Chapter 26

At the start of evening study the next day, Li Lan went to the small room the school had set aside for the competition classes.

Yu No. 1 rotated the coaching through the evenings. Maths, presumably because it had the most entrants, was timetabled on its own without clashing; biology and chemistry were a choice of one, as were physics and informatics.

Today was maths. With the most entrants, first and second years together came to sixty students, split into two classes of thirty. Plenty of them for now — but after next month's national league, thirty across both classes would be a good outcome.

Li Lan found an empty seat. Small room or not, thirty fitted comfortably; people who knew each other sat together, and those who didn't took two seats each, as she did.

At ten past six the bell went, and a teacher of about forty in glasses came to the front.

After introducing himself he sent a few students to fetch the coaching textbooks, and while they waited Li Lan gathered from the pair in front of her that this was the school's most experienced competition teacher: his students had taken provincial seconds, several provincial firsts, and one a national second.

One national second doesn't sound much, but it was the best result Henan had managed in years. Henan is an agricultural province, and its economy and education can't be compared with the developed provinces, let alone Beijing, Shanghai and the coastal cities. So while the province has students in enormous numbers, in competitions it has always been among the weak ones — a little better than the remoter provinces, and no more.

Li Lan took a copy and found it unlike the reference books she'd bought: far thicker. When everyone had one, the teacher went on. "This is one of the reference texts for next month's maths league. What you've been practising is only the first half of this book. Have a look at the contents for the second half."

She turned to it. Unlike the first half, the back was divided into four large sections: plane geometry, algebra, number theory, combinatorics.

"The league has two papers. The first is the one you sat last week — the syllabus is high school plus basic university material. The second, the additional paper, is optional. But anyone wanting a provincial first, a winter camp place, or anything beyond that has to sit both.

"I assume that having chosen maths, your target is a provincial first, since that's the only level that can lead to a recommendation. Some of you who've been to coaching classes will know about the two papers already; if you didn't, it doesn't matter — the second paper builds on the first and won't involve anything wildly beyond it.

"For those who didn't know, most of the material you bought covers the first paper. Next time you're at a bookshop you can buy second-paper texts aimed at whatever you're weakest on.

"There's under a month to the league, with the National Day holiday in the middle, and we have high school and university material to get through. Short time, heavy load, so we'll get on with it — and you're to practise on your own as well.

"Right. Let's begin."

Having got all of that out at speed, he picked up the newly issued book and went straight into teaching.

Short time and heavy load indeed: one period, and the whole of the first term's material had been distilled and delivered. Fast — but the students weren't slouches either, and most of them had covered the high school syllabus already.

---

Having entered four subjects and passed all four, Li Lan was now spinning like a top: competition classes every evening from Monday to Friday, and Sundays full as well.

"Aren't you tired?" A week of it, and Wang Jing found looking at Li Lan's timetable faintly suffocating. And Li Lan was still working through problems, bright as a button.

"What?" Politics had just finished, Li Lan had thought of an approach to a physics problem, and the break was noisy enough that she hadn't caught it.

Wang Jing had her answer from the look of her. Tired? She was enjoying herself. "Nothing. I was going to say the monthly exam's tomorrow, and then it's National Day — seven days. Aren't you pleased?"

Li Lan's first thought was how many books she'd need to take home, and which.

The holiday started the day after tomorrow? Life had been so full she'd lost track. Though—

"Seven days. That's a lot of books to carry back."

The thought escaped out loud. Getting no response, Li Lan turned to find Wang Jing staring at her with an expression of profound weariness. "What are you looking at me like that for?"

Wang Jing smiled. "Nothing. I'm just staggered by your dedication."

She rubbed her arms theatrically, and would have liked to take Li Lan by the shoulders and shake her. "You've given me gooseflesh. Isn't a holiday for being happy about where you're going? How is your first thought taking books home? We're not third-years — we don't have exams the week we get back."

Then she calmed down, looking at Li Lan's total lack of reaction. "Oh. I forgot you do have exams."

The province's maths league was on Saturday the twentieth, with the physics first round straight after on the Sunday, and the chemistry first round and biology league at the end of the month. They'd usually been spread across September and October; this year, for whatever reason, they were all in October. Four exams at once — Li Lan must be under a great deal of pressure, and perhaps saying that hadn't been kind.

Li Lan pushed her back down as she started to rise. "It isn't that I've got exams after the holiday. It's that you want to be thinking about tomorrow's monthly exam. You'll enjoy the holiday more if it goes well."

The bell went, and Wang Jing sat down muttering. "True. Mum will go on at me if I do badly."

This period was Jiao Wenfu's.

He put his book on the desk and taught as usual, and with five minutes to go took out a sheet of paper. "This is the seating allocation for the monthly exam. I'll put it up beside the board and you can note down your room and number after class."

He taped the sheet up, and every head in the room turned to follow it with some impatience.

Sure enough, the bell had barely gone before the board was ringed with students several deep. Wang Jing tried to get in, but being too far back, circled with paper and pen a few times before coming back defeated. "You were right. I'll do it after school."

Li Lan had said as much — too many people at the break, and after school would do — but Wang Jing was impatient and hadn't listened.

Afterwards they read the sheet. This being the first exam, the seating went by surname: Li Lan was in Class 10's room with number 678, and Wang Jing, whose surname came late, had been put in the big room that normally served as the hall.

---

Half past seven on Thursday morning, Li Lan walked into Class 10's room and found Li Cheng sitting near the front — the same room this time. She went over. "I thought you'd be in with me. How's the preparation for your first one?"

Between competition classes, it was the first proper conversation they'd had in a fortnight; Li Cheng knew she was busy and hadn't disturbed her.

"All right. You? Are your other subjects suffering with all the competition work?" Classmates had told her that some students practising Olympiad problems weren't studying anything else and had gone badly lopsided.

Li Lan shrugged. "Mine are fine. Oh — let's go back to the dormitory together after the last paper tomorrow. Have you packed?"

"No. I'll do it tonight."

They talked a while longer and Li Lan went to her own seat towards the back. The atmosphere wasn't especially solemn; first monthly exam or not, there was more ease than nerves on the faces around her, talk and laughter, and on the way past she heard people quietly arranging how to compare answers afterwards.

In neither life had Li Lan actually minded exams, because exam time always seems to pass faster than ordinary time.

Two days of it went by in a blink, and then the three of them were on the slow train home.

It was the first of October, but National Day then wasn't the crush it would later become, and their tickets were for a short hop inside the province, so the carriage wasn't full.

Li Lan listened to her sister and Zhao Xinxin trading gossip from their classes — which teacher was like this, which student had skipped lessons, the standard conversation of high-schoolers — and felt no particular urge to join in.

Two and a half hours to Minhe, so she took a biology league reference book out of her bag and started reading. The other two noticed, exchanged a glance and leant over. "Are these your Olympiad questions?"

She nodded, and the pair of them read a question about which reactions a particular phosphorylated sugar takes part in directly, at a metabolic junction inside the body.

Every individual character was one they knew, and put together it meant nothing whatsoever. They looked up and at each other.

So that's an Olympiad question? Can you follow it?

No. Our biology's got as far as basic cell structure.

So has ours. Isn't the whole of our first biology textbook about cells?

It is.

The world of top students is not for us.

Knowing she had exams after the holiday, they left her to it and talked quietly, though neither could quite stop looking at her working away — a train this noisy, and she was concentrating like that.

Li Cheng felt an obscure flicker of pride. Ever since the city-wide first — no, since the second time Li Lan came top of the school — her sister's stature had grown somewhat in her mind. Something like the legendary elder sister, in fact.

She never said so, and she talked to Li Lan exactly as she always had, but truthfully she was rather proud of her, and when she was tired of studying she sometimes found herself thinking of her without meaning to.

When the station was announced she nudged Li Lan, still deep in a problem. "Li Lan. We're nearly there. Pack up."

Their parents were waiting at the exit.

Both of them smiled at the sight of the three girls, and Li Quan went straight over and took the bags. Before Li Lan could say anything he had one in each hand and weighed them. "These are heavy."

Li Cheng went to their mother's side, ostensibly complaining and in fact wheedling. "I've hardly got anything. It's all Li Lan's books — a seven-day holiday and she's brought stacks of them, then couldn't carry them and put them in my bag for me to lug home."

Chen Ying patted her arm. "That's enough. She's got a lot of books, what's wrong with carrying some for your sister? You rang me and said she was in some competition class and worn out with it." Sympathetic about Li Lan on the phone and now this — her second daughter really was stubborn beyond belief.

Li Cheng went scarlet. "Mum."

Seeing she'd embarrassed her, Chen Ying let it go. "All right, all right, I'll stop. You've just come out of exams and two hours on a train, you must be worn out. Let's get home — your grandmother's cooked a whole table for you. Xinxin, you come too; your mother's at ours waiting, and she'd have come with us if there'd been room in the car."

Li Quan had borrowed a small four-seater with room for two in the back, and fortunately both his daughters were now a standard shape, so the three girls just about fitted across it. Last time round, Zhao Xinxin in the middle would have been thoroughly squashed.

It was nearly nine by the time he'd dropped Zhao Xinxin home and returned the car, and after a few words at the old house he and Chen Ying went back to the scrap station.