Chapter 5

I cried. I made a scene. I even went down on my knees. Nothing changed my parents’ minds.

After that, I could barely look the headmaster in the eye. I felt I had let down someone who had tried so hard for me.

The day I enrolled at the middle school in town was unbearable.

That same day, the boy who ranked second in our class went off to the city’s No. 1 Middle School. His marks were lower than mine, yet he had been given the chance.

It took me a long, long time to understand. He wasn’t as clever as I was, but he was an only child. His whole family put everything they had behind him.

I had lost that privilege the moment my brother was born.

Mom seemed to feel a little guilty too. “Don’t be so downhearted, Panpan,” she said to comfort me. “I gave up middle school for your uncles, and haven’t I turned out just fine?”

“Your older aunt was the eldest child. She went out to work before she even finished primary school. Didn’t she find a good husband and have children?”

“Gold will always shine eventually. I know you can overcome any difficulty. You’ll always be the best!”

I was already twelve, and she was still trying to fob me off like a little child.

Was giving up their education for their brothers some sort of medal? Wasn’t wearing it themselves enough? Did they have to pin it on me too?

I truly didn’t want that life.

Mine was the best middle school in town, but the pupils varied widely in ability, and the overall standard was still poor.

Those were the pupils available. There was no helping it.

Every day, students climbed the walls to go online, met up in the little grove for dates, got into fights, and even committed crimes. It was everywhere.

Three of the four classroom fans were broken, and nobody came to fix them. Summer was unbearably hot. Eight people squeezed into our dorm room; even turning over felt cramped.

Sometimes I wondered if I was being too pessimistic, so caught up in the pain and regret of missing out on the city school that I had lost the will to move forward.

Then one day, as I drifted through that fog, I suddenly remembered my aunt’s words.

“Study hard. Get into a school in a big city someday, and I’ll take you out to have fun.”

They struck my heart like lightning.

Shanghai… It must be beautiful, mustn’t it?

Later, I searched for pictures on one of the school’s bulky old computers. I saw the Oriental Pearl Tower, the Bund, the World Financial Center, the aquarium…

Clean and dreamlike. A different world from my little village.

Lovely hopes are like bubbles: fragile, yet so beguiling that they fill you with a courage you can’t explain.

That day, through my tears, I wrote in my diary:

One day you will go to the highest level of the Oriental Pearl Tower and see the view, Rong Panpan. Start now. Study hard.

I didn’t even stop to think that my aunt had left me no way to contact her. How would I find her? How could I know whether she’d meant what she said?

But I believed her.

Because, like her, I was a girl who wanted to escape this suffocating extended family.