Chapter 46 The Era of Struggle

For a long time, Zhang Yunqi's study life seemed to become very peaceful, following a routine. Many things were repeated over and over again: class, class, get out of class again, class again, get out of class again, playing basketball, selling Tetris handheld games, delivering goods to dealers, eating, sleeping, and talking about the width of girls' hips and the thickness of their breasts behind their backs...

Campus life has its own fixed format, but he does not find it boring, because within this fixed format, the youthful classmates around him will always create many new details, which are different every time.

When people reach this age, they are always easy to satisfy.

If the last time you play basketball, as long as someone changes, or the way the ball rolls into the basket is different, everyone will never regard the two times of playing basketball as a repetitive activity. Even if they feel it is repetitive, they will still be interested in it, just like children are interested in the fixed game of Tetris.

As the midterm exams approach, even the students who are usually lazy become extra diligent at this time. Students are in a hurry with their books in their arms and they race against time to eat in the cafeteria.

Zhang Yunqi wakes up early. Every day when he gets up before dawn and goes out for a run, he can see students doing morning reading in every corner of the school. Late at night, under the street lights and in the toilets, there are large numbers of people holding books.

From them, Zhang Yunqi sensed a kind of power of striving. In fact, we have to admit that the 90s in China was an era of belief in success through hard work. When he was young, the words he heard most often were: "Learn math, physics and chemistry well, and you will not be afraid to travel around the world." The statement "My father is Li Gang" was unimaginable in the 90s, which was equivalent to admitting the shame of not working hard! In later generations, this has become a commonplace and even worth showing off.

The environment is very contagious.

In this key high school where academic performance is the criterion for success, the tense atmosphere of the eight-school alliance's high school entrance examination also distracted Zhang Yunqi from his passion for selling handheld game consoles. Although his goal was relatively simple, to be an average student with passable academic performance, average students also had to get points.

Other subjects were fine, and he learned them smoothly and rarely encountered obstacles. The only exception was English. His foundation was so poor that he had a hard time learning it. Sometimes he really wanted to write a letter to the guys in the Ministry of Education, telling them that the motherland was so vast and there was enough for him to deal with, and that he had no intention of causing trouble on the other side of the ocean. What's the point of learning this thing?

Of course, he was just thinking about it. It was useless to write it down. In the early 1990s, there were three major crazes: studying abroad, starting a business, and learning English. Many people relied on English to make a living. The current reality is that if your English level is not good, you have to work harder than others.

Zhang Yunqi's goal is simple: pass! Don't let Jiang Lihua get the chance to feed him shit.

So he got up half an hour earlier than usual, joined the morning reading team after running every day, and went to the classroom to read at 7:30. He studied step by step during the day, delivered goods to handheld game dealers at noon, and used all the evening self-study time to learn English. Every day, he was the last one to leave the classroom.

After a while, he felt tired, but also felt fulfilled. Maybe for many people, it is difficult to get up at six o'clock, memorize words, and calm down... But there are always some people who can get up at five o'clock, memorize six lessons of words a day, and patiently read a book. No one has superpowers, so what do they rely on? One word, force! So, people still need to rely on force, and force is the first motivation.

In Class 168, Chu Jian is the best student in English. Zhang Yunqi asks her whenever he encounters something he doesn’t understand.

She was a little surprised when they first met. From the questions Zhang Yunqi asked, she could feel that his English foundation was indeed a little poor. But she knew that Zhang Yunqi was the top scorer in the senior high school entrance examination, and it was unlikely that the top scorer would have a bias in certain subjects. However, she was a girl who pried into other people's privacy, and she was very attentive when tutoring Zhang Yunqi.

Once during evening self-study, Chu Jian took the book "The Thorn Birds" that he had just finished reading to return it to Zhang Yunqi. Zhang Yunqi happened to have an English question that he didn't understand, so he pulled Chu Jian aside to ask for help.

During the tutoring, Chu Jian saw a copy of "Remembrance of Things Past" on Zhang Yunqi's desk, so she borrowed it again. After a while, when she came to return the book, she saw another copy of "The Scarlet Letter" on Zhang Yunqi's desk... Since then, she has never squatted in the bookstore to read books again. I don't know when it started, but during the evening self-study, Chu Jian began to habitually sit in Wang Xiaokai's seat, study with Zhang Yunqi, and tutor Zhang Yunqi in English, but most of the time, the two were busy with their own things, and occasionally chatted about those books that are beneficial to life, and those illusory dreams in youth.

Time flies, and it's November in a blink of an eye.

During a self-study class on November 11, class monitor Lin Yueying took a form and posted it on the wall, saying it was the examination room allocation list for the midterm exam of the No. 5 Middle School in the city.

All the classmates gathered around, trying to find their own examination rooms. Zhang Yunqi, Wang Xiaokai and his group did not go to check, because Lin Yueying had already seen the examination room allocation list. She reported the examination rooms for her group. Everyone's examination rooms were very far back, basically between 15 and 35.

The examination rooms at the No. 168 Middle School in the city have always been allocated according to grades. The first six examination rooms are basically occupied by students from subject-level classes and key classes. If one or two students from an ordinary class like get in, they are as precious as our national treasure, the giant panda.

There is only one such national treasure giant panda in Class 168: When I first saw her, she was in the sixth examination room. This was not surprising, and no one in their group was surprised. What surprised Lin Yueying and Yu Xiaorui was that Zhang Yunqi was actually in the last examination room, and he was the top scorer in the high school entrance examination.

Zhao Han glanced at Zhang Yunqi who was sitting in his seat doing English questions and said casually, "Zhang Yunqi, why are you in the last exam room?"

Zhang Yunqi raised his head and glanced at Zhao Han.

He realized that the news that he was the top scorer in the high school entrance examination had leaked out, otherwise Zhao Han would not have asked him such a question.

They were in this small circle and chatted together every day, but apart from the first meeting, he was most impressed by Zhao Han, who looked like a stewardess, tall, with long legs, a thin waist and big breasts. She was also very mature and had her own ideas.

He smiled and replied, "I'm not sure either."

"Oh my god! Yunqi, are you really stupid or just pretending to be stupid? It's just that your grades are bad." Yang Wei, who was lying on the desk and spinning a pen, complained.

He was the burden of the class, having paid the school construction fee to get in. There were only three people in the entire class 168 in the last examination room, him, Zhao Han, and Zhang Yunqi, so he felt very embarrassed and had a lot of objections to the practice of arranging examination rooms according to grades. He said, "In our No. Middle School, everything is really based on grade rankings. Taking exams depends on grade rankings, and arranging seats depends on grade rankings. I'll even queue up according to grade rankings for squatting toilets and taking shits."

Wang Xiaokai sneered: "Don't make fun of me, Wei Ge. If we really line up to use the restroom based on grades, with your grades, your shit might be blown dry in your crotch by the wind, and you'd still be a long way from the restroom door."

Yang Wei almost fainted from anger: "Fuck you, you idiot! You don't even allow me to squat and shit, how can I live like this!"

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(End of this chapter)