“Each of these questions could be worth twenty-five percent of the score. Nail the answers in your brain. If any of you comes out of the test missing these questions, any part of them, you will not call me your teacher anymore. Now go.” He leaned on his elbows and nodded his huge head, indicating his farewell to all our miserable souls. We rushed out of the hall for some fresh air. Another five minutes and some of us would have been carried out on stretchers.
The day before the tests, the street of Yellow Stone was alive with thousands of applicants coming to town to see the test site so that they wouldn't get lost in the next day's frenzy and confusion. Stone-faced militiamen walked the sealed sections of the school. The test-takers nervously looked beyond the yellow ribbon. For the well prepared, that day was the day to rest. The three long days of test-taking would be exhausting, to say the least. I saw the Head, the snob, dribbling a basketball absentmindedly, like a girl. Silently, I wished him luck: May he open his paper and not know a thing.
Others were just sitting around chatting, killing time. Han, my elementary school enemy, wasn't one of them. He had been studying, but the stuff was coming out from his granite head, his mom said. That day, he was sitting before a tall pile of books, not knowing which one to read.
His mom said he wouldn't eat, talk, or sleep. I also wished him luck and hoped that he'd faint on the floor of the test site and never wake up.
Since early morning, Dad's friends and neighbors had been coming by to wish us good luck. Ar Duang, whose son was Dad's patient, carried a large basket of fruit and insisted that we eat it all so that we would have fresh minds. Jin mingled with our guests in the living room, taking it easy. I knew he would do well. He was smiling and looked relaxed. I had gotten up at five and had washed my face extra carefully. Mom and I had prayed and kowtowed before every single god in her shrine. She had just unearthed a new one called the God of Wisdom and wanted me to beg hard before him. I had slammed about ten big ones to him, and I was sure every one of them would be worth something.
I was the only one from the town of Yellow Stone to register as an English major; only eight others in the commune were taking that major. So the National Examination Commission decided to lump us together and have all nine of us take the entire three-day exam in the city of Putien, where our final subject exam, English, was to be given.
Everyone in my family silently watched me pack a foldable bamboo mat, a sack of rice, my chopsticks, a rice pot, two bags of books, and some clothes. My youngest sister, Huang, was pumping air into a borrowed old bike. She would be giving me a ride to Putien. It felt as if they were sending me off to the battlefield, a place so far away that my family couldn't be with me. I felt an inner sadness, but I didn't show it. I was sixteen. I threw my luggage over my back, pushed out my chest, and smiled broadly at everyone. I wanted to tell them by my actions that I was brave and ready to take on the enemy.
Right before I stepped into the street, I turned and ran upstairs to my window. I knelt down and begged my grandfather to come with me to Putien and watch over me as I wrote the answers. He had loved me so deeply and had expected so much of me. It was he who had taught me the first strokes of calligraphy, his hands over mine. I needed him now more than ever. I told him that I would do honor to his name and that all his sufferings at the end of his life were not in vain because they had given me strength and would be the basis of all my success.
Tears filled my eyes as I called on his spirit again and again.
On the way to Putien, Huang and I talked for a while; then I took out my flash cards to review the English conjugations. I remembered them so well that I was sick of them, but I was terrified my memory might suddenly fail and all that knowledge disappear without a trace. We arrived at Hillside High School at the edge of Putien after three hours of hard pedaling against a headwind. The school had been temporarily converted into a camp for the test-takers from around the county. I followed the sign and found my name on the door of a dark classroom. I settled in and sent my sister home before sunset.
It was a zoo. At least a thousand students were bunking there for the next three days. The kitchen was overcrowded. I had put my rice pot in the steamer in the afternoon; it took me half an hour to locate it at dinnertime. I ate my cold rice with dried fish on the lawn in the playground and stared at the stars. I had intended to do some studying before going to sleep, but it was impossible. There was no light, no room, and I was constantly surrounded by a mob of mosquitoes. Like the city people, the mosquitoes here were sleazy. Their snouts drilled like needles and their sting stayed with you for a long time.
Daylight finally came. I crept to a quiet spot and knelt down for a brief prayer, then fought my way through the kitchen, this time easily finding my rice pot. The trick was to put it in late and get it out early.
I slowly swallowed half the rice I had steamed and left the other half uneaten.
The first test was Chinese. I was ready.
At seven-thirty, a man led the nine of us English majors on a milelong hike. We found our test site at the top of a hill and waited outside like runners at the starting line, ready to dash as soon as the bell rang. Rich kids arrived with their big-shot daddies in cars that left a dusty trail. City boys had long greased hair and fashionable clothes; the girls had long silky legs, partially covered by flowing skirts. I wore a yellowed cutoff shirt, a straw hat, and shorts, and was barefoot. Nobody looked my way, as if they had sized me up in a second and immediately dismissed me as an ignorant country bumpkin in the wrong crowd.
I was thirsty, dizzy, weak, and tired and felt the need to go to the bathroom again despite having visited it only five minutes before. I closed my eyes and prayed in silence as I waited in agony for the time to pass.
Grandpa, dear Grandpa, help me now.
The bell brought me back to reality. I ran into my test room, sat in my numbered seat, and closed my eyes again, holding my sealed questions. I felt like puking. My hands were trembling.
The proctor, a bespectacled bald man, nodded at me with a kind smile. “You may start now,” he said.
I broke the seal with my pen. As I focused my eyes on the first question, there was a sudden rush of blood to my head. My mind went blank, and I had to grit my teeth and grip my table to let the feeling pass. No wonder some people were carried out by ambulance. I didn't want to be one of them. Slowly, the darkness receded. I read and reread the question and wrote down the first answer of the day.
The test lasted for four hours and ended with a long composition that was worth forty-five percent of the score. I came out smiling to myself. The first thing I did was head for a quiet corner to kneel and thank all the good gods who had helped me through this first test.
I saw others, strangers to each other, chatting and talking excitedly. I didn't want to get involved. It was over.
I stayed on the hilltop under a tall tree, munched on some dried fish, drank some water, and reviewed my history flash cards. There was a guard sitting near me. I gave him a Flying Horse and asked him to wake me if he found me dozing off and to make sure I wasn't late for the test.
At ten minutes to two, I put away my history book and looked for signs of the guard. He was snoring away like a buffalo, his lips twitching. Obviously he was having an erotic dream of some sort. Too many young females taking the test were wearing enticing skirts.
I smiled from ear to ear when I opened my history paper. Peking Man had guessed two of the four questions. Each would bring me fifteen percent of the total score. I let out an animal cry of ecstasy as I left the room, then danced down the stairs. Others watched as though I were crazy. Long live Peking Man! I knew all the answers and had had plenty of time to check every nuance of the questions, as Peking Man had taught us to do, analytically and clearly. I wanted to take a picture of him and frame it above my college bunk bed and pray to him. He was almost a god. They should at least make him a local god of Yellow Stone High and give him whatever he wanted from life.
That evening I
ate twice as much as the day before. I was halfway through—only three more subjects to go.
I sailed through the second day like a sleek sailboat.
The English test came last, and it came as no surprise. I knew every word and irregular conjugation. There was a long translated article, a story about a magic ring. I had never felt as confident in an examination before. The large bag of exercises given to me by Professor Wei covered all the questions and more. I wanted to hug her and tell her she should become a goddess too, and that I would frame her picture and worship it every day.
When I walked out of the test room for the last time, my burden dropped to the ground. I was free.
Even the city folks began to look okay to me. I was ready to hug and embrace anyone when I saw my brother looking for me. I ran over to him and we shook hands frantically.
“How did you do?” he asked.
“Couldn't have done better,” I said, out of breath.
He had come to pick me up and share all the details of the experience we had come through together. We forgot about our fatigue and talked, laughed, smoked, and talked some more. We compared answers, thinking that we had gotten about eighty-five percent right. We were ecstatic.
We rode home in the fading sunlight. The breeze was gentle, the air cool. Our hearts were light. My brother had become my best friend. We had fought together and at least in our hearts we knew that we had won.
The next day I woke up to the painful twisting of my ears and nose.
I tried to get up but my legs were pinned down. I opened my eyes to see my four friends, making ugly faces as they tried to wake me up.
“Hey, what's up?” I rubbed my eyes.
“We're taking you hunting, college man,” Siang said. “I heard you did well in the tests.”
“Yeah, everyone's talking about it.” Mo Gong gave my ear another twist.
“We're gonna take you out for a day of fun.” Yi pulled my quilt off and lay beside me.
Sen was nudging my behind with the butt of his hunting rifle.
“Wake up. We've got catching up to do. Who knows, you're probably gonna be outta here in no time.”
I spent the whole day shooting birds in the thick woods, eating fruit, and smoking. Sen had brought a bottle of liquor, which we passed around. Mo Gong was a little woozy after a few greedy gulps. We sent him to pick up the fallen birds. At one point, he stumbled into wet mud and almost sank into a mudhole. We had to pull him out. Then he rolled on the ground until dried leaves stuck all over his body, and started dancing around like an aborigine, singing weird tunes that sounded like Japanese folk songs. I threw more leaves on him and he danced even more madly. Sen passed the bottle to him and he finished it off. Totally drunk, he started to laugh so heartily that it began to sound like crying. Then he collapsed on the floor, still in a fit of uncontrollable laughter. We had to kick him to stop his craziness. Then we carried him to the middle of a wooden bridge and dropped him into the Dong Jing River. He continued laughing until he sank beneath the water.
We applauded, expecting to see him jump up like a fish for air. But one minute passed, then two. We looked at each other.
“Don't worry. He's fooling us this time.” Sen was calm.
“He could never hold his breath for that long,” I said.
“He's a better swimmer than you are.”
“But he could be dead. He's drunk, remember.”
“Even a drunk is always thirty percent clearheaded. Don't let him fool you,” Yi said.
“The guy is dying! Do something! I'm going down there.” I took off my shirt and jumped into the water. My actions brought them all to the edge.
Suddenly, Mo Gong shot up like a fish and let out a wild cry. “I got you!”
“See, I told you,” Sen said.
Mo Gong swam to the edge. “I saw it all. Da was the most worried about me. Not you guys. If I'd come up and seen you still there on the bridge, smiling, I woulda quit being your friends. I really liked that, Da. Your shorts are soaked.” We splashed water all over him and forced him into the river again.
Jin's mood waxed and waned in a daily cycle. Some days he thought he had scored well, other days he thought he had drilled holes in the boat and was sinking. For the moment, he threw himself into farmwork. On a good day, he would hum and whistle, digging the field in readiness for the autumn bean season. He was the amicable old Jin everyone liked. On a bad day, he would stay in bed really late, the quilt over his head, thinking of all the questions he had missed. He used the abacus in his head and crunched the total score of his tests. But the more he crunched, the lower his scores got. He made himself miserable. We called it the Cousin Tan factor.
In the evening, I sat with him in our backyard and chatted. Mom and Dad had given me the job of encouraging him. They didn't want to see him turn into a nut. I would pull out our bamboo abacus and play with my estimate of his scores as he remembered them. When he said seventy percent, I threw in a modest five percent markup. In the end, the total looked fine. He was surprised by my estimate and wondered how I had come up with it. I told him he was too hard on himself; then I'd go to our kitchen and pour some locally brewed liquor for him. Resistant at first, he would drink it nonetheless. It would loosen him up, and we and the rest of the family would sit talking in the moonlight, late into the night.
I was the opposite. My own estimate of my scores kept going up.
Everyone in the family laughed at me. It was a pure gut feeling, but they believed me and were glad for me. No one stopped me from climbing my ladder of dreams.
A month later, rumors began to circulate that the papers had all been graded and the scores were in. The scores were low across the board. All the test-takers gossiped among themselves. Jin at this point didn't care anymore. It only made me pray harder each night, hitting my head against the soft pillows in obeisance to all the gods I assembled in my head, to whom I read off my list of wishes. The list got longer each day and the list of promises to the gods grew more generous. I went from one little piglet for each god to five piglets and two cows as sacrifices if all the items on my list came true. And I knew that if that happened I would probably have to bankrupt our family, returning all our worldly possessions to the places they had come from. But that didn't stop me. I figured we could always deliver the sacrifices gradually, or even make out an IOU for the gods. When all was repaid, we would add on a handsome interest. They would have no problem with that.
During the course of the morning, word leaked out about the score line. This was a line the government drew to cut off the successful applicants from the unsuccessful ones. It was based on how many slots were open for college enrollment that year: if there were only 100 openings, the cutoff line would be set after the top one 100 scores. Everyone above that line was guaranteed a place in college, while the rest of the applicants wouldn't be considered at all. This year's cutoff point was 300 out of the total 500 points possible.
The news sent chills down our spines. We all must have done terribly.
Just after midnight, the messenger, Chung, ran into our house, sweat covering his red face. He was breathless from the three-hour ride that he had just cut to two. We surrounded him, watching his heaving chest with great anxiety.
“Water,” he croaked.
“The scores first,” Dad said.
“I'm really thirsty.”
“The scores.” Dad's voice had never been that loud with a friend before.
Chung smiled.
We stood by, our hearts in our throats.
“Jin first.” Chung swallowed. “Three hundred and fifty.” There was an odd lull. Jin was in. His face first turned ashen, then red. He was speechless.
“How about Da?”
“You want to know?”
“Yes, yes. What is it?”
“Three hundred and eighty!” I felt the blood shoot up to the very top of my head. All the muscles in my arms twitched uncontrollably.
“I'm not finished yet. According to th
e record, Da has one of the highest liberal arts scores in the province of Fujian, including the big cities of Fuzhou, Amoy, Chuangzhou, and Nanping—out of hundreds of thousands of test-takers.” There were no joyful shouts or happy dances, only tears. It was a moment of triumph and happiness for the whole Chen family. Mom was in Dad's arms; my sisters were sniffling and holding each other. Jin and I shook hands wildly.
A dirt-poor country boy, beating all the city brats. I couldn't believe it. It was about forty points higher than my highest estimate. I could kowtow forever.
TWENTY-FOUR
Mom asked me to walk to her brother's house to tell Cousin Tan the news. I took the narrow road through the green fields. The fresh sea wind made the young rice dance and woke up my dizzy mind, still dazed with the intoxicating news.
Cousin Tan was holding court at his house with a few of his classmates from AU. I heard carefree laughter as I entered. They were having tea. I wanted to drop the bomb and have the AU boys running for cover. Tan stood up as I came through the door. Smart guy, he sensed something.
“Did you hear anything?” he asked.
I stood there, trying to catch my breath.
“Is it bad news?” he asked anxiously.
I shook my head. I didn't want to seem too eager to impress a bunch of AU guys, all of whom were proudly wearing their white-and-red school badges.
“Jin got three hundred and fifty,” I said.
“Well, that's very high.” Tan knitted his intellectual brows together with disbelief. “How about you?”
I took another deep breath.
“You didn't make it?” He started to smile and stretch out his uncallused hands to press on me his subtle condolence. I knew that look.