Doing It Over Again

It was enrollment season again, and the best junior high school in Peng County, the experimental junior high, had no shortage of students.
Parents whose children hadn’t already been assigned to the school were searching high and low for ways to get their child admitted, hoping they’d get a better education and move on to a good high school in the future.

This year was different from previous years, because Peng County Experimental Junior High had a new policy: the school was going to conduct a recruitment exam to fill the two experimental classes.
The test was open to all primary school students in the county who’d graduated in the previous year.
Every student who scored in the top eighty on the test could enter the experimental class, and it didn’t matter if they had an urban or rural household registration.
Of course, most people didn’t actually know what an experimental class was, but they’d heard that all the top students would be assigned there, and the teachers would choose only the best.
As soon as the news was released, a crowd of parents rushed over to sign up.

On the day of the exam, about an hour before the scheduled starting time, a few children carrying textbooks were already standing outside the exam room waiting for the door to open.
Most of these children were rural students who were afraid of being late, so they’d arrived extra early.

Forty-five minutes before the test, chief examiner Li Lu opened the door of the second exam room and watched the room gradually fill.
After exchanging a glance with the deputy examiner, Mr.
Luo, he turned to the blackboard and wrote down the rules of the exam room, the number of test pages, and the end time of the exam.

Eventually the bell rang and it was time to hand out the exam papers.
The teacher glanced at the second seat in the first row.
The exam was about to begin, but one of the students hadn’t arrived yet.
It must be some pampered child who’d given up on the exam.
Li Lu wasn’t very surprised.
He’d taught at the experimental junior high for years and had seen a lot of spoiled children.

“I’m here!”

Li Lu looked at the door.
A somewhat skinny boy had just arrived.
The child’s shirt and trousers were old and worn, but they were very clean.
At first glance he looked like a good kid. 

“Come in quickly.
The exam’s about to begin.”

The boy bowed to the teacher, walked quickly to the second seat in the first row, and sat down.
Li Lu watched as the boy took out his supplies in an orderly way.
He didn’t seem upset or troubled, so the teacher looked away.

After all, if the teacher kept staring at one of the examinees, it might make the child nervous and affect his score.
It wasn’t easy for a child from a poor family to get a chance to enter a school like this.
If the boy did well on the exam, he’d have a better chance of doing well in life.

In fact, this student really did leave early for the exam.
He didn’t want to be late like he was in his previous life, when he almost missed the test completely.
But as it turned out, on the way to school, he encountered a child with a broken arm.
At first he didn’t want to get involved, but when he saw the pitiful-looking ten-year-old kid squatting in the hot sun with his head bowed and his face flushed, he decided to take him to the clinic for bandaging.
He also helped the injured child call the police before he rushed over to the experimental junior high.
And that was why, in this life, he was nearly late for the exam again.

Shen Shao sat down in his seat and picked up the test paper.
The first set of questions wasn’t especially difficult.
When the bell rang to signal the start of the exam, he picked up his pen and began to fill in the answers.

The admission test for the experimental class consisted of two subjects, Chinese and mathematics.
After he finished the Chinese test in the morning, Shen Shao left the school on his own, found a café, and bought a bowl of rice noodles and a couple of vegetable buns.
When he looked at the crowded but dilapidated street outside, he sighed.

He’d opened his eyes two days ago and found himself in the house he’d lived in as a child.
At the time he thought he was dreaming, but now he was certain he’d returned to age eleven.
That was the year his father was working out of town and got mixed up with another woman, and his mother was so upset she drank half a bottle of dichlorvos pesticide.
Before she made it to the hospital, she was dead.
The entire village scolded his father, but he just packed up his bags and went off to find his mistress.
After that they never saw him again.

It was a pity Shen Shao had returned too late.
There was already grass growing on his mother’s grave, and he had no idea what hidey-hole his father ran off to with that woman.
Shen Shao was left alone to keep watch over a small, one story house and a little more than ten thousand yuan in savings left by his mother.

The rice noodles didn’t taste that good, and the vegetable stuffing in the steamed bun was a little greasy, but Shen Shao ate every bit of his meal, including the broth.
The math exam wasn’t until three o’clock.
He didn’t have a good place to spend the rest of his lunch break, so he simply went to the nearby Xinhua bookstore to waste time.
It was too hot to wait around outside, but the Xinhua store had air conditioning and free books to read.

There weren’t many people in the bookstore at noon.
Shen Shao found a book in the classics section and squatted in the corner to read.
A clerk came by a few times to sort books, and when he saw the half-grown child reading an adult translation of a famous work, he did a double take.
The clerk noticed him sitting in an uncomfortable position, and he found Shen Shao some old newspapers to sit on.

At two o’clock, Shen Shao put the book back, returned the newspapers, and thanked the clerk before leaving the bookstore.
The moment he left the store, a wave of heat swept over his face.
He touched his forehead, blinked at the dazzling sunlight outside, and walked back to the experimental junior high school without delay.

In his previous life, he wasn’t able to go to college, and he refused to go through this life with the same regrets.
If he didn’t treasure his new life, what was the point of a second chance? Was it just to increase the country’s GDP, or to exhale carbon dioxide for plants to photosynthesize?

For Shen Shao the math exam was a little easier than the Chinese exam.
When he answered exam questions in the morning, there was a question about a poem he had to leave blank.
It was only worth one point, but when he considered that as a thirty-year-old he couldn’t even answer a question meant for primary school students, he felt inept.

After finishing the exam questions, he still had a lot of time left before he needed to hand in the test paper.
He checked his answer sheet again and again to confirm he hadn’t filled in anything wrong or omitted his ID number.
Then he handed in the test early.
After all, it took more than an hour to travel from the county back to his home.
If he stayed too late he might end up walking in the dark.

When he left the school it was almost five o’clock in the afternoon.
The sun was still dazzling, but what was even more dazzling was the black Mercedes-Benz idling near the school gate.
The black vehicle was so clean and dust-free it reflected a glare of sunshine into people’s eyes.

Anyone who could drive such a big Benz these days would be regarded as wealthy by ordinary people.
With that kind of car