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墨書 Inktalez
The noise outside the window and the warmth of home could not stop the relentless march of time. The college entrance examination was proceeding steadily, following its established rhythm. However, this time was different from previous years; my heart carried a few more memories.
About a month before the exams, we received news that there would be no preliminary exams this year, and all students would participate in the high school graduation examination. The exam still followed a division between arts and sciences, with seven science subjects each graded out of 100 points, and the difficulty level was significantly lower than that of the college entrance examination. As transfer students, we had little interest in treating it as a mock exam; we approached it with a mindset of merely getting through the three days of testing. When the results came out, the highest scorer in our class, Xie Jun, achieved over 650 points—about 50 points higher than the highest score in the county from previous years. I managed to exceed 600 points as well, scoring a perfect 100 in mathematics.
Shortly after the graduation exam, Teacher Changlin began organizing class leaders to sort through all students' academic records and prepare for college entrance registration. For this year's students who had a foundation from the past three years, it was simply a matter of making some adjustments—removing or replacing any overly negative records. For transfer students like me, however, everything had to be redone, creating personal histories through reverse engineering.
Thus, my personnel file, which would follow me until I left the bank in 2006, reflected my elementary, middle, and high school enrollment dates pushed back by two years, while my experience at Third Middle School vanished into thin air.
What irked me was that the student organizing the files simplified things by writing my name as Long Bao Song instead of Long Biao Song. Although the former name carried my parents' hopes and my own memories, under the banner of "Everything for the College Entrance Examination," when I discovered this change on my exam admission ticket, there was no opportunity to revert it. I felt no resentment towards that unnamed classmate.
With that change, "Long Biao Song" disappeared from my life for over twenty years. It wasn't until one day when Liu Xingjia, one of the six brothers from Third Middle School, sent me a text message referring to me as "Biao Song" that I remembered I had once used that name. It brought back fragments of memories I recounted in "Dragon Walker," particularly in the opening chapter titled "A Name That Can Be Named."
A few days later, one afternoon, Teacher Liu came into our classroom and said, "Students who wish to apply to the Military Academy should register today; tomorrow we will go to the county hospital for a physical examination."
Having always harbored a strong fascination with heroes since childhood, I admired solitary heroes like Yan Long from the self-defense counterattack against Vietnam and various iron-blooded soldiers from battles in Two Mountains. Hearing that a classmate from Third Middle School named Zeng Jiyang had enlisted and become a reconnaissance soldier while also being accepted into Guilin Army Command College filled me with anticipation to join their ranks. I quickly signed up with my classmates.
The next morning, I jogged with several classmates across a bridge to reach the county people's hospital. We received our physical examination forms at the entrance and proceeded to knock on doors according to each item on the form. Perhaps due to special arrangements at the hospital or because it was early and few people were there for treatment besides us students undergoing physicals, we avoided much waiting time.
The first examination was for vision. Unlike the usual "E" chart we were accustomed to, this time we used a "C" chart with a maximum score of 2.0. Having previously lamented about having too good eyesight and seeing too much detail, I easily achieved the highest score this time and happily moved on to the next station.
The second examination was for surgery; we were asked to strip completely in an empty room and jump around a bit before being examined closely by a doctor who scanned us up and down while wearing gloves. He checked our thighs and shoulders before finally inspecting our buttocks for hemorrhoids and spreading our legs to check our reproductive organ development. After five of us were examined together, he marked some symbols on our forms that we couldn't understand.
The third examination was for hearing. I felt confident; no matter how far away he stood, I could hear the doctor's voice clearly. After testing my hearing, he put on a magnifying glass to examine my ears further. Upon looking into my left ear, he exclaimed in surprise: "Such poor hearing yet you want to apply to military school!" Alarmed by his comment, I pleaded urgently: "Uncle, my hearing is fine! Please take another look." The doctor impatiently glanced at my right ear again and sighed as he wrote two lines on my form: "Left eardrum perforation," "Right eardrum swollen."
It seemed that my hopes of attending military school were dashed. As I opened the door to leave for school, I bumped into Liu Suzhen, a teacher who was temporarily assigned by the county education committee to organize this military physical examination group. Seeing my dejected expression after learning about my situation, she asked what happened and said: "Biao Song, you should continue with your remaining physical examinations; if it's just a minor hearing issue it shouldn't have much impact. I'll ask the doctor if there's any way they can make an exception."
By noon, after completing all physical examinations and stepping out of the hospital building, Teacher Liu called me aside and told me: "The doctor said you cannot apply for military school anymore; I wish you success in getting into other better universities."
Time flew by faster than ever as the countdown to college entrance exams grew more urgent.
On July 5th, my mother traveled from our rural home to stay at Fourth Uncle's house in town to cook for me so that I could focus on preparing for exams while taking care of my health.
On July 6th, my father also arrived in town and urged me to take exams seriously without being careless or feeling pressured; he believed that if I performed at my normal level, I would be able to get into a good university.
On July 7th, the college entrance examination officially began with Chinese language as the first subject. The foundational knowledge posed no difficulty for me; although writing was somewhat challenging due to its complexity, having done numerous mock exercises and written many diary entries in Lu Xun's style allowed me to complete it smoothly.
After finishing the first exam, a classmate who had transferred into Class 45 quietly informed me that his older brother was one of the main examiners. Since we had developed a good rapport over time and complemented each other's strengths in subjects where one excelled over another—and given that both our seating arrangements were based on standardized testing—he suggested we engage in some small tactics: we would start from opposite ends of our answer sheets and exchange answers halfway through.
During English exams that followed, our collaboration went smoothly; difficult pronunciation questions and sentence structure items were almost entirely copied from his answers while we agreed on about 70% of reading comprehension questions—he trusted me just as much as I trusted him.
However, during mathematics exams things went awry; I started from behind but spent over half an hour on the last question. In haste but determinedly finishing just before time ran out meant I had no chance to check over what I'd done after swapping standardized answers with him—nearly half seemed incorrect! Stunned by this realization—was he not working off an A version? There wasn't enough time left; I had no choice but to start again from scratch until only fifteen minutes remained when an alert sounded indicating half of what I'd been responsible for still needed completion along with several unanswered questions from earlier sections.
With anxious hearts after finishing math exams—our faces pale—we took solace knowing only three subjects remained ahead without exchanging answers again as we gritted our teeth through this decisive test determining our futures.
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