Chapter 15

Towards the end, Li Lan happened to look over and saw her father and Li Cheng, who had finished first, standing in the doorway of Year 9 Class 3 talking and laughing. From how relaxed they looked, Li Cheng had presumably done well.

Their eyes met, and Li Cheng mouthed silently, exaggerating each word: "How — many — minutes — left?"

Li Lan glanced at Meng Qinghua, who was winding up. "Nearly — done."

Li Cheng gave her an OK sign to show she'd got it.

Sure enough, Meng Qinghua said a few things about applying to high schools and finished. Li Quan and Li Cheng expected the other two straight out — and instead several parents closed in around them the moment she stopped.

Seeing that, neither of them was sure whether to go in.

After a few minutes outside, with her mother's chatting showing no sign of ending, Li Lan prompted her. "Mum. Dad and Chengcheng are waiting outside."

Chen Ying, glowing under the compliments, remembered they existed. "Oh, look at me. So pleased with myself I forgot the pair of them."

She said her goodbyes to the parents around her and swept out of the room beaming.

Li Quan and Li Cheng were faintly baffled. "Your teacher's slow, isn't she — last to finish. And what was all that just now? Why were there so many people?"

Chen Ying, still beaming, went mysterious on him. "I'll tell you, but don't get too excited."

Li Quan was smiling too. "I've got something for you as well. Don't you get too excited."

"Right — one, two, three, together. One, two, three."

"Lanlan came first in the city." "Chengcheng came first in her class."

They looked at each other.

Li Quan doubted his own ears. "What did you say?"

"Lanlan came first in the city. The city."

Never mind her father's face — Li Cheng, who had until that moment been rather pleased with her own result, turned and stared at her sister. "Li Lan, the city first is you?"

Before the slips were handed out her form teacher had mentioned that this year's city-wide first was at their school, without saying who. And it was Li Lan.

"Mm. I did tell you. I'm a genius," said Li Lan, grinning.

"Let me see your slip." Li Cheng was extremely curious what a city-wide first actually looked like.

"God. Three marks." She looked at it with open envy, and when she looked back up at her sister, Li Lan seemed somehow different today. More like an elder sister, somehow.

First in the city.

While Li Cheng was reading it, Chen Ying was hearing Li Cheng's own result from her husband, and was delighted with that too. Not as dazzling as her sister's, but the school's top ten.

"Chengcheng's done very well too. We'll get you both a proper reward today." She said it quickly, in case Li Cheng minded her being so pleased about Li Lan.

"That's right, both of you did well. A proper reward," said Li Quan, his eyes crinkling. Apart from getting married and having his children, he thought this might be the happiest he had ever been.

"Li Lan's the impressive one, though." Li Cheng wasn't sulking about being overlooked. The gap between first in the city and first in the class was a bit wide for that.

"Right, let's not stand about. Back to pack up, and you can think about what you want on the way." Most people had gone by now.

The four of them walked to the gate talking, and there found Zhao Xinxin's family, all smiling too. Li Quan was surprised — he hadn't seen them in the grounds and had assumed they'd gone back to the flat. "Zhao Shu. You didn't go on ahead?"

"We were going to. Then we saw this and thought we'd wait for you." He tilted his chin at the gate, inviting them to look above it.

Meanwhile Zhao Xinxin had already come running over. "Li Lan, Li Lan — did you come first in the whole city?"

"How do you know?"

Zhao Xinxin pointed upwards too, and the sisters looked. Above the gate hung a banner that hadn't been there before: warm congratulations to Li Lan on her outstanding result.

Li Lan had nothing to say.

Phones at that point weren't smart and could only manage photographs of dreadful quality, but that stopped Chen Ying not at all. She dug hers out, found the camera function she hadn't used since buying it, handed the phone to Zheng Huifang, and then arranged Li Quan, Li Cheng and even Li Jingyu — summoned out of the flat — in front of the gate, and had them photographed from every conceivable angle, singly and together.

Afterwards, comparing notes with Zhao Xinxin, Li Lan learned that she'd finished within two marks of Li Cheng, second in her own class.

On the way back Li Lan rubbed a jaw that ached from being made to smile brilliantly on command, and tried not to think about the permanent record of herself grinning foolishly at a gate.

Fortunately there were still things to move, and after several dozen photographs Chen Ying tore herself away. Her parents had wanted to buy the girls a good meal at a restaurant in town as a reward, but Li Lan wasn't actually a teenager, and by pointing out that their grandparents were waiting at home she talked them round.

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Back at Beiguan, her parents got out of the car and told the grandparents the results at once. Li Tieshi, who had always been rather strict with Li Lan, couldn't help saying "good" several times over.

Song Qiulan didn't understand much of it, but she understood what first in the city meant. The city was bigger than the county — and her granddaughter had done better than first in the county.

Her parents had been in a state of high excitement since getting out of the car, and had no appetite for collecting scrap that afternoon. After a very generous dinner, Li Quan went out to find friends and drink, while Chen Ying went to find friends of her own and sat down at a mahjong table for practically the first time since the scrap station opened.

Neither of them, of course, had gone for the drink or the mahjong. By steering things there "in passing", both managed to mention their daughters' results with affected modesty. Having collected a great many compliments, they got rid of the accumulated resentment of being told they'd wasted their effort and their money, and felt a good deal better.

Let's see you say behind our backs that we're throwing money away on daughters, that we've got money to burn. Get your own child a city-wide first, or the county's top hundred. Chen Ying went to bed still chuckling, several hundred yuan down.

What neither of them anticipated was that even without their help, the whole town knew by the next day.

Because the next day the town secretary turned up at the house with people from the admissions office of the county's key high school, wanting to talk them into sending the girls there. To that end the school offered to waive three years of fees for both of them and give Li Lan a scholarship of ten thousand yuan.

They arrived at midday, when somebody happened to be sitting at the gate chatting with Song Qiulan. Beiguan is small and everyone knew the secretary, and the visitor, curious about the two strangers he'd brought to see Li Quan and Chen Ying, brazenly stayed put.

On hearing the purpose of the visit and the ten thousand yuan, they drew in a breath. Ten thousand. How many months' work is that? And this girl gets it for coming first at school?

When Chen Ying and Li Quan didn't immediately agree, the neighbour could hardly stop themselves from accepting on their behalf. What was there to think about? Ten thousand yuan. How much scrap did you have to collect to make ten thousand yuan?

Li Lan, on the side of it, wasn't remotely worried her parents would agree. Not for any complicated reason: the county's high schools were mediocre, verging on chaotic. Last time, when she and Li Cheng had ordinary marks, her mother had refused to have them at high school in the county — let alone now. As for the money and the fees, if Chen Ying were the sort to care about that, she'd never have paid to send them to the county town in the first place.

Sure enough, when the county's No. 1 High School came too, and raised the scholarship to twenty thousand, neither of her parents gave an inch. And once it got out that the county schools were offering money to get the city-wide first, everyone who knew about it started guessing which school the girls would go to.

Hearing afterwards that the family had turned it all down, some couldn't help thinking sourly: money on the table and she won't take it. What school does she imagine she's going to? First in the city or not, who knows whether she'll get into university — take the money while it's there.

And then turning on their own children. "Look at Li Lan. Weren't you at the same primary school? She comes first in the whole city and brings money in, and I've got to pay somebody to get you into high school."

The subject of which rolled their eyes. "Send me to the county town then. There are twenty-odd of us left in my class — getting into high school at all is doing well."

There was a good deal of that sort of conversation. In the countryside in 2008, ten or twenty thousand yuan was a very large sum, and few people could have refused it.

Chen Ying and Li Quan heard the sour remarks too, and paid them no attention whatever. They were busy with Zhao Shu and Zheng Huifang, trying to decide which high school to send the three girls to.

Before the exam the four of them had settled on a boarding school in the neighbouring county — strict, apparently, with a decent record for university places. Now the girls' marks had ruled it out.

Two days later they had a new option, because the secretary brought two more people to the house — and this time they weren't from either county school, but from the admissions office of a key high school in the city.