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墨書 Inktalez
In June 1981, just before my elementary school graduation, I faced my first major exam in life.
At that time, the transition from elementary school to middle school did not require a strict examination. However, my parents had different expectations; they hoped I would enroll in the best junior high school in the county—Dongkou No. 1 Middle School. To support this goal, they had already consulted my uncle Long Shiyan, who worked at the county's educational guidance office, to gather information. Coincidentally, that year, the middle school department of Dongkou No. 1 was holding an entrance exam for two classes of students from across the county, which led to this additional examination.
Since it was a selective exam, it was impossible for all elementary students in the county to participate in a unified test. Moreover, Dongkou No. 1 wanted to create its own questions to select students with exceptional abilities. Therefore, each district—there were about four or five communes in Dongkou County at that time, with district-level institutions set up between the communes and the county—had one examination room designated for this purpose. Our Qiaotou District's examination room was located in the best middle school in the area—Sihe Junior High School.
The Sihe Junior High School is more than ten kilometers away from my home. I can't remember whether my mother took me there or if I gathered with other elementary school classmates at the Commune first, then went there under the guidance of a teacher. I have little impression of that time. I only remember that Sihe Junior High School was very large; it was not only bigger than our Osmanthus Primary School but also larger than Xizhong Middle School in the Commune. The campus had many tall trees and a well-maintained playground, and the classrooms were in buildings.
For me, this was my first major exam in life; from an educational perspective, it was also considered a pioneering attempt at independent student recruitment. Therefore, the format and content of this exam were somewhat different from previous ones.
Since there were only six examination centers and six exam rooms in the entire county, all the invigilators were sent by the First High School. This was to ensure a unified standard for monitoring, and I heard they also had responsibilities for observing students on-site and conducting some interviews.
The first exam was Chinese language. Since the "Waterloo" of the essay competition due to the sloppy handwriting, I have developed good writing habits. Most of the exam content comes from the textbook, just a bit more profound than what the teacher usually teaches. About a third of the content seems unrelated to the textbook, especially with many questions related to idioms, and a passage of ancient text that I have never seen before. Fortunately, I read a lot of diverse books, so although I didn't have complete confidence, I felt pretty good and quickly completed the major sections of the exam, leaving only the essay as the main task.
Strangely, I couldn't remember at all what the essay topic was at the time, or how I completed it. Upon careful thought, perhaps I wasn't very interested in the essay at the time, so there were no exciting moments to leave a mark in my memory. Perhaps the essays at that time were purely imitations of "model essays" produced under the rote education system, and thus left no memory.
Moreover, for a long time afterward, although I never regarded essays as daunting, I never had outstanding performance in essay writing. Throughout middle school and high school, I participated in various competitions at the school and even county level, achieving success in all subjects except for essays, not even receiving an encouragement award.
I took the math test and, as usual, went through it from start to finish. Cold sweat started trickling down my face: this set of questions is exactly the opposite of what we studied in Chinese class; only about a third of the content comes from our textbooks, while the rest are entirely new topics that our teacher never taught us!
I must confess, even if those familiar topics like pursuit problems, encounter problems, and pool problems did appear, I usually just copied example answers without truly understanding them. This time, the questions were in a completely different form, requiring at least seven twists and turns to derive an answer. I was immediately lost and didn't know what to do.
It wasn't until then that I realized my previous "excellent" grades in school were actually too low-level. Among the new topics our teacher never taught us, two types of questions left a deep impression on me: the "chicken-and-rabbit-in-the-same-coop" problem and the "drawing-trees-inside-figures" problem. Because I didn't know how to approach them, I inadvertently memorized these two types of problems firmly in my mind, only to return to school and ask our teacher for answers, who could do so but couldn't explain it clearly to me.
Years later, when my child was in elementary school, they enrolled in an advanced math class. It was only after reviewing their materials that I finally understood how to tackle such math problems using elementary knowledge.
Although my math scores weren't ideal, I still had to attend a simple interview afterward. Calling it simple felt a bit of a stretch; the proctor merely instructed everyone to submit their papers and then proceed in order to another classroom.
When I entered that classroom, there were two teachers inside, one male and one female. The male teacher asked me a few questions, mostly about my name, where I attended elementary school, what competitions I had participated in, and what awards I had received. Meanwhile, the female teacher was writing and drawing on a piece of paper. I was too far away and a bit shy to look closely, so I couldn't tell what she was writing.
Soon, the exam results were released, and I did not get into the top high school. In the entire Xizhong Village Committee, only one student qualified to study in the county, and his name was widely spoken among the parents in the Commune, almost as if he had achieved the highest honor in ancient times.
My mother always said this student's name was "Zeng Jinsong." In fact, there is indeed a character "Song" in his name, but his full name should be "Zeng Yousong." Although we were not classmates in elementary school, we had taken the same exam together. He happened to sit right in front of me. Given our similar ages and builds, we had quite a bit of interaction during the breaks, becoming good friends at first sight. However, I have no idea how this "older brother" ended up on his life path or where he ended up later.
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