Chapter 27

Jiao Wenfu sat in his study, took a long drink from the flask on the desk, and started marking. The students were finished the moment the exam was; the teachers still had to get the papers marked, scored and ranked.

Being a maths teacher was a mercy — marking didn't take much out of him. A Chinese teacher would have gone blind. The further he got, though, the angrier he became. Each class's papers were sorted out to its own teacher on the day, and these were his two classes.

And look at the standard of them. He was form teacher of Class 3, and this was what their maths came to.

The paper had some difficulty in it, granted, but it was all material he'd taught. Change the form of a question slightly and suddenly they couldn't do it.

A drink to damp the temper down, and on. Fortunately the next several were decent — a run of scripts above a hundred and thirty — and his mood improved. Perhaps his teaching wasn't so bad after all.

In better spirits, he turned to the next: Xing Xiaozhen.

He remembered her — one of only three maths Olympiad students in his class. The Olympiad results hadn't been published, but teachers knew roughly how their own students had done, and his recollection was that hers had not been good; she'd scraped into the class.

He allowed himself some anticipation. Perhaps this would be the first full marks.

He finished, and his expression clouded. He went back through it, found no error of his own, sighed, and wrote a score at the top: 136.

Not low. Not high either.

It was the highest he'd marked that day, and nothing like what he'd expected. For an Olympiad student, never mind the university exam, a monthly exam ought to stay above a hundred and forty at the very least. Hers was on the low side. He'd have to talk to her after the holiday — and if it came to it, leaving the Olympiad class early would at least leave her a chance at a good university.

Whether or not mood affects luck, the next few were disappointing, and several students he had views about came in well below what he'd expected.

Then Zhang Qinxin's, and he let himself hope again. Her entrance result had been good and she'd been mid-table in the Olympiad test; perhaps this was the full marks.

He marked it carefully and it came out much as he'd imagined: three marks off for writing one figure wrong, and otherwise near perfect. That was the proper standard for an Olympiad student.

In a good humour he found the next one, saw the name on the left, and raised an eyebrow. Li Lan.

If you asked which student had made the strongest impression on him, it was Li Lan without competition — not only in this intake but the one before and the one before that. First, her entrance result. Second, the way she'd held her ground registering for the Olympiad. Third, the results a fortnight ago: first, and first in all four subjects.

Only first-years and a few second-years had sat it, but nobody confident enough to enter was anything other than a top student, all of them with ample faith in their own marks. And every one of those favoured children had come second to Li Lan in every subject.

People had speculated at the time that on that showing she was good for at least one provincial first, and with a push perhaps two — while as for the national finals, you do your best and leave the rest to heaven.

The teachers at Yu No. 1 didn't dare think much further than that. There had been a student like her before: first in all four subjects at school level, two provincial firsts at the provincial round — and then, over-confident, preparing for both the maths and physics competitions for the national finals, came unstuck and finished with a national second in maths alone. That remained the best Olympiad result Yu No. 1, and indeed Yu city, had ever had.

Back from the recollection, he drank some tea and started marking.

Multiple choice, all correct. Fill in the blanks, all correct. Long answers—

Not a moment's peace from her. He rubbed his forehead, thinking exactly that, while a smile got onto the corner of his mouth.

Just then a woman opened the door. "Wenfu, you've been marking all morning. Come and eat."

Because he always emerged from marking looking like a man betrayed by the world, she'd come in deliberately quietly — and today, unexpectedly, he was sitting there smiling and evidently in good spirits.

She came over. "What's happened, then? You look pleased."

"Mm." He pushed the paper towards her. "Look at this."

It was a maths paper, and although she didn't teach maths she could see something was unusual about it. "What is it?"

"Ha. Have you ever seen a student do that? She's written out several other methods as well as the standard one."

Looking at his satisfaction, the woman was less impressed. "This is a formal exam. Rather than putting in extras, she'd do better to answer the questions properly."

Jiao Wenfu looked at the long answers, at the alternative solutions that came close to showing off, and his expression settled. He'd sensed it the moment he met her: this was not a good student in the ordinary, rule-following sense.

"Young and full of it. Who hasn't done something childish." He said it smiling, and wrote a score in red.

---

Meanwhile, in Beiguan.

Coming home this time, Li Lan found the big pit behind the old house filled in, with foundations going down for a building.

The pit was the plot Li Tieshi had bought for his son when he was young, meaning a house to be built on it — and only in the last couple of years had her parents saved enough to build.

In September, having conferred with the others who'd bought pits as plots at the same time, several families had paid for a few tons of earth to fill them in. It had been levelled not long before the girls came home, and the foundations had only just been laid.

"Mum, are we really opening a supermarket?" Li Cheng stood up on the bed to check, thoroughly excited. She'd been sick with envy at her uncle's, and now her mother said they were opening one?

Li Quan looked at his over-excited second daughter and said, as though joking, "Of course. We'll get the building up first, and by the time you're next home the supermarket might be finished as well. Bigger than your uncle's."

It sounded like a joke, and Li Lan knew it wasn't. She didn't remember precisely, but last time round it had also been after she and Li Cheng started high school that the family gave up the scrap business for a supermarket, and ran it for a decade or more — from a small shop to the largest retail premises in Beiguan.

Only, at the start, a supermarket was cleaner than scrap and barely any easier. To get fresh vegetables her parents were often setting out for the wholesale market at four in the morning, gone the whole day, without stopping to eat. It improved once the business grew enough to hire people.

This time Li Lan hoped they wouldn't drive themselves like that — something small and relaxed, profit or loss immaterial, so long as their health held. Which meant: if the three of them cost less, or if she earned money sooner, might her parents be able to take it easy instead of working themselves into the ground?

Which reminded her that she'd barely written a word since the competition classes started, and the buffer must be nearly used up. Better write some over the holiday, she thought, rubbing her chin with a certain guilt — otherwise she'd have to break the run until the provincial competitions were over.

"Li Lan, what are you thinking about? Mum's asking you something." Li Cheng shouldered her.

"Sorry, I didn't hear. What was it, Mum?"

"Nothing much. That thing of yours — Chengcheng said it's a contest class? Is it wearing you out?"

"Mum," said Li Cheng, correcting her again, "it's the competition class, not the contest class. I've told you several times."

"All right, all right, competition class, competition class. I forget things when I'm busy." Li Cheng sighed to herself. Her mother could be extraordinarily sharp and then forget something the moment she'd been told.

Having repeated it twice, Chen Ying carried on. "What's the competition class for, anyway? Haven't you got the fast classes as well — why another one?"

Li Lan explained. "They coach students to sit exams the province runs. Do well and you get marks added to your university exam, or you can be recommended straight to a university."

Her parents looked at each other. Added marks they understood. "What's recommended? Sitting a provincial exam is all very well, but it won't get in the way of your normal work, will it?" Lanlan's marks were so good; they weren't having some exam damage the university exam. Two years away, but everyone said the first year's foundations mattered.

Li Cheng nearly choked at her mother not knowing what recommendation meant. "Mum, recommended means you get into university without sitting the exam. So if Li Lan does well, she goes to university without taking it at all."

Chen Ying was delighted. "Into university without the exam? Is there really such a thing? How did I not know?

"But Chengcheng, if it's that good, why haven't you signed up for this competition class? Straight into university without the exam."

Li Cheng was briefly unable to speak. I'd love to, if I could understand the questions. "Everyone in the competition class is a top student. I'm not good enough," she managed.

Li Quan found that reasonable enough. "Well, quite. Think about it — if the students and their parents all know recommendation is worth having, they'll all want in, and they've probably been preparing for years. Everyone who signed up is a good student. Our Lanlan getting in at all is doing well."

Li Cheng nodded along. Her father had it right.

Chen Ying looked at her, sorry about it. "Our Chengcheng isn't bad at school either. With some effort, who knows."

Li Cheng pulled a face. "Don't. Mum, I'm telling you, those questions—" and she launched into an animated account of what the competition class covered. Only on hearing that the exams took in university material as well as high school did her parents begin to understand.

They'd assumed it was something like a fast class. Instead the competition students were this formidable — first year and already finishing the high school syllabus and university material on top? Which meant the competition class was better than a fast class. More to talk about, then.

Although—

Her parents were faintly puzzled. How had Li Lan got in?

Their eldest really was a genius. Once it clicked, it had properly clicked.

And both of them thought, at the same moment: my daughter takes after me.