The more I thought about it, the bolder I felt. Even my stride seemed to stir up a breeze!
"Wang Sanhe!" He Xiang called out cheerfully as I neared my front door. "What are you thinking about? You look like you rule the world!"
He Xiang was my childhood friend. We had grown up together, and her grades had always ranked among the top three in the city.
Yet fate seemed to have played a strange little joke on us-we had taken the college entrance exam in 2003.
"Strange" was the only word I could use to describe it. Calling it either tragic or lucky would be asking for a beating.
Of course, calling it strange might get me cursed out too, but I really couldn't find a better word.
The 2003 college entrance exam was unprecedented.
With the shadow of SARS hanging over us, the exam papers had actually been stolen! The day before the exam, no less.
The appearance of the legendary "backup papers" had made that year's exam the hardest in its history.
We only learned all this after the exam, once the details of the case came to light. At the time, we had been struggling to find a glimmer of hope in questions we didn't even know how to begin.
That year's math exam had felt like an uncrossable chasm.
For students aiming for top-tier universities, most lost marks should have come from the Chinese and English essays, with a few more allowed for extended-response questions and minor careless mistakes.
The answers to every major math problem should have come readily to hand.
But in the exam room, I hadn't had a clue how to solve even the first major problem.
I had hurriedly skipped to the second, only to find I couldn't work that one out either.
The third, the fourth-again and again, nothing...
By then, sniffles had begun rising from all around the exam room.
Drilling questions under intense pressure every day had taught us one thing: if we couldn't crack two or three major math problems, we could pretty much forget about the universities in Projects 985 and 211.
Yet instead of feeling upset, I had felt a strange surge of excitement.
Haha, it's fine! Nobody else can do them either!
At the same time, I had grumbled inwardly, Had the teachers who set this year's exam gone insane?
They actually dared to go this far!
Unbelievable!
Once I relaxed, I had actually started finding ways into those seemingly impossible problems I'd skipped.
When I walked out of the exam room in high spirits, everyone outside had been crying.
The sniffles from earlier had turned into outright wailing. It had looked like a memorial service.
In the end, the average math score was reportedly somewhere between thirty and fifty out of a possible 150.
Math had been on the first day. That one subject had shattered countless students' confidence and affected their performance over the next few days.
He Xiang had been one of them.
What should have been a safe shot at Tsinghua or Peking University had slipped through her fingers.
It hadn't been that much worse-she had still gone to a Project 985 university-but it was a bitter shame all the same.
She had probably felt a frustration she couldn't put into words.
I, on the other hand, had turned disaster into good fortune and performed better than usual.
My carefree attitude had won the day.
Was this fate? I stared at her.
"Hey, where's your soul wandered off to?" She waved her little hand in front of my eyes.
"Still here!" I snapped out of it and smiled.
"What were you thinking about so intently?" she asked curiously.
Her question reminded me that I still hadn't figured out what the old Taoist had told me.
He Xiang would definitely understand.
She didn't just get good grades. Her knowledge of history and literature left everyone else in the dust.
She was the sort who could write full-length novels in Classical Chinese and script historical dramas.
If even she didn't understand, there probably weren't many people in the world who would.
I quickly repeated the old Taoist's words. "What does 'south is up, north is down' mean?"
He Xiang gave me a peculiar look, as though she could see straight into my mind. It made my skin crawl.
"What's wrong?" I asked, baffled.
"Why are you asking that out of nowhere?" He Xiang tilted her head at me.
One look at her expression told me she definitely knew more than I did.
I played dumb. "Nothing. I just saw those words on a scrap of paper. They didn't seem like an idiom, so I thought I'd ask."
He Xiang was a very trusting girl. She didn't suspect a thing and began explaining "south is up, north is down."
On the earliest maps in ancient China, south was at the top and north at the bottom. Ordinary people rarely traveled far, so maps were generally used by emperors, generals, and high officials. Whether an emperor or a general was setting up camp, they sat in the north facing south. From that perspective, south was drawn at the top.
In ancient times, south was the honored direction. South represented yang, and north represented yin. Becoming emperor was described as "facing south in honor," while defeat was called "fleeing north." East came next in precedence, followed by west, which was why the crown prince lived in the Eastern Palace.
That was also the reason behind the idiom "heaven to the south, earth to the north." Heaven was south and above; earth was north and below.
Only after the Qing Dynasty began did maps gradually shift to putting north at the top and south at the bottom.
In ancient times, toilets were generally to the south or southwest, some distance from the main house to let the smell disperse. Kitchens were to the north or northeast to make heating easier.
So going south to the toilet was called "going up to the toilet," while going north to the kitchen was called "going down to the kitchen."
"Of course, 'going up to the toilet' and 'going down to the kitchen' weren't just because south was up and north was down." At that point, He Xiang suddenly stopped.
I had been listening with rapt attention. Why had she slammed on the brakes?
He Xiang smiled at me. "I've finished explaining south being up and north being down. Anything else would be off topic."
"That's fine, that's fine. Finish explaining the toilet and the kitchen first. You can't leave it halfway! What other reasons were there?" I asked curiously.
Before you continue