Chapter 41

At the chemistry camp's closing ceremony, Liu Jianzhong watched Li Lan go up for her certificate with real satisfaction. She hadn't taken first in the practical, but the perfect theory paper had carried her into the top three of the national firsts.

He sighed. It came back to the province's lack of competition resources — otherwise she wouldn't have dropped marks in the practical. Fortunately the outcome wasn't bad. No, that was wrong: this was the province's best year ever, with two national firsts and a national second in chemistry.

The other first was the girl who had travelled with them. She hadn't made the training squad, but she'd scraped over the line and caught the tail of a national first. Zeng Hongshuo was the second.

Where Liu Jianzhong looked satisfied, Zeng Hongshuo looked disbelieving. The bank president's daughter taking a national first didn't surprise him — money buys coaching anywhere, so she wouldn't be far off. But how had that girl from the countryside taken a first and the training squad, when a fortnight of camp in Shanghai had only got him from last year's third to this year's second?

Not that any of it helped. The exam was over, and all he could do was look at her certificate with reddened eyes. The training squad. Recommendation to Tsinghua or Peking. Merely thinking about it, he wanted his own name on it.

Afterwards, his parents had been waiting outside and closed in the moment he appeared. "Shuoshuo. How did it go?"

He was black. "A second."

They exchanged a glance, disappointed — not a first, then — and seeing his face, hurried to console him. "Never mind. A second is very good, Shuoshuo. It'll take a lot of marks off your entrance exam."

Comfort was the intention. He threw the certificate on the ground and shouted at them. "Good? My target was a first. If you'd let me book two more weeks of coaching I might be a first now, instead of a useless second."

They jumped, and his mother stepped forward, stricken. "I'm sorry, Shuoshuo. It's our fault."

Liu Jianzhong, coming out behind him, went dark at that. Unreasonable as the Zengs looked to everyone else, they were first-rate to their son, and while the boy wasn't his student, a teacher cannot watch that and do nothing.

He stepped forward. "Zeng Hongshuo. As a high school student I think you understand that exam results come from your own work, and not from how many courses your parents book. Plenty of students attend courses — are they all going to come first? And students who have never attended one still take national firsts, and enter training squads."

Before the boy could answer, both parents objected. "Teacher Liu, that isn't right. Our Shuoshuo has a point — if we'd paid for one more course he might have had a first this time. Shuoshuo works very hard. The failure is ours." And by the end of it his mother's voice had thickened with distress, while his father looked bitter enough that a stranger would have assumed a disaster.

Which angered Liu Jianzhong further, and he tried again, patiently. "Mr and Mrs Zeng, this is not your failing. As parents you have been more than good enough — excessive, if anything. Indulging a child is not always kindness."

Neither of them heard a word of it, being occupied with their own distress. Zeng Hongshuo, watching coolly, was unmoved until he noticed the crowd of students gathering, at which vanity intervened. "That's enough. I was wrong just now. Let's go."

And he walked off without a glance at the certificate or his parents. Seeing him go, his mother snatched it up off the ground without looking at Liu Jianzhong. "Shuoshuo, wait for Mummy."

He watched the three of them head for the coach and shook his head. "Indulge a son and you destroy him."

Li Lan, watching the performance from one side, said, "Surely you knew how that would go, sir?" Convictions that deeply rooted don't shift for one or two remarks from a stranger, and she didn't believe he was unaware of it.

He knew perfectly well. Knowing was one thing; being a teacher and seeing it, one always wants to say something.

"Come on, let's get to the coach. We'll pack tonight — there's an early train tomorrow."

Since Beijing had a direct service to Minhe, Li Lan told him she'd go straight home, and he immediately offered to reimburse the fare. The idea of refusing twenty yuan to a training-squad member who came along once in several years was absurd. He bought her a direct ticket, which meant she travelled separately from the others.

The departure times were close enough. She said goodbye to Liu Jianzhong and the other girl at the station and got on with her case, without so much as a glance at the other three.

---

On the train, with one stop to go, she rang home. Her phone was above board now, thanks to the day before she'd left for Beijing. It had been well hidden — but her parents, thinking she'd be away half a month sitting exams in Beijing and Shanghai and inconvenienced without one, had decided to buy her a phone as a reward for the competition.

She refused, and nothing she said would shake them, so she had to produce her own. Which is how Li Cheng discovered that the phone she'd been ringing home on all this time was Li Lan's rather than a classmate's. Her parents were easier: hearing she'd bought it with saved money, they didn't scold, and only told her not to keep things from them — they weren't so rigid as that.

Li Lan, who was writing a novel and had a considerable balance, rubbed her chin. Should she mention the writing? Since they'd said that, perhaps she'd pick a moment and come clean, so that the two of them didn't have to go about worrying over ten or twenty thousand yuan.

Two rings and her mother answered. "Hello, love, where are you?"

She checked the time. "Half an hour. Mum, it's early — shall I get the bus back?"

"Certainly not. A whole day on a train and then a bus? I'll send your father with the car. Get off and come to the usual place, all right?" There was no possibility of a bus. Li Lan had rung the day before to say she'd made another training squad, and her mother was in no mood to have her coming home alone.

Hanging up, Li Lan turned it over. There was, she noticed, a faint trace of the Zengs in her own parents. Fortunately she wasn't Zeng Hongshuo, and they weren't his parents — devoted, but not indulgent.

Off the train she found her mother in the usual place, who came up beaming, looked her over, and said with concern, "A few days away and my girl's thinner. You weren't eating properly in Beijing."

Li Lan looked up at her. "I was. The restaurant food was good. Oh — I've brought you Peking duck. Try it when we're home."

Her mother took the case handle. "What do you want to bring duck for? We sell it at the shop. Waste of money."

Which did not prevent her, at dinner, from placing it in the centre of the table and telling her parents-in-law, "Father, Mother, this is Peking duck Lanlan brought from Beijing. Let's all try it."

Followed by the line she'd used several times already. "Our Lanlan's made the training squad in chemistry as well. Do you suppose these competitions aren't that hard after all? How else is our Lanlan getting into training squads?"

Thanks to Li Lan the family now understood the system perfectly well; she was saying it to keep the conversation going.

Li Cheng pulled a face. Her mother, honestly. She'd been saying it since Li Lan got back. Just as well there were no outsiders, or they'd have died of envy — one training squad place gets you Tsinghua or Peking, and Li Lan had two.

Which made Li Cheng both envious and rather pressured. Li Lan's university was settled; she had the entrance exam in two years and no idea where she'd end up.

Barely two days at home and Li Lan set off again, under a fresh volley of parental instruction, for the biology camp in Shanghai. This party were all conventionally good students, with nobody like Zeng Hongshuo, and the whole trip passed without incident to the end of the exams.

What surprised her was that the post-exam activity wasn't an academic lecture but a visit — to the largest botanical garden in Shanghai.

"...established in 1978, so thirty years of history, one of the largest botanical gardens in the country, and a site combining display with scientific and educational work. Today we're mainly outdoors; tomorrow staff will take us through the research on plant evolution."

"You may touch things carefully, but on no account snap anything off. You'll be in trouble if you're caught."

Li Lan listened to the guide with most of the students visibly unenthusiastic — teenagers not being greatly interested in plants, and phones not yet taking photographs, which made it duller still. The one exception was Li Lan, whose eyes were shining as she looked around. The collection here was far larger than Yu city's, and within an hour she had seen a great many she didn't have. All of them points.

"Right, that's the introduction. You may look round whichever areas interest you, but remember to reassemble in two hours — this afternoon we're visiting two more."

At the dismissal Li Lan left the group at speed. She had memorised the map and went straight for her target.

The garden was divided into four zones: plant evolution, cultivated ecology, environmental protection and landscaping demonstration. The morning covered the outer part of the evolution zone and the ecology zone; the afternoon the other two; and tomorrow the evolution zone again, but inside.

Her time today was very tight, there being so many plants, so she went first to the medicinal herb garden in the ecology zone, her target being its six hundred-odd Chinese medicinal herbs, followed by the dozen small zones within the evolution area — aquatic plants, ferns, conifers and the rest.

The herb garden did not disappoint. Never mind the common things; even the valuable materials were there in beds. The specimens weren't as fine as the system's illustrations, but they were valuable herbs all the same, and glancing at them Li Lan saw that the precious ones ran to fifty or a hundred points each, which the ten-point herbs beside them couldn't approach.

Fortunately, besides the growing beds, each rare species had a small plot of visibly struggling display specimens for the public to look at — which saved her having to devise a way of touching them unobserved.

Having been round and collected what she could, she checked the time and found forty minutes left; the herb garden alone had taken over an hour.

She'd meant to go on to the evolution zone, but the walk alone was ten minutes and plainly not worth it. Looking at her map, she found an orchid house next to the herb garden that she'd overlooked, the sign being small — a sensible distance, five minutes' walk, and ideal as a second stop.

Since she'd be inside the evolution zone tomorrow she felt no regret, the more so on reaching the orchid house and finding some orchids worth twenty or even thirty points.

Orchid house undersold it; it covered a considerable area, divided into potted, natural and courtyard display sections. Allowing for the walk back, she had thirty minutes, enough for the potted section and half the natural one before she had to turn back.

On the way, in a good mood, she opened the shop panel for the first time in nearly half a year.

Which was fair enough. Since spending her points on attributes she'd put the shop out of mind — partly from being busy, partly because there weren't many points in it and she had no time to collect plants, so it had simply sat there. Without this visit, she suspected it would have been a while longer before she remembered it existed.