Chapter 78

In the library, Li Lan looked at the bitcoin in her account and grinned broadly. Who quarrels with money?

Ni Xing and Luo Yu exchanged a look at this rare sight; she hadn't smiled like that checking her exam results. Neither of them felt much about it — like Xia Yanyan they'd bought ten bitcoin, about fifteen hundred yuan, which was within what they could stand. Li Lan, on the other hand. "Lanlan, aren't you frightened, buying that many?" Luo Yu said, concerned.

Xia Yanyan's senior did make it sound plausible, but a hundred at once was surely too many. Even Xu Lixue said he'd only bought fifty — and neither of them doubted that if there had been more available, Li Lan would have bought that too.

Xu Lixue hadn't expected his junior's roommate to have that kind of nerve. He'd learned bitcoin existed at an academic conference abroad last year, and between his subject and his long-standing interest in networks had concluded on the strength of what he knew that its future wasn't bad, which was where the interest came from — and even so he didn't dare put much in. The seven thousand-odd he'd committed by now was his limit. He hadn't expected this one to spend fifteen thousand in a single go. Whether that confidence came from having more money than sense or something else, he couldn't say.

Unaware of how nearly she'd been labelled, Li Lan shut her computer and answered pleasantly. "It's fine, it's fine."

Luo Yu wanted to say more, but held back with Xu Lixue there, and on reflection let it go. If Lanlan was prepared to spend that much she'd presumably thought it through, and she was only a roommate; saying too much would be tiresome.

Xu Lixue worked fast, and even after all of it it was only about ten. It was early, none of them had met before, and once Luo Yu and Li Lan's exchange ended a silence fell. He laughed easily. "Well, that's done, so I'll be off. Come to me if you have any problems. Yanyan, I'll go, then?" The last to her.

She hadn't expected him to leave at once and didn't know what to say; letting somebody go like that seemed wrong, and she had nothing to offer instead. "Right. Goodbye — no, would you like to eat with us?"

He laughed. "It's ten o'clock, what would we eat? Another time."

She checked the time and found nothing to say. "Then—"

He put his computer in his bag. "I'll get back. There's still work to do for the society's web design competition tomorrow."

She answered on reflex. "Is there? We won't keep you, then."

Watching him leave, all three of them — Xia Yanyan included — quietly breathed out. As the person in the middle she'd been holding the atmosphere together with her nerves; the other three had been meeting him for the first time, and an hour of conversation had made them somewhat familiar, and being obliged to socialise with somebody you don't know is excruciating. His leaving early was a relief, and improved their opinion of him considerably.

Once he was out of sight, Ni Xing said quietly, "Yanyan, your president's rather nice."

The other two nodded, and Xia Yanyan relaxed and said, cheerfully, "He is. I hear a lot of girls like him."

Which didn't surprise Li Lan. On an hour's acquaintance, the man was warm without being familiar, and had just been intelligent enough to leave at the right point rather than let anybody feel awkward. Considerable emotional intelligence. Being liked was to be expected.

Luo Yu joined in wickedly, and nudged Xia Yanyan with her shoulder. "Though he seemed a bit different with you today. No wonder you couldn't refuse."

She reddened. "Nonsense. I just can't refuse people." And took Li Lan's arm to escape. "Never mind, I'm not talking to you two, it's nothing but gossip. Lanlan, come on, let's go and work."

Seeing her embarrassed, Luo Yu and Ni Xing exchanged a knowing smile. "Where are you rushing off to with Lanlan? You haven't even packed up."

---

Having teased her, the four of them found places to sit; Li Lan and Xia Yanyan both needed computers so they went to the computer section, and term being new the library wasn't full and they found seats quickly.

Once the excitement had settled, Li Lan opened her computer. Between the sunscreen experiments and lectures she'd had no time for anything else, and out of habit she checked her email, where the unread had run to two pages. Nothing important had been missed — and opening one on the second page, her hand on the mouse stopped.

To students of the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences,

Professor Wang Xin's group at the State Key Laboratory of Natural and Biomimetic Drugs is recruiting two assistant researchers from among the School's undergraduates. The research directions are the discovery of lead compounds from natural sources and studies of the material basis of complex components in traditional Chinese medicine. Requirements as follows:

Currently enrolled undergraduate of the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences;

Completion of Fundamentals of Chinese Medicine, Pharmaceutics, Pharmacology, Bioinorganic Chemistry and Pathophysiology, with final examination marks above 90;

Prior experience as a research assistant;

…

Applications close at 6 p.m. on Sunday 18 April. The first written examination will be held at 9 a.m. on Saturday 24 April in Pharmacy Building room 303; applicants should attend punctually. Those passing will be notified separately of the second-round interview, and those passing the interview will formally become assistant researchers at the State Key Laboratory of Natural and Biomimetic Drugs.

A mass email from the School. Such things aren't unusual at a university — sometimes by email, sometimes posted online, sometimes through a recommendation from a lecturer you know. She'd got into Professor Lin's natural medicines laboratory by asking herself, plus the admissions tutor's recommendation, plus having just won the biology competition — and even then she'd only been given the small calendula project, with no standing to work on anything more complicated.

Laboratories recruiting undergraduates is ordinary enough. Every laboratory has its professors and their masters and doctoral students, and the research pressure on them is considerable, so the less important work can go to research assistants — undergraduates — which saves time and gives the undergraduates practice. Everybody wins. Openings at a state key laboratory are rare, though, and even there the assistants are generally the professors' own masters students. She hadn't expected an open call to undergraduates.

The eighteenth of April was tomorrow. She wasn't going to miss this, and applied as instructed. The reason was simple: she needed to do a great deal of L2 work, and L2 isn't as elementary as L1. At L2 there are already usable results — and the experiments involved need large instruments, and the park's were too old and too slow.

The other reason was that some of the problems she met doing L2 work were beyond her knowledge. As for the shop, it supplied the procedure; it did not tutor her on why, or the principles involved, or the precise handling some steps required. Problems in the middle were hers to solve.

She had privately attempted the L2 cough medicine under gardenia, and however much it was also L2, making a drug and making a cosmetic are not the same idea. The sunscreen was classed L2, but its pharmacological activity and duration are limited and it acts only where you put it. A drug is different; every one has powerful pharmacological activity, it affects the functioning of the body once inside it, and it generally acts systemically. The gardenia experiment had failed halfway; she hadn't got through a single run. Part of that was the instruments, and the greater part was genuinely not understanding why certain steps had to be done as they were.

Head down and grinding experience, she could probably produce it in a year or two. For anybody else, developing a new drug in a year or two would be extraordinary. For her it was inefficient, and left the shop nowhere near fully used. A year or two per drug, and only at L2 — when would she reach L3 or beyond? Drugs at that level would only be more complex, and time alone might not be enough.

She wasn't stupid. If she was going to do all of it head-down and alone, what was she at university for? Here was a chance to stand behind somebody formidable and be taught, and she wasn't going to miss it. Even without the email she'd been about to ask Professor Lin whether his laboratory needed anybody — and this one, reportedly, had taken delivery last year of a batch of instruments worth over ten million. Using them required an application; at least there was a chance of using them.

And even with instruments she couldn't simply do as she liked. Cerulean had no pharmaceutical production licence; an experiment or two is nothing, and a great many becomes unlawful.

---

Being a state key laboratory, even the assistant selection wasn't easy to get through. The second requirement alone told first-years to go home and go to bed: those modules being the School's common foundation courses, they'd normally be finished at the end of the first year. Li Lan had taken several extra last term and met the marks condition too. Not that it was strictly enforced — people simply know their own limits, there being a written examination waiting, and anybody without confidence wouldn't dare apply.

Peking University does not lack prodigies, and nor does the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences. This being a rare opening, Li Lan gave it her full attention. The foundation courses she considered fine; seeing the stated research directions, she went to the reading room for Drug Design and Medicinal Chemistry. Lead compounds were covered in a few chapters of a module she was taking this term, though only at an elementary level, and the two books were exactly right to fill it out.

Beyond textbooks, research means papers. The discovery of lead compounds from natural sources and the material basis of complex components in Chinese medicine being one of the laboratory's overall directions, Peking's School alone had produced a good deal on natural products and Chinese herbs, and adding researchers at other institutions at home and abroad, five years' worth came to several dozen papers. Not that they all needed close reading — most drug development in papers is still at the stage of experimental design and structural characterisation, so knowing the direction of travel was enough.

Days with reading in them aren't dull, and Saturday the twenty-fourth arrived quickly. Li Lan got there half an hour early, and the third-floor corridor and room 303 already held a good many people in threes and fives, all presumably waiting for the examination.

"Li Lan?"

Looking for a seat, she thought she heard somebody say her name uncertainly, and turned to a familiar face: Li Jing, whom she'd seen a few times in Professor Lin's laboratory.

"Li Jing?"

They'd been assistants at the same time and hadn't overlapped much; Li Jing had joined just as she left for the entrance exam, and they'd met only a handful of times.

Li Jing looked surprised. "It is you. It's been a while. You're applying too?"

Li Lan nodded. "Yes."

Li Jing looked at her, surprised. "If I remember rightly you're a first-year." She remembered hearing last year that Li Lan had left the laboratory to sit the entrance exam, and had reflected on it for some time; somebody who got into a laboratory before being formally admitted makes an impression.

Seeing her nod, Li Jing couldn't help saying, "The youngest people here are second-years. Isn't first year rather early?" Rather early was one way of putting it. Li Lan was the only first-year sitting this; there were five or six second-years, and everybody else was in their third or fourth. Had the email not specified undergraduates, twice as many would have been normal.

Li Lan knew what she meant, and said politely, "I thought I'd try."

Li Jing didn't mind the formality. "Ha, I thought as much. Same as me, trying my luck. There are far too many people here, and a lot of them fourth-years." Said to be modest and to reassure her; she was in her third year, in the department's top ten, and had been an assistant before. There were plenty of fourth-years, and at this point most of them were busy with dissertations or job-hunting, and the real competition was her own year.

Li Lan knew it was modesty. Nobody who decides to sit an examination comes to try their luck.

Being barely acquainted, they separated after the greeting; Li Lan found a seat and Li Jing went back to her friends.

The girl beside her asked at once, quietly, "Jingjing, do you know her?"

Told Li Lan was a first-year, she made a small noise. "A first-year dares? That's nerve. She can't know how hard Professor Wang's group is to get into."

First and second-years don't know how it works; third and fourth-years know perfectly well. Never mind undergraduates — Professor Wang had two masters students and doctoral candidates otherwise, and his places were always the hardest to get, on account of his standing in the field and the several state key funded projects he held. This sudden decision to select assistants from undergraduates was reportedly because he'd taken on another project and was short-handed, and the admissions cycle was months away, so two undergraduates it was.

Which was why so many had come. Getting onto Professor Wang's team, even without a paper out of it, is research experience that counts for a great deal — so anybody planning a doctorate, an application abroad, or a good job afterwards wasn't going to miss it.

The half hour went quickly, and at nine four people who looked like students came in with a stack of papers; two of the men, Li Lan learned later, were Professor Wang's masters students, and the other man and the woman were teaching assistants.

The rules briefly announced, they handed out the papers. Li Lan glanced at hers: five sheets of A4 and two question types, fill-in-the-blank and short answer — the first two sheets densely packed with blanks, the rest short answer. A good many questions, and ninety minutes, which was tight. Time short and the task heavy, and the room began to rustle. An examination like this is important and unimportant at once; everybody there believed in their own ability, so nobody was going to cheat — being caught would be humiliating, and leaving the professors with a poor impression would be far worse. Once the papers were out the large room held nothing but the sound of writing.

Li Lan picked up her pen, and working through it found something odd. The range, first of all: from basic botany to drug design, wide and uneven in difficulty. Most of the blanks were elementary with a few harder ones, and then several were peculiarly awkward, out of keeping with everything around them; without a memory that retained everything she'd read, they'd have been very hard to answer. She let herself be distracted long enough to work out that Wang Xin, a man with no time whatever, wouldn't have set a whole paper — a few questions, though, certainly — so the awkward ones would be his, and the rest his doctoral students'.

Then she refocused. If the blanks were like that, the short answers were worse, and by the end she wondered whether the whole of that section was his. Had one of his doctoral students heard her, they'd have answered sympathetically: correct. The short answers were the final examination questions from his module last term — a handful of questions, from the module universally agreed by everybody who has taken it to be the hardest, and the hardest to score well in.

To Wang Xin's mind, of course, his module isn't difficult at all; meet his requirements properly and the difficulty is nothing. The difficulty, from a student's position, is meeting his requirements. The strictest professor in the School by a clear margin, his module is the one everybody dodges at registration; against other professors' it is agreed to be harder and heavier, with papers to read on top of the textbook.

And while nothing is said if you can't answer in class, the way he looks at you leaves you wondering how you came to be so stupid, and how you could possibly not know something so self-evident. So apart from his own students, who must take it, everybody avoids it where they can.

Which gives some idea of the difficulty of using those questions to select undergraduates. The doctoral student who set the paper thought it was bullying — though the professor had said he didn't expect them to answer properly, and mainly wanted to see how much of the literature they'd read. Having taken the module himself, he knew that for anybody who had, Wang Xin's short answers genuinely aren't hard: classic methodology lifted from classic papers, thinly covered in the textbooks, and answerable in outline by anyone who has read them.

And if you can't answer at all — well, then, sorry. Professor Wang's team is not that easy to get into.