Chapter 16

Once the teachers from the city's No. 1 High School had gone, Li Quan and Chen Ying were both slightly dazed. Two days ago they had still been agonising with Zhao Xinxin's parents over where the three girls might go, and had been meaning to make a trip into the city to ask about admissions. And now the city school had come to them.

"If Li Lan comes to us, we'll waive her first year's fees. And if she can stay in the school's top three, we'll waive the second and third years as well."

"For Li Cheng we'd charge the usual fees."

Chen Ying thought about what they'd said and found it tempting. Shang No. 1 was one of the best schools in the city, and the one all four parents had put first anyway.

She decided to talk to her eldest brother, Chen Shanxing, before committing.

Li Quan was quiet a moment when she said so, and raised no objection. Chen Shanxing was a middle-school teacher and one of the most widely informed of Chen Ying's siblings, and she liked his opinion on any big decision. On his own side of the family everyone had left school after primary, so there was nobody he could usefully ask about this.

"Lanlan, Chengcheng — up early tomorrow. We're going to your uncle's." Chen Ying never dithered; by that afternoon it was settled.

The old Li Lan would have been glad to go. This one knew exactly what would happen and was not remotely keen. "Mum, you and Dad go. Li Cheng and Li Jingyu and I will look after the house."

"Look after what? We'll shut for the day. Anyway, your uncle said the other day he wanted the two of you to come over." That was that.

Li Lan lay on the bed in despair. Her mother did what Chen Shanxing said, so this was clearly non-negotiable. Li Cheng and Li Jingyu, by contrast, were rather looking forward to it: they'd heard their uncle had opened a supermarket and hadn't seen it, and now they could have a proper look round.

Listening to them discuss it, Li Lan thought: one small supermarket and all this excitement. In a few years ours will be the biggest in town.

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The next day Chen Ying bought a quantity of Beiguan's local flatbreads and other food to take, and Li Quan drove the four of them on the three-wheeler to her home town, Changjun.

Li Lan sat on the edge of the tray. It was summer, but the wind of the three-wheeler at speed took some of the heat out of it, and she felt the familiar shaking come up through the boards. It had been a long time since she'd ridden in one of these. Between her siblings talking loudly and the noise of the engine, her reluctance about the visit ebbed a little.

And when she saw her cousins, the last of it went entirely.

Chen Ying was close to her family and still saw them often even at the point Li Lan was reborn, so Li Lan got on well with all of her cousins. Reborn or not, seeing their much younger faces lifted her considerably.

Chen Ying had rung ahead, so Chen Shanxing was outside waiting when they pulled up, and with him Li Lan's second uncle Chen Jinde and his two daughters, and her third uncle Chen Leshan.

The three of them lived close by, and having heard Chen Ying was coming had come over for a talk.

Li Lan got down and took in the four or five people at the supermarket door without any surprise. There were a great many relatives and they did everything as a group, so any discussion on her mother's side always drew a crowd. And this was a small fraction of it — neither of her aunts had appeared yet.

Chen Shanxing came over smiling. Nobody on that side of the family was short; he was past forty and still over a hundred and eighty centimetres, straight-backed, with a habitually cheerful face that made people take to him at once.

"Brother — where's my sister-in-law?" Chen Ying was off the three-wheeler before Li Quan had cut the engine, and asked after her once she'd greeted him.

The three children got down and dutifully lined up behind their mother. "Uncle."

"Upstairs doing the accounts. How was it, then — tiring drive?" Chen Shanxing asked Li Quan as he came over.

"Not really. Forty minutes." Li Quan scratched his head. Ten years married and he was still slightly formal around Chen Shanxing.

Chen Shanxing nodded, and turned to the girls with real approval. "Lanlan, Chengcheng. Your mother rang me the other day. The two of you have done your parents proud — and Lanlan, you're top of your whole city."

"She is that. First in the city. Yaxin only managed first in the county last year," said Chen Jinde.

Chen Yaxin was the same age as Li Lan and had come first in the county in last year's exam. They should have been in the same year, but Li Lan's move to the county town had put her a year behind.

The girls laughed awkwardly, while their parents beamed with pride.

"Right, we're blocking the shop standing here. Let's go up," said Chen Leshan, looking at the ten-odd people in the doorway.

"Yes, up we go." At Chen Shanxing's word the whole party followed him in.

He'd built the premises himself: shop on the ground floor, family above.

Li Cheng and Li Jingyu had never seen it, and looked round with great curiosity. Beiguan had a small supermarket, but next to this one it was a corner stall.

It looked enormous. There were staff on the tills.

The two of them followed the adults up the stairs reluctantly, privately resolving to come down and explore properly later.

Zhao Youqin, hearing footsteps, came out and found the party behind her husband. She took off her accounting glasses and produced a smile very like his. "You're here at last. Come here, let me look at our champion. Where are Li Lan and Li Cheng?"

Li Lan wailed inwardly and smiled without a trace of it. "Auntie."

"Look how much weight you've lost. No wonder you came first. I'll make you something good in a bit and put it back on you," said Zhao Youqin, looking her over.

"Thank you, Auntie." And then it was Li Cheng's turn to perform.

Mercifully the stairs were narrow, and Zhao Youqin let them off after a couple of remarks.

They had barely sat down in the front room before Chen Ying was asking about high schools.

Chen Shanxing took his time. "Xiaoying, about the two of them and high school. I've had a think since you rang. Let me go through it."

"Yes." Chen Ying looked at him expectantly. She had known he'd have thought it through. Li Quan was interested too.

"First, the county schools are out. However good the offer. I know you'd planned on the school in the next county, but with marks like Lanlan's and Chengcheng's you can afford to be choosy about city schools, never mind county ones."

"That's just it, brother. Li Quan and I were thinking of a city school — pay if we have to, but somewhere good."

"City No. 1 came to the house yesterday, though." She relayed the offer.

"Well then, No. 1's certainly available." He hadn't expected them to come recruiting, but it didn't change his thinking. "There's another idea I'd like you to hear, though.

"I think you should take Lanlan and Chengcheng and try for a school in the provincial capital."

"Shang city's schools are a good deal better than the county's, but next to the provincial ones they're still some way behind. When Yaxin came first in the county I had her try for the city's Hongzhi class — get into that and it's another thing entirely. Waived fees are the least of it; Hongzhi students all come out with university places, and a good few get into the top ones. Shame she didn't get in, and this year the city isn't running the class, so there's no chance to try." There was real regret at the end of it.

Chen Yaxin coming first in the county was the thing he was proudest of, and while Li Lan's result pleased him, Chen Yaxin was the closer relation.

Li Lan looked over at Chen Yaxin, sitting to one side. She knew this story. On spending money on their children, her mother and Chen Jinde were exact opposites: Chen Ying spent whatever it took for the best school available and never grudged it, while Chen Jinde saved wherever he could, his own daughter included.

Chen Yaxin had been at a village middle school, and although she came first in the county, the gap between her and city children who'd had tutoring since infancy was still wide, so she missed the Hongzhi class. Her marks would have got her into an ordinary city high school easily enough — but Chen Jinde wouldn't part with the money, and she went to high school in the county.

And then the school closed before she finished her final year. Chen Yaxin's was the last intake, and that year was a free-for-all: not only were the students not studying, the teachers weren't teaching. Nobody, however able, gets anywhere in an environment like that, and her university exam result was predictably poor.

Chen Jinde regretted it afterwards and sent her back to a city school to repeat a year, which didn't help much; the three years that mattered were gone. To her credit she didn't slacken after getting into university, and went step by step to a doctorate at a famous one. But with a better high school she'd never have been stuck at an ordinary undergraduate place to begin with.

Chen Ying's eyes, meanwhile, were lighting up.

Of course. Why had she never thought of the provincial capital? Her own horizons were too narrow, that was the truth of it — a city school had seemed impossibly good. And the girls' marks weren't worse than Chen Yaxin's had been.

"So how do you get into a school in the capital, brother? Is there another exam? Should Li Quan and I go up to the city in a day or two?"

"I'd hardly suggest it without finding out. Tiancheng works in the city, doesn't he — I had him ask a few days ago, and they told him the requirements."

"What are they? What did Tiancheng say?"

"He says the entry mark for high schools in Yu city this year is six hundred and twenty." Chen Shanxing remained unhurried.

Six hundred and twenty. Lanlan had six ninety-seven and Chengcheng six fifty — both over.

"But since we wouldn't be local students, thirty marks come off the exam result," he added.

"Thirty off?" Chen Ying hadn't known that applying elsewhere cost you marks.

"So after thirty off, Lanlan's six fifty-seven and Chengcheng's six twenty — exactly on the line. Is on the line enough to apply?" She was worried about Li Cheng now.

"It is. This isn't university. But at a school in Yu city there'd be no awards for either of them — I should expect you'd be paying fees and living costs for both, and neither is cheap up there. At a Shang city school the costs are lower, and Li Lan's fees at least you wouldn't have to think about." He laid it out point by point.

"Yu city, definitely." Chen Ying didn't hesitate. If they were going, they were going somewhere good. Li Quan nodded beside her.

"Xiaoying, don't rush at it. I think you want to think this over properly. Two of them in the capital will cost a great deal — it's the provincial capital. The Shang city schools look fine to me; they send plenty on to the top universities every year." Chen Jinde couldn't help urging caution.

As he saw it, they weren't well off, and the two of them had been talking about building a house and starting a business. Pay two lots of fees and living costs and where was the house and the business coming from?

Li Lan was not remotely surprised by her mother's choice. Last time, when she'd done badly, Chen Ying had paid over the odds to get her into a school at all. Let alone now.

"I know, brother. Worst case Li Quan and I collect scrap a while longer. I'm not having the girls held back." Chen Ying was unbothered. Money was earned to be spent — she was not her second brother, hoarding it away from his only two daughters.

"I said Xiaoying would pick the capital." Zhao Youqin got a dig in at her husband first, then turned to the girls in earnest. "So the two of you had better work hard and get into a good university."

"Mm." Li Cheng nodded hard. She'd been planning purchases with Li Jingyu, but she'd heard every word, and at the thought of school in the provincial capital her hands had closed into fists.

At that the whole room laughed, and since Chen Ying had decided, nobody pressed her further and they started teasing the parents instead.

"So Li Lan and Li Cheng are both bound for top universities now. Work hard enough and it could be Tsinghua or Peking — and then you two are buying dinner."

"We will. If it's Tsinghua or Peking, Chen Ying and I will lay on twenty tables."

Under the laughter, both of them knew it was mostly a joke — but with their daughters going to school in a provincial capital they had never even considered, both privately hoped the joke might come true.