuxiang)

The "Echo" column of the September 5 evening newspaper "The Ancient City" contains this article: "Letter from a restaurant in Henan: Your newspaper reflects on me There is something wrong with the food in the restaurant, and it is basically true after investigation..."

At first glance, it seems nothing, but on second thought, something is wrong. Are there flies in the food or not? The presence of flies means "true", and the absence of flies means "untrue". How should this "basically true" be understood?

Let’s check the old man’s background. I checked the column of "Ancient City Zongheng" in the evening newspaper of August 22, and there was an article in it: "On the 3rd, I went to a Henan restaurant for dinner. After just a few bites, I found two black things in the dish, which turned out to be two dead flies! …”

That’s it. Could it be that we found out that there were flies, but only one? ——Yes, so it is "true", but the number is wrong, so it is "basically" true? Is that what happened? That should be made clear. However, the letter only said that "there were flies in the food", so it is difficult to understand that it is "basically true". In fact, what happened on August 3rd was reported in the newspaper on August 22nd before I went to find out whether there was one fly, two, or three flies. Probably no one could remember clearly, so I only mentioned whether they were present or not. number. So why is it “basically” true? Because I feel a bit embarrassed to honestly say, "There is such a thing", so I give it a "basic" and give it a discount. Unexpectedly, since there is no quantity, there is no way to get a discount.

There must be a question of quantity, or degree, before the word "basic" can be used. Basically, it means that it will happen nine times out of ten. For example: basically feasible, basically effective, basically agreed, basically sufficient, basically vegetarian, basically not going out... These are all meaningful. On the contrary, basic necessity, basic difficulty, basic seriousness, basic fever... are not easy to understand. To say that two plus two basically equals four, or to say that so-and-so and so-and-so rarely get married or have children, is almost a joke. Although jokes like this are not easy to appear, it is often encountered if you pay a little attention to newspaper texts, especially internal documents, such as "There is a fly in the dish" is basically true.

Conclusion: The word "basic" is basically useful, but not everywhere.