Chapter 181 Adult College Entrance Examination

After only two days of waiting, Erhu returned from Fuzhou.

The full payment of 1500 yuan for the goods was handed over to Xu Qiang.

This gave Xu Qiang sufficient cash flow again. Together with the 800 yuan bonus given to him by the factory and the more than 4000 yuan he made from selling fertilizers recently, Xu Qiang now had more than yuan in cash on hand.

Now that he had money, Xu Qiang still wanted to buy equipment.

The equipment for synthesizing indigo powder that Xu Qiang had purchased before were all the smallest models. However, due to the limitations of the model of the generators at the current peat field, the large reactors and centrifuges could not be powered at all, so he could only use this small type of equipment.

If he wants to increase production, Xu Qiang will need to purchase larger diesel generators. However, now a generator, even a general model, costs around four to five thousand yuan, and the expensive ones can cost as much as eight to ten thousand yuan, not to mention the price of other equipment. Therefore, Xu Qiang still needs to accumulate funds.

The first batch of goods was successfully traded, and Xu Qiang began to arrange for Erhu to continue to go to Fuzhou to deliver the goods. At present, the peat field has produced more than 30 kilograms of indigo powder. In the absence of other means of transportation, Erhu had to run errands back and forth alone.

However, Erhu has obviously adapted to this kind of life. On the contrary, when he was resting in the peat field, he felt that he couldn't stay there at all. He preferred the life of being outside.

At the same time, under Xu Qiang's guidance, Liu Jun became more and more proficient in operating the machine. Although he did not know the synthesis principle of indigo powder, he gradually figured out the various detailed changes that occurred in the synthesis process. When Xu Qiang was not around, he could complete the production with ease.

However, due to equipment limitations, the daily output of indigo powder has always been around five kilograms, and it is almost impossible to make a breakthrough.

In fact, Xu Qiang can completely accept this kind of output. At the end of a month, he can make nearly 20,000 yuan in net profit. Before long, Xu Qiang will have enough money to buy more equipment.

……

Time flies, and in a blink of an eye, it is already mid-October and the TV University entrance examination has officially begun.

Before six o'clock in the morning, Xu Qiang got a meal in the cafeteria, which included a fried dough stick and two eggs. He thought it was a good omen.

After breakfast, Xu Qiang took his pencil case and went straight to the Workers' Club.

More than ten minutes later, when Xu Qiang arrived at the club square, there were already seventy or eighty candidates carrying stationery gathered there.

All these candidates were students of the Shengli Machinery Factory’s night school and were also Xu Qiang’s classmates.

This year, the number of applicants for adult night college in the county reached 2,100, most of whom were workers employed in factories and mines in the local county town and surrounding counties and towns.

Generally speaking, candidates who take the adult college entrance examination have to ride their bikes to the examination center in the county town. However, for units with very good performance like Shengli Machinery Factory, the factory will send special vehicles to pick them up. After all, many of the employees who can take the adult college entrance examination are technical elites and backbones of the factory, so it is reasonable for the factory to take care of them in a timely manner.

The factory has four buses and seven or eight large trucks, and Director Liu, the person in charge of the night school, organizes the relevant matters of picking up and dropping off the candidates.

"Xu Qiang!" Liu Siying, who was surrounded by a group of male students at the time, saw Xu Qiang, smiled and waved to say hello.

"You're here quite early." After seeing Liu Siying, Xu Qiang also walked forward and greeted her with a smile.

"You really travel light." Seeing that Xu Qiang didn't even have a textbook in his hand, Liu Siying said with some surprise.

The reason why Liu Siying said this was because the candidates around her all had some textbooks and materials in their hands to a greater or lesser extent.

Sharpening a gun in the face of battle will bring displeasure.

This exam was undoubtedly a great opportunity that could change the fate of these night school students, so the closer the exam was, the harder the students tried to memorize. Even if they could get one more point, it would make a big difference in the results. Some students even wrote a lot of information into pocket booklets and sewed them into their sleeves. There were also various other ways of cheating.

Cheating in the college entrance examination will undoubtedly result in the cancellation of scores and expulsion from the examination room, but for many candidates who know they have no hope of being admitted, it is not a bad idea to take a gamble and try their luck.

Only Xu Qiang was relatively simple-minded. He didn't bring any books or cheat sheets. He just went into battle with nothing on his PG!
"I have no hope in the first place. Even if I bring books, I won't be able to remember much." Xu Qiang said with a smile.

"Okay." Liu Siying smiled and shook her head, then said, "In fact, your previous test scores in class were very good..."

"The bus is here, everyone, come over and line up!" At this time, Director Liu of the night school saw two empty buses slowly approaching the intersection, and hurriedly called out to the candidates gathered in the square.

"Get in the car first." Xu Qiang smiled at Liu Siying and then walked over.

After Director Liu lined up the people and counted the number of people, he checked the admission tickets of the examinees one by one and then let them get on the bus.

Liu Siying and several other female workers who got on the bus first sat in the front row, while Xu Qiang sat down in an empty seat in the back row.

After the car started, it drove towards the county town.

After more than an hour of driving along the rugged mountain road, several special vehicles arrived at the examination site for the adult college entrance examination, which were all middle schools in the local county.

After Xu Qiang got off the car with everyone else, he was stunned by the scene in front of him.

At this time, there were already two to three hundred candidates gathered outside the gate of No. 1 Middle School. The ages of these candidates holding stationery and textbooks varied greatly. Some of them, like Xu Qiang, looked to be in their early twenties, while some were obviously middle-aged, and there were a few who looked to be at least in their forties or fifties!

However, after Xu Qiang thought about it carefully, he felt that this kind of thing was reasonable.

After the college entrance examination was resumed in 77, many of the junior and senior high school graduates of that year were already in their mid-life.

Although the country initially relaxed some age restrictions for the college entrance examination, the 28-year-old age threshold still blocked too many junior and senior high school graduates.

Moreover, most of these junior and senior high school graduates are now working, and some have even worked in units and government departments for more than ten years. This age is far higher than the national age limit for college entrance examinations. In addition, they have jobs and are relatively old, so it is difficult for them to rely on full-time universities and the semesters are too long. Relatively speaking, adult night college is their last chance to obtain a higher diploma.

Seeing that some people had already begun to show their admission tickets at the front gate, and that several male and female teachers with armbands were conducting body searches behind him, Xu Qiang quickly took out three still warm boiled eggs from his pocket, peeled off the shells, and swallowed them one by one, which made him burp repeatedly.

After queuing up to enter the campus, Xu Qiang entered the examination room numbered on his admission ticket half an hour in advance.

The examination room where Xu Qiang was located was a high school classroom. In order to prevent cheating, the desks were spread far apart. In addition, there were three invigilators in a classroom: one stood at the podium, one sat in the back row, and one patrolled back and forth in the middle. The invigilation was very strict.

Xu Qiang took the examination for upgrading from high school to university.

In the 1980s, there were three subjects in the night university examinations for high school to junior college: Chinese, mathematics, and English. In addition to Chinese, mathematics, and English, high school to undergraduate students also had to take a physics test. There was one subject each in the morning and afternoon, so all the exams could be completed in just two days: Saturday and Sunday.

Xu Qiang had taken several mock exams at the workers' night school before, and he felt that the questions were not difficult. As for some rote memorization things, Xu Qiang had mostly remembered them after reading the textbooks for a few days.

After the test papers were handed out, Xu Qiang took a look at them and couldn't help but heaved a sigh of relief. He picked up the pen and wrote his name neatly...

(End of this chapter)