Because of a £5.68 discrepancy, Shen Qi and Zhou Yu'an were locked in a standoff with the British girl at the checkout.
This sparked a lively discussion among the British shoppers queued behind them.
"They're Asians."
"Chinese?"
"The Chinese are the best at math."
"The Chinese multiplication table is amazing."
The British shoppers watching weren't annoyed that Shen Qi and Zhou Yu'an were holding up the line without paying. On the contrary, they seemed rather interested in the commotion. In their minds, anyone who was good at math was impressive.
"Shen Qi, what should we do? Are we going to get in trouble? Forget it, let's just pay her £33.50 and leave. Better to lose a little money than invite trouble." Zhou Yu'an was timid and ready to back down.
"Don't rush. Don't panic. Can't you see all these Brits are praising us?" Shen Qi was calmer. He held his dual-currency credit card in his hand. If he really couldn't take it anymore, he could just pay the £33.50 by card. It wasn't worth getting beaten up over a few pounds.
"She means no harm. Please don't misunderstand, young gentlemen," said a man behind Shen Qi and Zhou Yu'an in a distinctly South London accent.
The two turned around and saw a smiling elderly white man looking them over through his glasses.
The British gentleman had rather unusual features. His face was long and thin, with hollow cheeks, as though it had been carved with a knife. His hooked nose was remarkably sharp, and his ears stuck out at nearly right angles, almost perpendicular to his cheeks. Without his gold-rimmed glasses, he might have looked a little frightening.
"No, no." Shen Qi waved his hand to show that they were both law-abiding citizens and hadn't come to cause trouble in the British Empire.
"Tesco is a world-famous supermarket chain. They wouldn't deliberately cheat their customers. It's true that some discounts are calculated incorrectly, but I think that's an oversight by their finance manager and has nothing to do with this lovely young lady."
"The British are obviously worse at math than the Chinese. Without calculators, most of us can't do addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division with numbers under twenty. As a result, we lose about eight hundred million pounds a year. Our prime minister has decided to import math textbooks from China to improve the overall math skills of the British people." The old man glanced at the cashier, then at Shen Qi and Zhou Yu'an as he explained. He was holding a shopping basket and was a customer too.
Shen Qi, whose English was at Level 1, understood only about half of what the old man said. The gist seemed to be that the British were terrible at math and often got the sums wrong, and that they hoped their Chinese friends would be understanding.
If you put it that way, then I'm not mad anymore. Shen Qi stopped dwelling on the £5.68 loss, swiped his card, and paid £33.50.
The bewildered cashier put Shen Qi's purchases into a shopping bag. He took it and prepared to leave.
"Perhaps I can make up for your loss of five pounds and sixty-eight pence in another way," the British gentleman added.
Holy crap! Shen Qi was startled.
"What's so surprising?" Zhou Yu'an asked, baffled.
This strange old man can do mental arithmetic with numbers under forty. He's a local master! A powerful dragon can't crush a local snake. Zhou Yu'an, quick, run! Shen Qi grabbed the shopping bag and bolted.
Zhou Yu'an chased Shen Qi out of the supermarket. The two stood outside, panting, then walked slowly along Waterloo Road, admiring the English scenery.
As they went, Shen Qi—unable to resist the temptation—stopped at a roadside stall. He'd been drawn in by the traditional British snack, fish and chips.
"Hey, Zhou Yu'an, let's buy some local London food and give it a try." Shen Qi pulled out a ten-pound note, his mouth already watering.
"Shen Qi, are you a glutton? You bought a pile of food at the supermarket, and now you want to buy more! Fish and chips are awful. I don't want any. Come on." Zhou Yu'an tugged at Shen Qi, trying to drag him away.
"You've never been to Britain before. How do you know fish and chips are awful?"
"My New Oriental teacher said so."
"Ever heard of putting theory into practice? Practice is the only way to test any theory. Zhou Yu'an, you're such a cheapskate. You don't want to spend money, so I'll treat you. Boss... No, wait. Hey, man, fish and chips, two." Shen Qi handed the ten-pound note to the young man at the stall.
The British vendor quickly wrapped up two portions of fish and chips and handed them to Shen Qi and Zhou Yu'an. Then he gave them a five-pound note and a handful of coins in change.
Shen Qi glanced at the change. One portion of fish and chips cost £2.30, so two came to £4.60. He'd been given £8.60 back. What kind of math is that?
Were the British really that bad at math?
Any Chinese primary school student could instantly tell you what ten minus 4.6 was.
Shen Qi returned £3.20 to the British vendor, but the stubborn man wasn't pleased. He insisted he hadn't made a mistake.
"Zhou Yu'an, back me up. I'm an honest man. I didn't deliberately swindle the British people out of their money or belongings."
"Come on, let's go. If you keep arguing with this Brit, he might hit you."
With £8.60 in change, Shen Qi and Zhou Yu'an left the fish-and-chips stall and went to sit on a bench by the River Thames to eat.
"Newton was British. He invented calculus," Shen Qi said.
"Green and Taylor were great British mathematicians," Zhou Yu'an replied. "They invented Green's function and Taylor's formula, and nearly drove me crazy."
"And Maclaurin and Cramer, too. The Maclaurin series and Cramer's rule bothered me for a long time."
"Turing was British too. He was a mathematical genius."
"Britain produced so many outstanding mathematicians throughout its history. Why are modern British people so bad at math?"
"If Chinese middle school students came to Britain, they'd probably dominate—at least in math."
"So Britain really is a great place."
"But seriously, Shen Qi, you need to work on your English."
"That's true. Luckily, the IMO problems are translated into all the participants' languages. Otherwise, I might not even understand the questions."
After strolling around London, Shen Qi and Zhou Yu'an returned to the hotel to prepare for the upcoming IMO competition.
For nearly thirty years, China had been the strongest champion on the International Mathematical Olympiad circuit—without a doubt.
Since first competing in the IMO in 1985, China's Olympiad team had racked up eighteen team championships, beating every other country hands down.
The Chinese team, including Shen Qi, had come to Britain for one purpose: to win.
"Shen Qi, Chinese people are so good at math overall. Even primary school students can do addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division with numbers under a hundred, while most British adults can't handle simple calculations with numbers under twenty. We can say that we've built a very solid foundation in math from childhood. But why has not a single Chinese person ever won the Fields Medal, while the British, whose math is so terrible, have won it six times?"
Zhou Yu'an lay on the single bed in their hotel room and added, "I mean Chinese people with Chinese nationality. All right, even if we include Shing-Tung Yau and Terence Tao, only two ethnic Chinese have won the Fields Medal so far."
"I feel like math in our country is a bit like cycling. We have a huge population involved in the sport and an incredibly deep base of participants, but there are only a handful of world-class competitors at the very top. Britain, on the other hand, may be full of weaklings, but when a few strong ones emerge, they're world-class superstars. I can't explain the real reason. Maybe it's because our national circumstances are different." After saying this, Shen Qi went to take a shower. He knew, of course, that the Fields Medal, awarded once every four years, was the highest achievement in the Mathematics Community. So why has not a single Chinese person ever won it? It makes no sense.
On July 25, local time in Britain, the Chinese Olympiad team gathered at the hotel for a meeting.
The British organizers had confined the Chinese team leader, and the deputy team leader was currently in charge of everything.
In fact, the team leaders of every country had been confined by the organizers. They had been taken to a secret location and weren't allowed to contact the outside world.
For the sake of fair competition, this rule had been in place since the first IMO was held in 1959.
The team leaders gathered together, each contributing one to three problems to create a pool of nearly three hundred questions. After several rounds of screening, they voted on the six questions that received the most votes to become the official problems for that year's IMO. Each team leader then translated them into their own language and submitted them to the organizers. When the contestants received their papers, the questions would be in their native languages, so there would be no language barrier when solving them.
The team leaders wouldn't be released until the competition was over. This system guaranteed fairness.
With their team leader locked away, the deputy leader of the Chinese Olympiad team gave the pre-competition pep talk. "In the nearly thirty editions of the International Mathematical Olympiad, China has claimed eighteen team championships. We're the undisputed kings of this competition."
"However, team members and coaches, you must understand that although our Chinese Olympiad team is strong overall, we aren't invincible."
"We can lose, and we've made mistakes before. We've lost to the United States, Russia, and even Korea. Those were painful lessons."
"In this year's IMO, those three teams remain the toughest obstacles on our road to the championship. Some developed countries, especially the United States, believe in taking what they can get. They don't cultivate talent; they harvest it."
"In short, we must give it our all. Do you have the courage, boys?" The deputy leader grew more impassioned as he spoke.
"Yes!"
"Are you determined?"
"Yes!"
"What's our goal?"
"The championship! The championship! The championship!"
"Good. I'm very pleased by your steadfast determination to face danger and press forward. Victory will be ours! Shen Qi, Zhou Yu'an, and Yu Lei, come with me to the pre-contest briefing. The rest of the team and the coaches will stay at the hotel and prepare for tomorrow's IMO." The deputy leader left the hotel with the three contestants and headed on foot to the University of South Bank, London.
The grand hall at the University of South Bank, London, was packed. Representatives from the Olympiad teams of 102 countries had gathered there.
A group of important figures of every skin color sat on the stage. They were renowned experts in the international mathematical community.
"Now, please welcome the chair of the jury, Fields Medalist, Fellow of the Royal Society of London, and Oxford University professor, Sir Andrew Wiles, to announce the competition rules." The host invited the chair of the jury to read out the rules. It was a routine procedure, and every country's team had to have a representative present.
The chair of the jury was an elderly white man. He rose to acknowledge the audience, and the hall erupted in thunderous applause.
A Fields Medalist, a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, an Oxford professor, and a knight appointed by the Queen of England—all those titles in one person were incredible. Holy crap, what an impressive man! The applause continued without end.
Professor Wiles began reading out the competition rules. He had once held another highly distinguished position in the field: head of the Princeton Mathematics Department. He had astonished the world, and his most famous achievement was proving Fermat's Last Theorem in 1995.
After his term at Princeton ended, Wiles returned to his home country, Britain, and became a professor at his alma mater, Merton College, Oxford.
"Holy crap..." Shen Qi and Zhou Yu'an stared in astonishment from the audience. They'd met the chair of the jury, the fearsomely renowned Sir Wiles, before. He was the very same British old man they'd run into at the supermarket a couple of days earlier.
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