Chapter 83

Coming out of the meeting room, Li Lan found several missed calls from her mother.

She rang back, and had barely said hello before Chen Ying said loudly, "Lanlan? You didn't answer. Were you in a lecture?"

"No, I was in a meeting with the others. Mum, you rang several times. Is something wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong. Chengcheng's entrance exam results are out. We checked them this morning."

Which reminded Li Lan that it was the twentieth of June and about the time for them. Between end-of-term exams and the laboratory her diary had been full, and she'd forgotten.

From the excitement in her mother's voice she guessed Li Cheng had done well. "Has she? What did she get?"

"636. Seventy-odd marks over the first-tier line." Chen Ying's voice came through delighted. "She's looking at which universities and subjects suit. That's why I rang — have you any advice?

"Though I don't know whether that gets her into Beijing. It would be nice if you two were together."

Tsinghua or Peking she knew was impossible; if her two daughters could be in the same city she'd like them in the same city, so they could look out for each other.

Li Lan knew what she meant. She'd talked to Li Cheng a few times since the exam and Li Cheng had said she wanted Shanghai, though with no results yet she'd had no confidence about it. Shanghai looked possible now. The one worry was that while she was fifty-odd marks over the line, Henan's cut-offs are very high, and getting into the good universities would need careful choosing.

"Chengcheng says she wants Shanghai. Which university is up to her — she has to want to go." Li Lan walked and talked, and passed on her sister's thinking.

"Shanghai's all right. An international city. Except that then one of you is south and one is north, and much too far apart." Chen Ying's first reaction was that the two of them wouldn't be in one city and she'd only ever be able to visit one at a time.

"North and south are about the same distance from home. And with one of each we can travel and see both." Li Lan consoled her.

"True enough." She hadn't really been agonising over it. "Right. Nothing else, then, I only wanted to know whether you had any advice on universities and subjects. Have a look if you've time, and never mind if you haven't — I can talk to your uncle."

Universities and subjects were something Li Lan had never studied. Since coming back her goal had been fixed, and her own marks had spared her the choice; and last time round she'd forgotten everything about it. She genuinely had no advice.

"All right."

---

Off the phone, Chen Ying looked at her second daughter making notes at the computer. "Chengcheng, Lanlan says you want Shanghai?"

Li Cheng turned round and nodded, hesitantly. "Yes." And silently cursed Li Lan for telling her without consulting her first. She knew her mother wanted Beijing, and she didn't, and she'd meant to work up to it — and Li Lan had gone and blurted it out.

"Have you chosen one?" Chen Ying pulled a stool over and looked at the notebook. "Tongji? That's where you want?"

Meeting no objection, Li Cheng relaxed. "Yes. Jiaotong and Fudan are too high, I'm not confident. I want Tongji as first choice, but I don't know whether they'd take me."

Talking about it made her anxious. There are a great many people in Henan; seventy-odd marks over the line sounds like something, and by previous years' records Tongji's average intake mark in Henan runs about ninety over. Her mark genuinely might not do it — and settling for somewhere else, at that mark, galled her. If only she'd got another twenty or thirty.

She said as much, and Chen Ying was astonished. Dozens of marks over the line and you can't get into the university you want? That was beyond her. "Shall we apply somewhere else?"

Li Cheng wavered. "I'll try. Last year's lowest intake was ten-odd marks below mine. It's hard to say."

Chen Ying thought. "Try, then. If you don't get in you can repeat the year — you're young, a year won't hurt." A good many students in Henan repeat and she had no objection, and Li Cheng was seventeen.

"Ugh, I don't want to repeat." Li Cheng pulled a face. One final year was plenty. Another would kill her.

"Well, if you don't get in there's nothing else for it — you won't choose anywhere else." Chen Ying said it without mercy.

"I'll keep looking." Li Cheng looked mournful. Here's hoping for a miracle.

"All right, keep looking. I'll go and see what your father's doing." Not understanding any of it, Chen Ying left the choice to her.

Li Quan had started organising a dinner the moment the mark came out. His second daughter wasn't as good as his first, and this mark was the only one of its kind in the town — Zhao Xinxin, who'd gone through school with her, was a dozen marks lower. Of course they'd have a dinner. Chen Ying eventually talked him into waiting for the offer letter; the mark could still slip through the tiers, and standing everybody dinner and then being unable to answer where she was going would be humiliating.

Once her mother had gone, Li Cheng sighed and went back to it. The university mattered and so did the subject, and about subjects she had no idea at all — better to ask Li Lan, who was at least a university student.

Li Lan took her sister's call not long after her mother's. She knew a good deal more about subjects than universities, her own room of four covering three departments. From Li Cheng's tone at the end she'd made a decision, though what she'd settled on privately, Li Lan couldn't tell.

---

On the second of July, after the term's last group meeting, Zhao Qi stopped her on her way out. "Li Lan, have you plans for the summer?"

"Nothing much. I should go home for a few days somewhere in the middle." Tomorrow was the first day of the holiday and most students had gone; the place was nearly empty.

"I see. From your report the experiments look as though they're at a critical point. Are you carrying on over the summer or leaving it until term?" There's nothing a student looks forward to more than a holiday, and research assistants have no hard requirement to come in over one; he was asking in his teaching assistant capacity.

"Carrying on. I shan't be home long." Had she not gone the whole term without going back she wouldn't have gone at all — though a few days out of a summer made no difference.

"Right. This month's meeting with the professor should go ahead as usual. I'll let you know in advance if you want to come." She was part of the laboratory now, and having heard her research topic at last month's meeting, Wang Xin had given her some of his attention despite her not being his student.

"Yes please. Thank you, Brother Zhao." A summer without lectures was a great deal freer; she could go home whenever.

"Then enjoy the holiday, I'm off." He had somewhere to be, and watching her turn into the laboratory instead, couldn't help asking, "You're not going back to the dormitory?"

"In a while." She'd applied to stay over the holiday, and with the room to herself and nothing to do there, she'd rather be in the laboratory.

He gave her a thumbs up. "You're the most self-disciplined person I've ever met."

Having marvelled a while, he packed up and left in an excellent mood. Doctoral candidates have no real concept of holidays and a holiday still cheers you up. Xie Nan and Meng Wei had shouldered their bags and gone the moment the meeting ended.

In a moment the large laboratory held only Li Lan. She put on her coat, settled quickly and went back to the experiment she'd left. No lectures meant whole days in here, and by her plan she'd have a result before the summer ended.

Had Zhao Qi known her timetable he'd have been astonished. A paper normally takes six months to a year, and in a subject requiring constant experiments the cycle is longer still; a year is the optimistic case, which is why Meng Wei had started preparing in his second year. She had formally opened her topic at the end of May. A result in August would make the whole thing three months and a bit. Far too short.

A fortnight later Zhao Qi sent word that the meeting with Wang Xin was set for the twentieth of July. Meng Wei being away, only the three of them would attend.

Zhao Qi and Xie Nan being his own students, Wang Xin already knew their work inside out; he heard their latest, offered a suggestion, and came to Li Lan. She'd outlined her topic at the June meeting, and having only just begun there hadn't been much to say; he'd endorsed the direction and left it there, so this time took longer.

He went through her printouts carefully when she'd finished, and after a while said, "As I recall, at the last meeting you were starting the preliminary experiments?"

She nodded, and he studied her data. "Take me through the procedure."

Which went differently from before: he asked a great many detailed questions, and she answered all of them, and a faint smile appeared on that habitually severe face. "The procedure isn't quite orthodox, but the results are going in the right direction. You should get the glycosyltransferase out of the Trollius in the end — and if you do, the group's topic has its first result."

He was in a very good mood, and went on. "Then present at next month's family meeting. Share the work and hear what people suggest."

She agreed, and he turned to Zhao Qi. "Xiao Qi, you and Xie Nan keep an eye on this, and talk to her about submission. See whether we can get a paper out — I'd say the odds are good." At his position an extra paper is neither here nor there; his students producing results counts as an achievement of his own.

Zhao Qi nodded, and Wang Xin went on to some administrative matters, and the meeting closed.