On the tenth day of the Lunar New Year, County Second High School's Retake Class began.
The day before school started, three things happened.
The first was that the school announced this year's college entrance exam subjects and their corresponding scores.
Ever since 1977, the total score for the exam had changed every year. The total score for the 1982 college entrance exam was different even from 1981's.
This year, mathematics was worth 120 points because it included a 20-point extra section. Politics, Chinese, physics, and chemistry were each worth 100 points.
English, which had been counted at only 50 percent of the paper score last year, had been raised to 70 percent, making it worth 70 points in total. Biology had also been raised to 50 points.
By that calculation, this year's college entrance exam would be worth 640 points in total.
For the few students who were good at English, that was an out-and-out piece of good news.
After all, in this age of "mute English," people's English scores varied enormously. A gap of several dozen points was enough to open up several tiers of difference.
The second matter was that Hu Man, the class monitor of Retake Class One, voluntarily stepped down from her position, citing "insufficient energy."
It was not that Hu Man had chickened out. Rather, ever since she had started going off-campus to study with Li Ye, many things that should have been handled by the class monitor had become inconvenient.
Then Xia Yue would naturally step in, and rather than waste energy tearing each other apart, Hu Man might as well shove the whole thing away.
The third matter was that Jiang Xiaoyan's grandfather and mother suddenly came to the school to transfer her out.
Li Ye was extremely surprised when he learned