Chapter 3

After we left the Suns’, Erya cycled all around town. Everything seemed new to her, and she didn’t head home until dusk.

Afraid my aunt would be angry at our late return, she pedaled furiously.

Her mouth was just as busy. She chattered without stopping, reminding me eight hundred times to hold her globe carefully.

She said Sun Heng was amazing. He had even been to Shanghai.

“He said the buildings are taller than ten water towers put together, and there are colored lights everywhere.”

“There’s even a restaurant up in the air. Pay once and you can eat anything you want—as much meat and sponge cake as you like!”

“What was it called again?”

“A buffet?” I said quietly.

“Yes, yes! You know about it too?”

“I read about it.”

Erya suddenly lowered her voice, sounding embarrassed. “Actually, when Mr. Sun called you a genius and a prodigy today, I thought he was making fun of you.”

“Then I heard you talking. You’re nothing like the half-wit everyone in the village says you are.”

“Mr. Sun and Sun Heng both say you’re clever, so you must be really clever! Not mahjong-winning clever. University-going clever.”

She grew more excited as she spoke. “Next time anyone in the village calls you stupid, I’ll tell them off!”

I couldn’t help laughing. I said all right.

“When you get into university, will you take me to see a big city?” she asked.

“I want to see how pretty the city people are. Those skyscrapers and neon lights Sun Heng talked about—I can’t even imagine them.”

I quietly said yes.

I had never seen the outside world either.

But I had heard Mother talk about it.

For as long as I could remember, she had talked about the past.

She described the qipao and Western dresses she had worn, the cafés and Western restaurants she had visited, her university’s library and clubs, her talented classmates and professors who seemed to know everything.

When she heard she could return to the city, hadn’t I imagined living there too?

I wanted a clean, bright desk. Books that could answer every question in my head. An endless supply of paper, and teachers I could turn to whenever I needed help.

If my parents wouldn’t take me, I would go myself, just as I walked to town myself.

Mr. Sun hadn’t taught high school for years, and tutoring me was hard work.

He searched everywhere for good secondhand books and sent them with Sun Heng.

Some were old textbooks, some specialized books on mathematics and physics. There were even textbooks translated from the Soviet Union.

No. 1 was a good school, but its teachers had to accommodate pupils of every level. Their lessons were neither very deep nor very basic.

I couldn’t understand the formulas and theorems they wanted us to memorize.

Only after reading Mr. Sun’s books and learning the principles behind them could I make the connections.

I could no longer get every answer by mental arithmetic alone.

Still, tests and exams of all sizes became easy to handle.

Gradually I relaxed. In my spare time, I even felt like tackling the hard-to-prove theorems in those mathematics books.

Sun Heng brought books every few days, and we grew familiar.

His marks, like Lin Wu’s, hovered around the middle, so he often asked me to explain problems.

Romance novels were popular then, and girls passed them eagerly from hand to hand.

Sun Heng was fair-skinned and rather refined in his manner. Plenty of girls blushed when they looked at him.

But he was proud. He barely acknowledged their overtures and only came to me with questions.

That displeased Shen Juan, the prettiest girl in our class.