Chapter 90

Having handed the form in, Li Lan put the scholarship out of her mind. Wang Xin had settled on a pharmaceutical company and was negotiating the details, and after National Day he told them the contract was signed and the first round of preclinical toxicology could begin once the money arrived.

As project head his weight was on another new-drug project concerning cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease, a great deal more important than this modest one, so he remained head in name and designated one of the new doctoral students to lead it in fact. Presumably in his thinking Zhao Qi was about to graduate and couldn't take it on, and Li Lan, able as she was, had her age against her; whatever the reasoning, the lead went to the other doctoral student rather than to her.

At first Li Lan thought nothing of it — another pair of hands, and no great effect on her own experiments. Once it started, though, she found herself obstructed at every turn while working with the others, and the new doctoral student, considering himself the lead, didn't precisely take everything over and nonetheless conducted himself entirely as one.

"I've finished the second round of the orientin and vitexin synthesis. You can spend today writing up what we discussed about the toxicology protocol."

Qin Tuo, the one Wang Xin had designated, said it mildly enough, coming over as she was about to change for the day's work.

Her hand stopped on the button and she looked up. "I thought the synthesis was mine?"

He kept the same mild smile, and said it as though out of concern. "It is. But you have lectures during the day and can't come in, and I was afraid you wouldn't finish, so I did it for you."

She looked him in the eye and said it one word at a time. "Whether I finish is my affair. Aren't you taking rather a lot on yourself?"

His face cooled and the corner of his mouth went up. "This is for your own good. Nobody can guarantee you'll finish just because you say so — you're only free in the evenings and at weekends, and the whole group can hardly be held up over one person."

She wasn't angry, and said calmly, "Even with only evenings and weekends, I have never once missed a task or a deadline set in a meeting. Where exactly have I held up the work?"

Remembering that over a month she genuinely hadn't, he felt something like uneasiness. "Not holding it up now doesn't mean you won't. There's more and more to do, and an undergraduate would do better to put her studies first."

And turned to go, and looked her up and down first, and left a parting line. "I'm only informing you. The second round of synthesis is done."

She watched him go with something unreadable in her face, thought for a while, took off the coat and left. It wasn't the first time; over the past month Qin Tuo had used her hours as a pretext to make what she was given steadily more trivial and more laborious.

She'd braced for friction; working together always produces some. Since starting university every project she'd done had been her own, and collaboration was already unfamiliar. Deliberate obstruction she hadn't expected.

Presumably in Qin Tuo's mind an undergraduate was beneath them to begin with — and having got into Peking he was at the height of his confidence, and nobody at that point believes himself inferior to anybody, still less to somebody who has just started her third year. Which is how, under two people's unspoken exclusion, her share of the work grew smaller and more menial.

Zhao Qi had mediated several times, without effect. The two new arrivals were a bloc; they agreed to everything to your face and afterwards did precisely as before.

Walking back, Li Lan turned it over and reached a decision: leave the group. Qin Tuo and the other plainly didn't accept her, and rather than continue in that atmosphere she'd give it up. Taking it to Wang Xin would in all likelihood mean more wrangling — and at the preclinical stage the work would go on without anybody in particular.

A pity, in a way. She did research partly because she enjoys it and partly for the satisfaction of an experiment working, and neither was available now. Deciding to leave was a shame and not a wrench.

Two days later she went to Wang Xin.

He was startled. She didn't avoid it, and set out what had been happening in the group, and having lodged the complaint felt the tightness in her chest ease. He looked at her and shook his head, smiling. "Still a child. All that youthful spirit."

She neither agreed nor disagreed, and he went on before she could. "Have you thought about a doctorate?"

She nodded. Of course, and she'd sat the TOEFL and the IELTS last year.

He wasn't surprised. "I thought so. In fact I was about to look for you. I have an old friend in America running a short project next semester, and I think it would be a very good opportunity. I can recommend you if you're interested."

She hadn't expected that, and after some hesitation declined. "Professor, I've applied to graduate early. Next semester is my last, so I may not have time."

He hadn't expected that either. "Graduate early? Your credits are complete?"

She nodded. The School's would be complete at the end of this term and chemistry's next, so she'd applied before term started in September.

He sighed. "A pity." The project was a semester at minimum, and being in her third year, she could have gone next semester without affecting her graduation.

She didn't find it a great pity; she had her own plan. She'd applied to Cambridge's chemistry department in late October, and could enrol on graduating once the offer came. After this business she wanted still less to work with other people.

---

Out of the project, she had no reason to stay in Wang Xin's laboratory. With only lectures to attend, and Cerulean settling into its stride — several products selling steadily, and a name beginning to be made in the domestic cosmetics market — life became unexpectedly easy.

At the end of November, before the Cambridge offer, came good news from Li Jingyu.

From October 2010 to November 2012 was almost exactly two years, and he came back for a few days only when the visa expired every three months and then hurried off again. His parents couldn't manage standard Mandarin, never mind going abroad to find him; Li Lan had spent two years with her feet barely touching the ground, and Li Cheng had been a first-year last year and had no time either.

So nobody knew how he was getting on. He'd come back in July for the high school entrance exam and stayed a few days, and by his mother's account there was no change beyond being thinner and taller — his schoolwork included. He got something over a hundred in the exam, and his name was kept on the register of a private high school in the county town, which was all that stopped him counting as a dropout.

One day in November he posted a link to the WeChat group.

My Dad's Son Is the Handsomest: Dad! Mum! I'm in a music video, come and look!

Wanjia Supermarket: My son's wonderful. Let me see.

Lilicheng: Ooh, I know this group, they're huge. Very good.

Li Lan opened it and found the new video from a girl group currently everywhere, in which Li Jingyu's face appeared fewer than ten times in total. She'd seen him once or twice since he went to Korea, the last nearly a year ago, and if he hadn't said so she'd never have known the person in the video was her brother — though something of the old face was visible if you looked.

Wanjia Supermarket: My son's so handsome!

Lilicheng: He really is. I showed my roommates and they all said so.

Wanjia Boss: You look like you know what you're doing, dancing. Keep it up.

Wanjia Supermarket: Jingyu, have you lost more weight? You're only on for a moment, I can't see properly.

Chen Ying praised him at length in the group and worried about whether he was eating, and looking at her parents' voice messages Li Lan had a thought and typed. Mum, Dad — how about Li Cheng and I take us all to Korea to see him in the winter holiday?

With no laboratory to go to, she had a holiday like any other student's and could go where she liked.

Before her parents could answer, Li Cheng sent a run of yes yes yes with unmistakable eagerness. Her parents hesitated, and agreed in the end because they wanted to see how he lived; he'd been abroad alone for two years and it wasn't possible for them not to worry, or not to want to look.

Li Cheng rang, excited, to go through what one needs for going abroad. Apart from Li Lan and Li Jingyu nobody had been on many flights, let alone abroad, so the whole thing fell to Li Lan — who booked the tickets and the hotel and gave the rest to a travel agency.

At seven one morning in early December the Cambridge offer arrived. She'd expected it and nobody says a hundred per cent before it's confirmed, and with it settled she relaxed, and screenshotted the email into the group, which is the Li family's lifelong habit: good news goes to the family first.

Wanjia Supermarket: What's this? I can't read it.

Lilicheng: God. Li Lan, is that a Cambridge offer?

Chen Ying had no English and no idea; Li Cheng could read it and didn't quite believe her eyes.

Wanjia Boss: What's Cambridge? What offer?

Li Lan-lilan: A university in England. A doctoral offer. It came today.

Chen Ying rang the moment she'd sent it. "Lanlan, what was that in the group? What doctoral offer? Aren't you still at university?"

She could hear her mother had just woken. "Mum, are you not up?"

"Mm. Your father's cooking, I'm still in bed. You haven't said what this doctorate is — you're at university, how are you suddenly a doctor?" She'd only heard the word on television; in life she'd met one masters student, her third sister's child, and never mind a doctorate, she'd never heard of anyone's family having one.

Li Lan laughed. "It's a doctoral offer. I only saw it and put it in the group."

Chen Ying was quiet a moment. "Oh." And hung up before Li Lan could say anything else.

A little later Li Lan saw her mother's Moments post and understood what she'd hung up to do — look up what Cambridge was. Because Chen Ying had posted a nine-photograph display of her children: Li Lan's various certificates, Li Cheng's offer letter, a still of Li Jingyu from the video, the screenshot from this morning, and an encyclopaedia entry on the University of Cambridge. With the doctorate given particular prominence, and a caption full of pride.