You Are All on the Same Team

More and more students streamed up and down the stairs in the teaching building. Class was about to start.

"Who does he think he is, acting all high and mighty? Sure, Shuimu is one thing, but Yanda? You think Shuimu and Yanda belong to your family?"

"Isn't that the guy?"

"Which guy?"

"Shen Qi, the provincial math champion!"

"The one on the banner in the administration building?"

"Yeah, that's him. He's in Class 2, Grade 11."

"A top student!"

A few girls passing by chatted among themselves, glancing back at Shen Qi as they walked.

"Hey, ladies! Want to go out?" Shen Qi waved at them.

The girls giggled and ran off.

Director Nie gave him an amused smile. "Shen Qi, you never used to flirt with girls so openly at school."

"My grades used to be bad, so I always felt inferior." Shen Qi answered honestly.

"Even with good grades, you're not allowed to date in high school." Director Nie's smile faded, and she spoke sternly.

"Got it, Director Nie. Studies should come first in high school."

"All right, Shen Qi. Class is about to start. Head back to your classroom and think about my suggestion."

When Shen Qi returned to the Class 2, Grade 11 classroom, his classmates greeted him with adulation.

"Shen Qi, the perfect-score king!"

"Please accept my humble admiration!"

"How do you get a perfect score every time?"

"How do you become the math champion?"

His classmates envied him, praised him, and asked him for advice.

"Getting a perfect score is no big deal. It mostly depends on how I'm feeling." Shen Qi sat down at his desk, took out his books, and got ready for class.

"If you'd stop showing off, we could still be friends." His classmates had just been worshipping Shen Qi, but now they didn't want to talk to him anymore.

Seasons turned, and spring gave way to summer.

Before long, June arrived, bringing the heat of summer.

After his Math Level reached Level 4, Shen Qi understood the subject more deeply. Lately, he'd been studying the Journal of Mathematics, published by the Chinese Mathematical Society, and the Mathematical Herald, published by Yanda. These two professional math journals were leading domestic publications, and their papers were right up his alley.

He was only reading to broaden his perspective and learn what the country's top mathematicians really thought about math.

To understand every paper in the Journal of Mathematics, you needed a solid grounding in mathematics. Otherwise, it was like reading a foreign language: you knew the words, but had no idea what they meant.

Shen Qi and Zhang Wanbang continued exchanging messages outside of class, but Shen Qi noticed that Zhang Wanbang was taking longer and longer to reply.

Zhang Wanbang used to write him something every day. Now he'd managed only a little over a hundred words in a whole week. His last sentence read, "I don't have much left to teach you. Mathematics is mainly learned through self-study."

It made sense. Shen Qi's Math Level was already 4, while the system ranked Zhang Wanbang as a Level 5 reference model. The two of them were only one level apart. A master had to keep a few tricks up his sleeve, so it was understandable that Zhang Wanbang felt he had little left to teach Shen Qi.

So one day, I'll graduate from the beginner's village and set off alone on a lonely new journey. And that day came several months sooner than I expected.

On June 25, Shen Qi packed his bags and headed alone to a resort in the northern suburbs, 38 kilometers from home. He would spend a week there at the provincial team's closed training camp.

The Nanyue Province Math Olympiad team had a head coach, an assistant head coach, a liaison officer, and six team members.

All six members had gathered at the northern suburbs resort. They ranged in age from sixteen to eighteen, and were the best young mathematicians in the province in their age group.

The camp had been set up in the suburbs because the area was scenic and especially peaceful.

Shen Qi was pleased with the arrangements. There was plenty to eat and drink, the Wi-Fi worked, and two people shared each room.

The closed training camp wasn't what Shen Qi had imagined. They weren't all being locked in a little room and ordered to solve problem after problem, with no food until they got the right answers.

In fact, their training sessions lasted only four hours a day. The rest of the time, they were free to use their phones, play games, read novels, or do whatever they liked.

The Provincial Mathematics Society's vice president was the head coach and taught the daily lessons.

"Can anyone tell me the essence of a function? Answer in one sentence." The vice president posed the question during that day's lesson.

"Put simply, functions study what changes and what stays the same," Shen Qi answered first.

"Oh, really? Does anyone else have anything to add?" the vice president asked.

The other team members shook their heads, then nodded in agreement with Shen Qi.

"Shen Qi is right. Functions study what changes and what stays the same. Next, let's move on to permutations and combinations."

For the past three days, the vice president had taught only concepts, not specific problems. He believed teaching students a way of thinking was more useful than teaching them how to solve a hundred problems.

"All right, that's it for today's lesson. Now I'd like to talk about something a little more relaxing. You've been learning math since first grade, or maybe even kindergarten. Do you know when mathematics first appeared, and who invented it?" The vice president was about to give them a lesson in the history of mathematics.

Shen Qi was the first to speak again. "I've seen a science program on CCTV. If we set aside primitive barter, mathematics in the true sense first appeared around 3000 BCE. It was either invented by the ancient Babylonians or the ancient Egyptians; historians disagree. In any case, it was one or the other. They couldn't have built the Hanging Gardens and the pyramids without using mathematical knowledge—not just the simple kind where you trade a cow for a sack of grain."

"I personally lean toward the ancient Babylonians. Of course, my opinion isn't definitive; I'm just discussing it with you all." The vice president wrote some strange symbols on the blackboard, then asked, "Do you know what I've written?"

The other five team members looked bewildered. Shen Qi was puzzled too, and could only guess. "Cuneiform?"

"Wow, Shen Qi, you can even read cuneiform?"

"I can't read it. I just guessed it was Babylonian cuneiform. Teacher Tian, didn't you just say you leaned toward the Babylonians?"

"That's right. It's Babylonian cuneiform." The vice president's surname was Tian, so Shen Qi and the others called him Teacher Tian.

As he went on, Teacher Tian began to get annoyed. "The six of you are one team! Why is Shen Qi always the only one speaking? The rest of you should share your views too. Tell me what you think of Babylonian mathematics."

"We... really don't know. We can't pretend we do." The team members looked helpless. They could understand a lesson on functions, but what was all this about cuneiform?

"Ah." Teacher Tian sighed. Of the team, Shen Qi was the only one with a real chance of earning them a good result at the national competition. Shen Qi's perspective, knowledge, and way of thinking were all ahead of the other five, and that was very important in mathematics. "Shen Qi, keep guessing. Do you think this string of cuneiform symbols has any meaning?"

Shen Qi studied it for a while. "I don't know whether it means anything, but I'd guess it has something to do with mathematics. The cuneiform symbols you've drawn seem to follow a pattern. The first through tenth symbols are all different, but some of the later ones share parts of the same patterns. So are you going to teach us base twelve?"

"You know about base twelve?" Teacher Tian was a little surprised, but then again, Shen Qi was the provincial champion. Knowing about base twelve wasn't all that astonishing.

Shen Qi nodded. "A little. In The Martian, the main character was stranded on Mars. Just when he was about to die, he used base twelve to contact mission control on Earth, and eventually escaped and made it back home. That was seriously awesome. It's a great book, with a wild imagination and a plot that somehow makes it all believable. I've been really into science fiction lately, the hard sci-fi kind."

"Base twelve was also invented by the ancient Babylonians. It's not too difficult to understand. What I want to talk about now is base sixty. Just listen for fun and broaden your horizons. It's fine if you don't understand. I know you're all top students at your schools, but a top student shouldn't just know how to grind through problems. That's a fake top student. A real top student needs to understand one thing: perspective." Teacher Tian continued drawing Babylonian mathematical symbols in cuneiform. His study of ancient mathematics was a bit like Kong Yiji showing off how to write the character for 'fennel'—an exercise in self-admiration with no one to appreciate it.

But now Teacher Tian had found a kindred spirit. Shen Qi was listening with keen interest as he spoke about the mathematical civilization of five thousand years ago...