Chapter 42

Li Lan opened the collected-plants list, which apart from holding more species looked much as it always had. She hadn't gone out of her way to collect anything since the garden in Yu city, and she'd checked before today: three hundred and fifty species, which was where she'd stood as of this morning.

Now it read five hundred and ninety-five. Three fifty to five ninety-five — two hundred and forty-five species in two hours. The personal information had changed too.

[Host: Li Lan] [Points (L1): 2580 — convert to a higher grade?] [Stamina: 40] [Spirit: 100] [Focus: 100] [Memory: 100] [Comprehension: 100]

She'd zeroed her points into attributes before, so by rights this should have come to two thousand four hundred and something — but between the ginseng and the lingzhi and a few other scarce things, it had come out well above the standard rate.

Plenty of points, and nothing she particularly needed. And for all that two thousand-odd looks a lot, converted to L2 it was two hundred and fifty-eight, enough for two L2 items and nothing else.

So in the afternoon, in the other two zones, while everyone else strolled about in twos and threes, Li Lan went through the plants at speed: anything uncollected got three seconds of contact and she moved on.

The afternoon being longer, by the time they left the garden that evening the count had gone from five hundred and ninety-five to nine hundred and thirty-six — three hundred and forty-one species — and the points from 2,580 to 5,990. Ten short of six thousand, and tomorrow morning's visit inside the plant evolution zone would carry her past it comfortably.

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After breakfast the next morning the coaches drove into the garden, and unlike yesterday's simple tickets, staff issued every student a pass: only with a pass could you enter the inner part of the evolution zone.

Inside, Li Lan found the interior nothing like the outside. Without being told it was a botanical garden, the visiting students might have assumed they'd arrived in the countryside, since the inner zone was given over almost entirely to cultivation.

Instead of buildings full of instruments, the route to the working area went past a good deal of open ground: plants having to be raised, most of the evolution zone was greenhouses and plots of various kinds, with researchers going back and forth among them.

"The garden's principal work is the introduction and domestication of plants — ornamentals in quantity, and specialist and rare or endangered species. Most of what happens here is the first two. Over several decades the scale has more than doubled: Shanghai originally had some two hundred ornamental species, and thanks to our work there are now nearly two thousand. And in the herb garden in the cultivated-ecology area, we began with a hundred-odd species and now have as many as six hundred. All of it the work of the garden's staff together."

The guide delivered the history proudly, and was satisfied by the appreciative noises behind her — and knowing that talk alone achieves little, led them to a lecture hall. "Today we'll start with the research done inside the zone. Then, since there are too many of you to move as one group, we'll split into parties to see different plants. You can choose whichever interests you, but numbers are capped at about fifty a party, so anyone arriving late will have to go to another one. Once you've decided, be quick about it.

"Now, Dr Wang will outline the garden's research, which may help you decide."

She nodded to the man beside her. "Dr Wang, if you'd tell the students about the work here."

He stepped forward and took the microphone. "Ahem. Hello, everyone."

Next to the guide, he was the researcher of type: not old, white coat, thick glasses, indifferently groomed and somewhat thin on top — and he had the room's attention with his first sentence. "I gather you're this year's biology finalists. I came up the same way myself — biology final, straight through to a recommendation and then a combined bachelor's, master's and doctorate. Eight or nine years ago now."

At which the students were considerably more interested than they had been in the guide, and wanted more. He noticed, and smiled. "Would you like to hear about the final?"

"Yes," the hall said.

He rubbed his forehead. "There's not much to tell. I was about your age. I sat the competition, made the training squad, was lucky enough to represent the country at the international competition that year, did reasonably well, came back to a recommendation and never sat the entrance exam. Then at university I decided on research, so I took the combined route, and came here to work after graduating the year before last."

Unprepossessing and thinning on top he might be, but the man had been on the national team. To a high-schooler, a doctorate is remote; membership of a competition national team is startling.

They wanted more about competitions, and instead he changed tack and opened a slide deck on the garden's research. Fortunately, being biology finalists, most of them were genuinely interested, and although the competition talk stopped, they were soon absorbed.

He looked wooden and lectured with a good deal of life, drawing laughter in waves. "My own area is Chinese medicinal herbs — and on that, even those of you who aren't biology competitors will know something about them. Take heshouwu. In the popular imagination it's the great restorer of hair. But do not fix on that and eat the stuff by the handful, because I guarantee your hair won't have arrived before you do — in hospital."

He looked pained about it, and the students' eyes travelled involuntarily to the top of his head. So the hair-restoring effect is a myth?

He caught the direction of it and looked up at them. "Do you feel cheated? Heshouwu has no effect on hair at all?"

Seeing a few nods, he shook his head. "Apart from black sesame and ginger and one or two others, heshouwu is among the most effective herbs there is. Let me show you a photograph of myself."

A group photograph came up, and Li Lan looked at it, and then at the man on the platform.

The shop's entry, she reflected, had not been wrong: the tuber taken medicinally calms the spirit, nourishes the blood and frees the channels; prepared, it replenishes essence and blood, darkens the hair and beard, strengthens the sinews and bones, and supplements liver and kidney.

He pointed at the photograph with a laser pen. "That's me before I graduated. Can anyone see it? Compare that with me now — any difference?"

The man in the photograph and the man on the platform were much the same, apart from the hair.

In the photograph the top of his head was practically bare, faintly reflective. The Dr Wang on the platform was still thin on top and unmistakably better off than that.

"That is what heshouwu does." He said it with pride. "My work established that the resveratrol extracted from prepared heshouwu increases scalp activity and thereby promotes growth. A year of trials, and you can see the result." And he tossed his head, confidently.

Under the students' admiring eyes he was proud of the work and privately rather regretful: by rights the herb's properties go a great deal further, and this was as far as he'd been able to take it — a year for a sparse crop of hair, and any further progress needing a great deal more experiment.

For all his lightness about it, only the institute's own staff knew that the work had taken him close to three years, and had at least come to something. It had produced several papers and got him his degree, the results had been bought at a high price by a shampoo company, and he was now retained by them as a senior consultant — one of the few genuine high-flyers there.

That brought the talk to an end, and then the parties dispersed to different areas. Li Lan had decided long since and went straight to the Chinese medicinal herbs queue, with bonsai, flowers and aquatic plants beside it. Plenty were interested in the herbs and the fifty filled quickly, leaving the latecomers to go elsewhere.

Once the numbers were about right, the staff member led them out of the hall. The herb area, having only six hundred-odd species, had correspondingly less office space than elsewhere. Small it might be, but it was among the wealthiest parts of the garden, because its researchers can pick up outside commercial projects easily.

Dr Wang's current work being chiefly the shampoo company's hair-loss project, and the other researchers all holding something similar.

Under the guide's direction the students saw how researchers cultivate scarce plants step by step, and were allowed to watch some non-confidential experiments. Li Lan committed each stage to memory, and noticed that the methods for most plants differed somewhat from the shop's — though with no equipment and no facilities of her own, she had no way of testing whether the shop's recommendations were the more precise or the researchers' experience the more sound.