Chapter 30

"Tomorrow is the national high school maths league. All of you have come through the preliminary. Whatever the result, I hope you'll stay positive — the Olympiad is one of many options open to you, and a poor result isn't worth agonising over."

In a room that looked rather empty next to the others, the coaching teacher addressed his students. Perhaps because it was the last session before the exam, he seemed less severe than usual and spoke a good deal more gently.

He checked his watch, decided the time was about up, and finished. "After all this training I trust you understand the format. Go back, rest properly, and be ready for tomorrow."

The maths league paper is set nationally but administered by each province, and can be sat at your own school without any special allocation of rooms — though where a school has only a handful of entrants they'll be sent elsewhere. Yu No. 1 had plenty, so nobody had to travel.

At eight the next morning, the twentieth of October, the campus was empty for the holiday.

Li Lan sat waiting for the bell. As with the internal exam, the first paper ran from eight to twenty past nine.

At eight exactly the bell went and she opened it. The first paper is set to the school syllabus, covering the same ground as the university entrance exam and pitched slightly above it. If you wanted a comparison, the first paper's general difficulty is about that of the last question on a university entrance paper.

For most entrants, everything on the first paper is doable. The difficulty isn't the only obstacle, though. The other is time.

Eight to twenty past nine is eighty minutes, and in those eighty minutes you have eight fill-in-the-blanks and three long answers, every one of them at the difficulty of a final entrance-exam question. So the characteristic scene in the first paper isn't students agonising over difficulty; it's students racing the clock. Fast hands score, slow hands don't.

The rule does not apply to certain special cases.

Around the room, pens moved without pause across working paper, barely stopping. Li Lan took in the questions several lines at a time, and next to everyone else's her working paper was frighteningly clean — while her pace was, if anything, faster.

That came from habit. For many questions she preferred to work through them in her head rather than on paper, and used the sheet only for key formulas and figures.

The eighty minutes went in continuous work, and after a twenty-minute break the second paper began at twenty to ten.

Where the first paper was a scramble, plenty of students looked at the second and blanched; some couldn't begin. Unlike the first, the second is the real test — only four long answers, but it runs from twenty to ten until ten past twelve, a hundred and fifty minutes.

Four questions, one each from plane geometry, algebra, number theory and combinatorics. Forty marks each for the first two and fifty each for the last two, a hundred and eighty in total. With the first paper's hundred and twenty, the league is scored out of three hundred.

For most students the additional paper means the first two questions. Solve both, plus at least half of one of the last two, and a provincial team place is close to certain — with luck, even a provincial first.

Having finished the third question, the algebra, she had half an hour left. This year's algebra turned on Fermat's little theorem and the computation was involved; it had taken her a full forty minutes to work through.

The last question was number theory, and this year's looked unusually complex. She had written out a few steps of it when the bell went.

Looking at the unfinished paper, she was reluctant to stop. Another ten minutes and she was confident she'd have had it — but the exam was over, so she put her pen down and waited for the papers to be collected.

On the way to the canteen she worked out roughly where she stood. Her coach had said that in most years in Henan, ninety on the first paper plus two questions on the second was enough for the provincial team, and last year's results bore that out: the provincial first line had been 126, with seventy-five above it, and the provincial team line 168, which only fourteen people cleared.

In Zhejiang, one of the strong provinces for the maths league, ninety plus two questions would get you nowhere near the team. Last year Zhejiang's provincial first line was 165, again with seventy-five above it, and the team line was two hundred, with twenty-six over.

What this year's Henan lines would be she didn't know — but by her own reckoning her score would have made the Zhejiang team without difficulty.

She regretted the last question, but Li Lan wasn't one to worry a thing to death, and with the physics first round the next day there was no time for it anyway.

---

The physics round was also at Yu No. 1, in a different room. It comes in two parts, written and practical: the theory paper is set nationally out of 320, and the practical is set by each province's competition committee out of 80.

Theory was nine until twelve this morning; the practical was the following Saturday — which meant that on that Saturday she would sit chemistry in the morning and the physics practical in the afternoon.

The physics theory paper had only seven long questions, but the questions alone ran to six sheets of A4. Looking at the dense text and diagrams, Li Lan felt no pressure at all and rubbed her hands, and at the signal went into it.

Three hours later, at the bell, she put down her pen and counted: seven questions had taken her eight sheets.

With maths and physics — the hardest of them — behind her, she could breathe. Two days at that intensity had wrung even her dry. Mercifully the biology league and the chemistry round that followed carried much less pressure.

Since starting high school she'd found that, whether because of the shop or not, biology and chemistry came more easily than she'd expected, and over the following week the biology league and chemistry round turned out to be oddly relaxing.

---

The eleventh of November — nothing more than an ordinary day, the shopping festival of later years not yet invented.

Jiao Wenfu came into Class 3 during a study period, caught several students talking, confiscated two novels, then stopped by Li Lan's desk, tapped her shoulder to bring her out, and collected Zhang Qinxin the same way on his path.

The two of them followed him out with no idea what this was about, and Li Lan found herself looking at the novels held behind his back.

Hm. That pink and rather twee cover was extremely familiar.

Curiosity got the better of her and she tilted her head to read the title the right way up — and recognised it.

Her face went hot. So that was why the cover looked familiar; someone had sent it to her before publication, and she'd been busy with exams at the time and glanced at it and forgotten.

She hadn't expected it in print this fast. Also: seeing her own book in a teacher's hand produced an obscure sense of shame. Li Lan decided to know nothing about it.

The office was empty. He pulled out two stools for them, put the confiscated novels in a cardboard box by his desk, and took several folded sheets in different colours out of a drawer, regarding them mildly. "Li Lan, Zhang Qinxin. Nothing's wrong — I wanted to tell you both about last month's competition results."

Zhang Qinxin looked at what he was holding and gradually understood: certificates. Certificates meant at least a provincial third for both of them. Her eyes widened and fixed on them.

There were only two of them — why so many certificates? Had one of them won in more than one subject? And which was hers? She suppressed the urge to look and waited.

He didn't draw it out. He handed the top one to Zhang Qinxin and gave Li Lan the remaining four.

Li Lan opened the first and saw the words for an award certificate in red across the middle, headed with the national high school maths league.

She went through them one at a time: the national physics competition at provincial level, the national biology league, and the national chemistry competition. The wording of each was much the same — a line certifying that she had taken a first prize in the 2008 competition, with the organisers' seals at the foot.

"Congratulations, Li Lan. You're the only student in this school to win four provincial firsts in your first year." He'd waited until they'd finished reading and then couldn't hold it in.

He was genuinely delighted. Collecting the certificates today he'd expected three at the outside — ideally one each for Li Lan, Zhang Qinxin and Xing Xiaozhen, and at worst none at all. It had turned out considerably better than he'd imagined.

Xing Xiaozhen placing nowhere was a shame, but Zhang Qinxin had done well — a provincial second in maths at the first attempt put her among the best of this year's first-years. What delighted him was Li Lan's.

A first-year, in her first provincial competition, with four provincial firsts. Never mind among first-years; across the whole of Yu No. 1 that was first place beyond argument. Which made him thankful that she'd held her ground and entered four subjects over his objection — otherwise he'd be regretting it bitterly.

Beside her, Zhang Qinxin looked up, stunned. Having entered two herself, she knew exactly how hard both were, and privately she had doubted Li Lan could hold four together.

Evidently she'd held them together and then some.

Four provincial firsts. Zhang Qinxin briefly wondered whether a provincial first was easier to come by than she'd thought — and then her eye fell on her own certificate and she came to her senses. Provincial firsts weren't easy. The gap between her and Li Lan was simply very wide.

She might not talk much, but she wasn't small-minded, and she smiled. "Congratulations, Li Lan."

Privately she resolved to take a provincial first in the second year. Reading her certificate, she knew her own competition run ended here; entering again meant waiting until next year. A provincial second this time — and she was confident of a first at the next attempt.