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墨書 Inktalez
Entering the teaching building of Yizhong, a place I had visited many times in my dreams, I walked into Classroom 45 and found that the students had clearly formed two distinct groups. In the front rows sat the current students, who had been admitted to the top school in Dongkou County two years ago. They enjoyed a head start and a sense of superiority over most of their peers, and despite the heavy academic workload, they remained youthful and spirited. In the back two or three rows were more than a dozen transfer students like me, coming from various schools outside of Yizhong, mostly graduates of Shijiang or Second Middle School. We all carried the heavy burden of preparing for the college entrance examination and worked silently, rarely participating in class activities. Among us was a tall current student known as "Bean Sprout," Yang Xiaoqiu, who was nicknamed for his height.
With over ten years of schooling behind us, we quickly settled into a routine of attending classes, staying in dormitories, and eating in the cafeteria—what we called "Three Points in a Line." As I became familiar with this daily rhythm, my naturally playful and active personality set me apart among the transfer students, and I soon integrated into the circle of current students.
I first joined the "Active" group. A few current students who were athletes sat at the back of the classroom like me. Within days of school starting, I bonded with them. The athletes had low academic demands and spent little time on cultural studies; they viewed daily assignments as burdensome, especially with frequent exams looming over them. It was only natural that I became their go-to person for homework help and exam answers.
Through my connection with the athletes, I became a cheerleader for the class basketball team. Almost every afternoon, as long as the weather was nice, I would join Tang Liming, Yang Xiaoqiu, Zeng Kecheng, Xiao Jiangfeng, and others on the playground to watch them compete while I never actually played myself.
Rather than saying I joined an "entertaining" group, it was more accurate to say that I formed one. The classmates were divided into two factions; both groups understood each other without needing to say much. The expectations placed on us varied significantly. As a transfer student, I enjoyed more freedom while most others were solely focused on studying and ignored everything else around them. Thus, I sought out some current students to be my companions in fun.
Zeng Kecheng from Xizhong Township was the first to respond to my initiative. Yang Jun, who lived in the county transportation bureau dormitory, offered us a place to hang out. The small but energetic Yin Guiping often joined us along with a few other classmates who came and went sporadically. This is how our circle began to take shape.
After school, we often hid under the riverbank playing cards or crossed Pingxi River to catch birds at Huilong State. We squeezed into Yang Jun's small room at the transportation bureau to mess around. Almost every week, one of us would treat everyone to a hearty plate of fried scraps from a nearby restaurant to improve our monotonous meals for a couple of days.
While we were having fun, another transfer student managed to slip into our lively group—She Songsong, whom I had met on my first day at school. Unlike most transfer students who buried themselves in study materials and rarely left their classrooms, Songsong understood how to balance work and play. Every afternoon he would take half an hour off from studying to stroll around the classroom area. More impressively, he introduced us to an entertainment activity none of us had encountered before—Go.
At that time, Nie Weiping was making headlines in the Sino-Japanese Go competition; however, most students in Class 45 only knew about it but had never seen it played. Coming from a family of officials, Songsong had learned some basic Go knowledge at some point. During his breaks when we chatted occasionally about Nie's achievements, he sketched an informal Go board on his notebook and explained basic rules like capturing stones and determining wins or losses.
With this new toy in hand, I quickly shared it with my friends in our fun circle. I pulled one friend after another into learning Go with me using our notebooks to draw various non-standard boards sized 9x9, 11x11, 15x15 while explaining rules before diving into games as a way to learn.
As we engaged in repeated practice sessions on paper, more people joined our circle. Although we hadn't truly mastered Go yet, we became increasingly skilled at playing it and discovered numerous tricks: initially using plain paper for boards quickly transitioned to math notebooks with lines; soon we found small children's notebooks where lines naturally formed Go boards even if they measured 15x20 or 12x15.
Our game pieces also evolved; we started with black and white drawings but soon replaced them with triangles and circles; initially using pens gave way to pencils that could be erased for reuse—allowing us to play multiple games on one board until it wore thin.
While we immersed ourselves in Paper Go games for two or three months, perhaps influenced by Nie's later missteps or our own low skill level making it less enjoyable or simply because winter made playing outside too cold—or perhaps because looming exams crushed our playful spirits—Paper Go gradually faded from Classroom 45.
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