Mathematics, a magical subject.
Those who know it, always know it; those who don’t...
"Fourth Sie, congratulations, after a week of hard study, your math score has finally dropped from a dreadful 26 points to 22 points."
"What does 22 points represent? It ans I could hand the test to first graders to randomly fill in the answers and still score 22 points."
"Yufei, honestly, did you bury your brain in the ground? Where did you bury it? I would dig three feet into the earth to get it out for you."
After tutoring Yufei one-on-one for a week, Lin Nianhe was completely enveloped in a sense of defeat—his existence posed no threat to her academic career, but was certainly the biggest blunder of her teaching career.
A perplexed Yufei with heavy eyes: "Sister He, I did exactly as you taught , why am I still getting it wrong?"
Lin Nianhe: "I say one plus one equals two, you hear one tis one equals two, rember one equals two, and you ask why you’re still getting it wrong."
Yufei: "Um... what does that an?"
Lin Nianhe: "..."
Following the excellent tradition of sharing the burden, Lin Nianhe packed Yufei off to Principal Wu.
"Alright, leave him to ," Principal Wu said with a smile to Lin Nianhe, "go study and revise your books, I’ll teach him."
Watching Lin Nianhe running away hastily, Principal Wu laughed: "This child, still so young, gets quite impatient with things..."
She soon realized that Lin Nianhe wasn’t the only young one.
Principal Wu, with fifteen years of teaching experience. Like all other teachers, her proudest students went on to study at Fudan, the least promising ended up loitering on the streets.
She had seen all types of students, even the most dim-witted ones.
Whether smart or foolish, she was still their teacher.
She had endured great sorrows and trudged through tough tis, yet stumbled deep into the pitfall of Yufei.
Principal Wu looked at Yufei’s 20-point math test, pondering for a long while, then sent Niuwa to fetch Lin Nianhe’s small teaching cane.
Yufei, the youngest of the Sie family. There’s a saying, "The eldest grandson, the youngest son, are the darling of the grandpa," and his "darling" status is distinct; he’s been beaten by his father since childhood.
In other hos, a father striking his son with a belt would be outrageous, but in the Sie family, nobody stops the father even if he were to fix a bayonet.
From enduring countless beatings since childhood, Yufei developed quite a skill for taking a beating.
So, when Principal Wu’s cane landed on his bottom, Youngest Master Sie rely scratched his buttocks a couple tis—it felt a bit itchy.
Principal Wu: "Niuwa, go, ask Sister Wen Lan for two nitroglycerin tablets for ."
Niuwa ran off, coming back with the nitroglycerin tablets and a cleaver enthusiastically sponsored by Sister Hehe.
Niuwa said: "Sister Hehe said, if one chop doesn’t solve it, keep chopping a few more tis."
Principal Wu: "..."
She didn’t advocate rote learning, nor did she recomnd dying from studying.
Principal Wu spent three days and nights with Yufei, finally concluding—this kid just doesn’t have a brain for math.
She was sowhat annoyed.
Starting from last year, when Yufei couldn’t even spend the three dollars he earned, she should have realized this.
Forcing soone who can’t learn math to study it, is an imnse torture both for the learner and the teacher.
Principal Wu didn’t let Yufei continue with math, but instead cramd him with Chinese, history, and politics, trying to recover the scores from other subjects.
Fortunately, Yufei was good in liberal arts; under the cheer of both the cleaver and the cane, he morized a history book in half a month.
...
After the news of the re-establishnt of college entrance exams spread from house to house, it seed like the whole family, the whole village, the whole country was focused only on this one thing.
The disputes it caused were countless.
So were indecisive between work and the entrance exam; so didn’t want to conform to the reality, marrying themselves off for two bags of rice, hoping to change their fate with knowledge; and there were married educated youths in the countryside wanting to take part in the entrance exams...
In the first two cases, Lan County has very few.
But the latter kind...
"Hey, aren’t you afraid that once your daughter-in-law goes off to college, she won’t need Zhuangshi anymore? If you ask , it’s better not to bother with university. They’ve been married for so long, having a child is what really matters!"
Widow Zhao had lost count of how many tis she had heard people say such things.
She rolled her eyes familiarly and spit out, "Damn brats, just because I have a daughter-in-law in university, you get jealous!"
In front of others, she was full of confidence, as if she never worried that such a thing would happen.
Behind their backs, as soon as she returned ho, she would look at Yu Xiangqin with teary eyes, as if every glance was one less she’d get.
Yu Xiangqin felt uncomfortable under her gaze, "What’s up? Do I have flowers on my face?"
Widow Zhao sniffled, muttering softly, "No, I was just thinking, once you go to college, I won’t see you anymore."
Yu Xiangqin was instantly horrified, "Did you et a fortune-teller? Am I going to die outside?"
Widow Zhao: "..."
This ti, Widow Zhao’s eye roll was especially heartfelt; she felt she had overthought—it seed her simple-minded daughter-in-law hadn’t even considered the possibility of abandoning her husband and mother-in-law.
Relieved, she went to catch a chicken from the coop, intending to make chicken soup to nourish her daughter-in-law’s brain.
But Yu Xiangqin, unsettled by her words, couldn’t focus on her books anymore.
After a long mont of thought, she decided to go ask Lin Nianhe.
"Lin Nianhe, do you know any fortune-tellers?"
"Huh?"
Lin Nianhe was baffled by the question, "What’s up? Are you choosing between asking for people’s help or figuring it out yourself, or do you want to ask a master to predict your exam questions? You might as well ask ."
"Damn brat," Yu Xiangqin poked her and hesitated before whispering, "My mom t a fortune-teller today who said if I go to college, I’ll die outside! I thought I’d find soone capable to check again."
Lin Nianhe: "...?"
She was a bit confused.
Fortune-tellers dared to roam around still?
After three minutes of silence, Lin Nianhe skeptically guessed—
"You don’t need to make up such a la excuse if you don’t want to revise."
"Huh?"
Yu Xiangqin was confused, then frowned tightly, "I’m serious! My mom’s been looking at with the eyes of a farewell to a corpse all day! She said so really nonsensical things, I feel like I’m about to die."
Lin Nianhe pondered another three minutes and suggested another possibility, "Is there a chance that Aunt Zhao thinks you should divorce your brother-in-law once you get into university?"
Yu Xiangqin confidently replied, "Impossible, am I such a thankless person?"
Lin Nianhe’s silence was deafening.
Yu Xiangqin frowned, "What does your silence an?"
Lin Nianhe touched her nose, reminiscing with her, "Do you rember what you said on your wedding day when your uncle was singing the bridal send-off song?"
"Huh? What did I say?"
"You told him to stop with the useless stuff, to hurry up and drink the wine because he owed three more cups."
"..."
"So, you really can’t say you know what’s good or bad."
"..."
"I’m afraid God might not be able to stand it and strike you down with lightning."
"..."
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