Chapter 2

My acceptance letter for No. 1 High School arrived at the same time as my older cousin Lin Wu’s.

My aunt was suspicious. Had I copied his answers?

I shook my head. “His marks weren’t as high as mine.”

She looked more puzzled still. “Then whose did she copy?” she muttered to herself.

She was in a hurry to play mahjong, and I couldn’t be bothered to explain.

The people in our village didn’t care much about education. They certainly didn’t think qualifications were anything to boast about.

Especially after my parents produced their “half-wit.”

More of them came to believe that too much reading did you harm. Real intelligence meant winning at mahjong or knowing when the weather was right to work the fields.

Lin Wu was a year older than me, but we were in the same grade. His results were middling, yet he went to school every day, just as I did.

He was even taller than his father had been, but he had never worked in the fields for a single day.

He came home, bent over the table, and did homework until the lamp ran out of oil. Even then, he wasn’t finished.

When I looked, half his answers were wrong.

At harvest time his pen grew busier still, infuriating my aunt.

Lin Wu curled his lip. “I’m not going out there to tread in that filthy mud. Once I’ve got into university and become an official, will I have to toil in the sun and wind like you?”

My aunt swore furiously. “What’s university good for? Huisheng’s mother went to university, didn’t she? Still married your uncle and spent all those years farming! Even had an idiot! Keep studying and you’ll have one too!”

Unable to make Lin Wu budge, she shouted and drove Erya and me out to the fields.

Erya was half a head shorter than I was, but she was an excellent worker.

She had already harvested a large patch of wheat while I stood where we had begun, with several cuts on my hands.

She ran over and tossed me a pair of gloves, her lips stuck out. “You’re so useless! If everyone worked like you, the winter snow would come before we finished the wheat!”

Unlike her brother, Erya flatly refused to continue after primary school. Reading hurt her eyes and her head, she said.

She would wash clothes, cook, or work in the fields. Anything but books.

My aunt needed another pair of hands, so she let Erya leave school.

The plan was for her to do farm work for a few years, then get a job at the paper mill in the next village when she turned fifteen.

Erya was ecstatic. Once her work was done, she roamed the village, her loud laughter carrying from one end of the street to the other.

My uncle was gone, and Lin Wu had a scholar’s temperament.

Between them, they had forced Erya to grow fierce.

In dry weather she fought others for irrigation water. When it was time to dry the grain, she fought for space.

My aunt worked her younger daughter like a grown man, and even that wasn’t enough. She only complained that she hadn’t had another two sons.

The summer before high school slipped away amid my aunt’s complaints and curses.

Then term began.

No. 1 High School was in the center of town, about five kilometers from our small village.

Most pupils boarded there.

Now the family had even less hope of getting Lin Wu to help at home.

My aunt had not wanted him to continue at school, but then a letter came from my father.

He said he had taken further courses and now worked for a large company. His monthly salary was more than they earned from a whole year of farming.

Only then did my aunt see the value of education. She hurried to pack Lin Wu’s bedding and told him he must get into university.

Reading the letter aloud, Lin Wu also mentioned that my mother had returned to her old university, Fudan, for postgraduate study.

My aunt clapped and laughed so hard she could barely straighten up. She pointed at me. “I told you your mother was lying! Studying how to hatch eggs? That’s for hens!”

Lin Wu snapped, “Mum, if you don’t understand, keep quiet. It’s one of the most famous universities in the country.”

Put in her place, my aunt went back to the subject of my mother’s idiot child.

On the first day of term, she carried bundles of luggage to take Lin Wu to school.

I went along.

She was astonished. “You copied your way in, and you’ve actually got the nerve to go?”

I said I hadn’t copied.

She waved impatiently. “Even if you can face showing up, I’ve no money for your tuition!”

I didn’t mention my own money. I only said my father had paid.

She seemed relieved. “Go if you like. Better than staying home scorching my pots. And at No. 1 you’ll be handy to look after your cousin.”

The money I had hidden was only enough for tuition. Boarding fees were far beyond it.

So began three years of walking to school. I left before dawn each morning and walked for an hour or two.

At noon I gnawed a cold steamed bun brought from home, occasionally sharing a few mouthfuls of a classmate’s pickles.

In the evening I walked another hour or two home, where my aunt’s crying and curses awaited me.

She wept over her life of endless toil and cursed the family for doing nothing but making more work for her.

Each night she cried at the table while Erya went in and out, wiping the table and sweeping the floor, and I crouched in the corner washing clothes.

We each did our own thing. We neither spoke nor met one another’s eyes.

We seemed like three lines from different times and spaces, intersecting for a moment before going our separate ways, with nothing to do with one another.

High school was much more tiring than anything before it.

Many feelings had once meant nothing to me. Now subtle changes began to stir.

With my first period came an awareness of pain and exhaustion.

The pupils at high school had their own private concerns. Their occasional friction and rejection made me irritable and uneasy.

Most of all, the lessons were becoming difficult. I could no longer understand everything the moment I heard it, or see an answer at a glance.

I began to understand why Lin Wu worked through so many questions.

I too had to keep my pen busy, struggling through mountains of books and oceans of problems. Even then, full marks were hard to come by.

I decided to visit Mr. Sun over the weekend.

His son, Sun Heng, also attended No. 1. To make sure he ate and slept well, the whole family had moved to town.

It was a quiet time on the farm. When Erya heard I was going to town, her eyes lit up.

She wheeled out the bicycle and volunteered to take me.

Mr. Sun was delighted to see me. “The child prodigy’s here!” he called, telling Sun Heng to come and learn from me.

Erya stared in amazement.

I had written everything I didn’t understand in a notebook, and I asked Mr. Sun about each point.

Some he knew. Some he didn’t.

For those, he could only scratch his head and work through the problems with me.

Erya understood none of it. She wandered around the room until her eyes fell on a globe.

She kept turning it, fascinated.

Sun Heng took it off the shelf and gave it to her.

He didn’t understand the problems we were discussing either. He laughed and chatted with Erya, though his eyes kept drifting toward us.