Chapter 34

They were off the plane barely a minute before all four of them had their padded coats off and over their arms. They'd braced themselves for it, and Guangzhou's near-summer temperature still came as a shock.

Li Lan was all right; she had only a sweatshirt under hers, and while it was hot it was bearable. The other three fared worse, especially the two boys who'd come from home wearing thermals and several layers over them.

None of them had expected this. They'd checked the forecast before leaving, but Henan had had snow not long before and they'd set off into ice and hard frost, so thermals had been irresistible — perfectly comfortable there, and soaked through within minutes of landing here.

Rather than wait for the luggage, three of them detoured to the lavatories to shed layers, which helped. The tall, heavily built boy fanned himself and mopped his face continuously. "How is it this hot? My mother insisted it wouldn't be and made me put all this on, and now look — it nearly finished me. I'm getting into short sleeves the minute we reach the hotel."

"Same," said the other boy, though he sounded rather sorrier for himself. "Except it's worse for me. I only brought sweatshirts and jumpers, no short sleeves at all. Looking at this I'll have to buy some."

Li Lan wasn't surprised. Short of experiencing it, it's hard to judge two entirely different climates from a couple of numbers. She'd been to Guangzhou once in her last life, as a tourist, and hadn't dared dress lightly for the journey either — but she had a few wearable things in her case.

Unlike Henan's rather empty airport, Guangzhou's was visibly busier, the exit packed with people meeting arrivals. Faced with the crush, Teacher Deng looked harassed and raised his voice over it. "The organisers said someone would meet us. Let's all look for them."

The three of them turned their heads, and the tallest boy spotted, at the back, an organiser holding up a board with Teacher Deng's name on it. They went over: under his name was a smaller line identifying the Henan maths competition delegation. Their man, plainly.

After a brief exchange he led them to a coach parked inside the airport. It already held two other delegations, one from the far south and one from the far north — Hainan and Heilongjiang.

The two of them appeared to be getting on well, and when Teacher Deng boarded the Heilongjiang teacher greeted him warmly first. "Hello there. You'll be the Henan delegation — we're from Heilongjiang, and these are from Hainan. The organisers said they'd collected you. That should be everyone on this run."

Teacher Deng put out a hand. "Hello. Henan delegation, yes. I'm the supervising teacher, Deng Hua."

The Heilongjiang teacher shook it. "Teacher Deng, thank goodness you're here. I tell you, we nearly died of the heat waiting."

They soon learned why. Heilongjiang had made exactly the same mistake with their clothes — except they had come from Harbin, so the effect can be imagined, and their first act on arriving in Guangzhou had been to find a lavatory and undress, which is how they'd met the Hainan delegation on the coach.

Hainan, by contrast, felt none of the heat Heilongjiang was complaining about. They'd travelled in short sleeves and found Guangzhou distinctly pleasant, and the two delegations had been deep in a lively comparison of their respective climates when the Henan party arrived.

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Fortunately the two delegations in a hurry to change weren't kept waiting long. The coach set off for this year's hotel, near the affiliated high school where the finals were held, and by the time the three delegations got out the lobby was full of students from all over the country. Registration and check-in done, Deng Hua handed out key cards, agreed a time to reassemble, and the four of them went to their rooms. The camp registration was formally complete.

The second day was the opening ceremony, a look at the exam rooms, and free time — but everyone at a camp is there for a national first, and nobody was in the mood to wander. Having seen the rooms, they went out to eat and otherwise sat in their rooms preparing.

At ten past seven on the third morning the candidates assembled and took coaches to the school for the first paper, while the supervising teachers, barred from the site, waited at the hotel. At half past seven the provinces filed in, and at eight the exam began.

Li Lan looked at hers. A final's paper is a single sheet and there isn't much on it: a heading naming the 2008 Chinese Mathematical Olympiad and the first day's questions, and then three problems. The league's second paper had already stopped a great many people; the final's six problems did remarkable things with plane geometry and elementary number theory, because being benchmarked against the international competition, the questions are the hardest the syllabus allows.

If you wanted a sporting comparison: an ordinary high school paper is a daily jog, the league's two papers are national-games standard, and the final is selection for the Olympic squad — the difficulty rising sharply, and those selected going into continuous training and two rounds of elimination to leave the six who represent the country at the international competition, where the problems are set by different countries and the difficulty leaves the scale altogether.

She focused on the paper. In the quiet, and under the tension in the room, she could feel her concentration working at its fullest, and once she picked up her pen she was entirely inside the problems.

She stopped only after writing the last figure, and checked the time: twelve exactly, half an hour before the end, and fifteen minutes faster than in practice.

She didn't relax. At a final, in the interests of scrupulous fairness, the judges mark to the most exacting — you might say nit-picking — standard. So every solution has to be not merely complete but properly presented, watertight enough to leave the judges nothing to catch at.

Mercifully she'd been in better form than at any practice: fifteen minutes early, and several passes through the paper found nothing irregular. When the bell went she handed it in without hesitation. Half of the nerves she'd carried in went with it — she had done her best, and whatever the outcome there was nothing to regret. And having worked better than ever before, she didn't think she'd done badly.

The second day's exam differed from the first only in the questions.

Afterwards, though, the uniformly solemn students looked considerably lighter — every one of them, from wherever, visibly relieved — and the coach back was much noisier than on the previous two days, with a good many already discussing the problems.

Deng Hua was waiting at the hotel door and came over the moment she was off, anxious. "Li Lan, how did it go?"

She adjusted her bag, rather less anxious than he was. "All right, I think."

His face fell. "Only all right. Ah. No luck again this year, then." The two boys had got back earlier, and when he'd asked them the same question both had shaken their heads and said the paper was too hard and they hadn't done well. So Li Lan's answer looked to him like the same thing put politely — and knowing she was only a first-year, he hadn't placed his hopes on her to begin with.

He gathered himself, handed her a lunch voucher, and gave the usual instructions. "Never mind. It's not the first time Henan has done badly. Lunch voucher. The afternoon is free — the exams are over, so you can look round nearby, but don't go far."

She didn't take the voucher; she meant to eat out. Guangzhou is famous for its food, the exams had left no time for it, and with them finished the afternoon was the opportunity.

He didn't object — a good many students were doing the same, planning to get out that afternoon — and only told her to be careful and to ring him if anything happened.

With a small phone that could just about manage the internet, she found her way to the city centre. Guangzhou at that point seemed to differ from its later self chiefly in the height of the buildings. In a phone shop she saw a first-generation Apple handset, at a price that made her click her tongue.

She didn't look for anything characteristically local — she wouldn't have known how — and found a large shopping centre to buy presents in. She considered a computer, and hadn't expected them to look this thick and heavy while costing quite so beautifully much.

She checked her purse and was reminded again that she was a poor woman. And thinking of her editor's nagging, with the exams nearly done, it looked as though she could consider resuming once the biology competition was over.

Her bag, empty on the way in, was full on the way out, and she carried it on her front and found the bus back to the hotel.

As for the two days of academic talks and exhibitions, the organisers had brought in professors from the university to lecture. Li Lan had expected to be bored — in her last life every conference of any description had been for sleeping through — and having actually listened, found it a great deal more interesting than she'd imagined.