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墨書 Inktalez
The noise outside and the warmth of home could not stop the relentless march of time. The college entrance examination was advancing steadily, following its established rhythm. This time, however, it felt quite different from previous years; my heart was filled with new memories.
About a month before the exams, we received news that there would be no preliminary tests this year, and all students would participate in the high school graduation examination. The exam was still divided into arts and sciences, with seven subjects in the science stream, all scored out of 100 points, and the difficulty level was much lower than that of the college entrance exam. As transfer students, we didn’t even have the interest to treat it as a mock exam; we approached it with a mindset of merely getting through the three days of testing. When the results came out, the highest score in our class was over 650 points, achieved by Xie Jun, which was about 50 points higher than the highest score in the county from previous years. I managed to score over 600 points as well, with a perfect score of 100 in mathematics.
Shortly after the graduation exam, Teacher Changlin began organizing class leaders to sort out all students' academic records and prepare for college entrance registration. The current students had a solid foundation from the past three years; they just needed to make some adjustments by deleting or replacing any inappropriate records. For transfer students like us, however, everything had to be redone from scratch, generating personal histories through reverse engineering.
As a result, my personnel file followed me until I left the bank in 2006, with my elementary school, middle school, and high school enrollment dates all pushed back two years, and my experiences at San Zhong vanished without a trace. It irked me that the student responsible for organizing the files simplified things by writing my name as Long Bao Song instead of Long Biao Song. Although the former name carried my parents' hopes and my own memories, under the banner of "Everything for the College Entrance Exam," when I discovered this change on my exam admission ticket, there was no chance to revert it back. I felt no resentment towards that nameless classmate.
This change caused "Long Biao Song" to disappear from my life for over twenty years. It wasn’t until one day when Liu Xingjia, the eldest among our group from San Zhong, sent me a text message referring to me as "Biao Song" that I remembered I had once used that name. It brought back memories I recounted in "Dragon Walker" at the beginning of "A Name That Can Be Named."
A few days later, one afternoon, Teacher Liu came to our classroom and said, “Students who wish to apply to the Military Academy should register today and go for a physical examination at the county hospital tomorrow.”
Having harbored a strong fascination with heroes since childhood, I always admired lone heroes like Yan Long from the self-defense counterattack against Vietnam and various iron-blooded soldiers from battles in Two Mountains. I had heard that Zeng Jiyang from San Zhong enlisted and became a reconnaissance soldier before being accepted into the Army Command College in Guilin. Eager to join their ranks, I quickly registered with the class leaders.
The next morning, I jogged across a bridge with several classmates who had also signed up and arrived at the county people's hospital. We received our physical examination forms at the entrance and proceeded to knock on doors in various departments according to the checklist; perhaps due to special arrangements at the hospital or because it was still early—there weren’t many patients aside from us students undergoing exams—so we avoided long waits.
The first examination was for vision. Unlike the usual "E" chart we were accustomed to, this time we used a "C" chart with a maximum vision score of 2.0. Having often lamented about having too good eyesight and seeing too much before, I easily achieved full marks this time and happily moved on to the next station.
The second examination was for surgery; we were asked to undress completely in an empty room and jump around a bit before being examined closely by a doctor who wore gloves. He scanned us left and right before checking our thighs and shoulders by touch. Finally, he spread apart our buttocks to check for hemorrhoids and spread our legs to examine genital development. After five of us were checked, he marked some symbols on our forms that we couldn’t understand.
The third examination was for hearing; I felt confident as I could hear the doctor’s voice clearly regardless of distance. After testing my hearing, he put on a magnifying glass and began examining my ears further. As soon as he looked into my left ear, he exclaimed in surprise: “Such poor hearing and you want to apply for military school?” Alarmed by his words, I pleaded urgently: “Uncle, my hearing is very good! Please take another look.” The doctor impatiently checked my right ear again and sighed as he wrote down two lines on my form: “Left eardrum perforation,” “Right eardrum swelling.”
It seemed that applying for military school was out of reach now. As I opened the door to leave for school, I ran into Teacher Liu Suzhen—a colleague of my mother’s—who had been temporarily assigned by the county education committee to organize this military physical examination group. Seeing my dejected expression, she asked about my situation and said: “Biao Song, you should continue with the remaining examinations; if it’s just a minor issue with your hearing it shouldn’t matter much. Let me ask the doctor if there’s any way around it.”
By noon, after completing all examination items, as I walked out of the hospital building, Teacher Liu called me aside and told me: “The doctor said you cannot apply for military school anymore; I wish you success in getting into other better universities.”
Time flew by quickly as the day of the college entrance exam approached ever more urgently.
On July 5th, my mother came all the way from our hometown to stay at Fourth Uncle's house in town to cook for me so that I could focus on preparing for exams while taking care of my health.
On July 6th, my father also arrived in town to remind me to take exams seriously without being careless or feeling pressured; he believed that as long as I performed at my normal level, I would be able to get into a good university.
On July 7th, the college entrance exam officially began with Chinese language as the first subject. The foundational knowledge posed no difficulty for me; although writing an essay was somewhat challenging, having gone through so many mock trainings and written numerous diary entries in a style reminiscent of Lu Xun's works allowed me to complete it smoothly.
After finishing the first subject exam, a classmate who transferred into Class 45 quietly informed me that his older brother was one of the main examiners. Since we had developed a good relationship over time and complemented each other’s strengths in subjects we excelled at while sitting according to standardized seating arrangements for Exam A—so we decided to play some tricks: we would start from opposite ends of our answer sheets and exchange answers halfway through.
During our English exam afterward, we collaborated very well; difficult pronunciation questions and sentence structure items were nearly copied verbatim from his answers while my strengths lay in reading comprehension where we agreed about 70% on answers—he trusted me just as much as I trusted him.
However, during mathematics things went awry; I started from behind but spent over half an hour on the last question while rushing against time just managed to finish within scheduled limits; when exchanging standardized answers back again without simply copying his responses—I double-checked several calculations only to find nearly half were incorrect! Stunned by this realization—was he not working on Exam A? There wasn’t enough time left so I had no choice but start again from scratch until only fifteen minutes remained when an alarm sounded—the earlier section still had several unanswered questions while those assigned later hadn’t been reviewed either.
With anxiety weighing heavily upon us after completing math—we both looked pale but thankfully only three subjects remained ahead—we refrained from exchanging answers again but gritted our teeth determinedly finishing this crucial exam that would decide our fates and futures.
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