Chapter 36

Chapter 37: Su Can of Xiahai City

Yu Qiushou had heard only a little about Zeng Qu anming. He had heard that the Planning Office director was very strict in his conduct, but had offended too many people. Whatever rumors reached his ears, they were all negative reports about Zeng Qu anming. Having risen to the position of mayor, he had his own judgment, but with so many people repeating the same stories, he was not entirely free of prejudice against Zeng Qu anming. His question now was merely a formality. He did not even know Su Can's name, and perhaps, once today's banquet ended, he would forget what Su Can looked like.

Xiao Fei's wife glanced at Su Can, a little more disdain in her eyes. Their family lived right across from his, and she had long heard Zeng Qu anming's wife, Yin Shuying, repeatedly mention her troublesome nephew Su Can: how his grades always ranked at the bottom, and how his teachers kept calling his parents in. Back then, Su Can had quite a reputation in their residential compound. When her daughter Xiao Yunyun had grown too close to him, she had been among those who strongly opposed it. Although she no longer worried that Su Can posed any threat to her daughter, her prejudice against him had not disappeared.

Xiao Yunyun picked up a small cake in front of her with her five slender, delicate fingers, took a little bite, and looked over with a smile.

"Su Can, Mayor Yu asked you a question. Tell him yourself," Zeng Qu anming said mildly.

Xiao Fei gave an amused snort inwardly. There it was. Zeng Qu anming could hardly bear the embarrassment anymore.

Before Su Can could speak, his aunt Yin Shuying excitedly answered first. "645 points! On the high school entrance exam!"

"Hey! Keep up the good work-" Xiao Fei was smiling broadly and about to continue when he suddenly registered what she had said. His eyes immediately bulged, the abrupt change in his expression almost uncanny. "Huh? What? How many points? How many points did your Su Can get?"

Xiao Yunyun had put half a piece of cake into her mouth, but could no longer swallow it. Her beautiful eyes watched Su Can in bewilderment, her lips slightly parted, a hint of mystery in the depths behind her pearly teeth and delicate tongue.

Had Su Can said it himself, Xiao Fei's wife would have scoffed at the score to some degree. She might even have thought he was taking the joke too far. Wasn't that far too outrageous an exaggeration? But coming from his eldest aunt Yin Shuying, those words were different.

With women like Xiao Fei's wife, Yin Shuying had always been straightforward and said whatever was on her mind. She was also the elder sister figure in their circle, and her words carried weight. She freely aired her own family's dirty laundry and would never think to cover it up. If Su Can was no good, she had no need to deliberately hide it, so almost anything that came out of her mouth was the plain truth.

"Oh." Yu Qiushou was a little surprised. Only then did he look squarely at Su Can, his gaze becoming more appraising. "An excellent score. How come I've never heard you had such an outstanding nephew? A handsome young fellow, too. Hmm, he has a spark about him! He's at No. 1 High School, isn't he?"

"He was at City No. 3 Middle School before, but he's planning to go to No. 1 High School this time. There's just some difficulty with the paperwork..." His eldest uncle actually let an involuntary smile of pride spread across his face. He knew just how hard it was for Su Can to draw that kind of surprise from Deputy Mayor Yu. Lately, this nephew of his had truly been baffling.

"Oh? What sort of difficulty?"

"There was a problem with his school preferences on the application. We never imagined he could score so high if he worked at it, so he put down Third Middle School. Once the scores came out, we realized he had enough points for No. 1 High School. We approached their academic affairs office, but they said there was a problem and it wouldn't be easy to arrange..." His younger uncle, Zeng Zhaoding, spoke first.

Yu Qiushou frowned. What kind of academic affairs office turned away an outstanding student like this? It seemed they were deliberately making things difficult. "Not easy? What's so difficult about it? A student this outstanding would be shortchanged at No. 3 Middle School. Since you want to go to No. 1 High School, then go to No. 1 High School. Just tell Principal Ding Juntao I said so!"

That was quite a powerful endorsement. With Deputy Mayor Yu's personal directive coming down, Tian Feng in the academic affairs office probably would not even be able to put up a struggle.

Xiao Fei looked gloomy, and no one knew what he was thinking.

Xiao Yunyun's gaze toward Su Can, however, changed. There was actually less condescension in it. As she recalled those days in the past, her eyes grew a little gentler toward him, with a measure of returning admiration.

That mellow male voice rang out again at that moment. "Su Can, are you the Su Can from Xiahai City?"

Everyone could not help glancing at the man who had spoken. Still reeling from the shock, Xiao Fei's wife thought that for a reporter sent down from Xinhua News Agency, he certainly did not speak very coherently. Wasn't that a pointless question? The boy wasn't off in some far-flung corner of the world.

Yu Qiushou, however, sensed something and looked seriously at Zhang Chaoyang. From his tone, this Xinhua News Agency reporter seemed to know Su Can.

The atmosphere suddenly fell quiet. The prominent figures from the cultural departments and supervisory agencies present all turned to look.

How could a Xinhua News Agency reporter from the capital, Beijing, from China's most authoritative news organization, know an insignificant Su Can in a small city, whose name was barely even known to the locals!?

"Ha, I've finally found you! Did you write a piece of literary reportage in your high school entrance exam? You're the young author who wrote that piece?" Zhang Chaoyang's voice grew excited, making everyone around him turn solemn. Since arriving in Xiahai City, he had never revealed genuine feelings of this kind. Who could have known that today, a middle school student would make him unable to contain his delighted surprise?

Su Can's heart gave a jolt. So that was it. His entrance exam essay had centered on the floods of 1998. From the perspective of a tree, he had used a sorrowful tone to describe the desolation of its circumstances. The theme was the exam's essay prompt, "Give Me One Day."

His opening had been: "I am a tree. Humans, stay the axes in your hands. Give me one day to remember a hundred years. The centuries I spent rooted here, with fertile land stretching for a thousand miles, birdsong and fragrant flowers, were like paradise..."

Then, reporting from a tree's perspective, he had gathered everything he could remember about human destruction in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, and summarized some potential disaster risks. Of course, he could not openly state that a flood was about to arrive, but his arguments were well supported, and the entire piece had been full of feeling.

The entire room grew very quiet, because Zhang Chaoyang had already left his seat and walked over to Su Can. The sight left everyone frozen in place. When the director of the cultural bureau had earlier gone to great lengths to flatter Zhang Chaoyang and strike up a rapport, he had been polite on the surface but kept him at arm's length. Now, however, he had left his seat in such excitement that these people's hands froze in midair as they reached out with their chopsticks for food. In the midsummer sunlight streaming inside, white fluff drifted and danced.

Zhang Chaoyang laughed heartily, extended his hand, and shook Su Can's. A thirty-year-old man was ignoring most of a prefecture-level city's prominent figures and instead showing exceptional regard for a sixteen-year-old middle school student. It was quite a dazzling sight. "Your essay was given priority selection for the New Edition of Selected Excellent Middle School Essays, published by a publishing house in Beijing's Haidian District. It'll soon be on sale nationwide!"

What!? The whole room was shaken. The delighted surprise on his mother's and father's faces clearly showed how stunned they were by this sudden bombshell.

In fact, the truly explosive news went far beyond that. In the first half of the year, while experts in the national Ministry of Water Resources had judged and firmly believed that no catastrophic flood would occur in the Yangtze River basin within three years, the basin had also welcomed an auspicious year of abundant harvests. The whole country had been immersed in celebration, and the few dissenting opinions from some experts in the relevant specialized state departments had been drowned out. Who could have known that sustained heavy rainfall in June and July would indeed trigger catastrophic flooding, causing countless losses of property and life? The armed forces were sent to the front lines, and soldiers and civilians rushed to fight the floods and provide disaster relief.

Only then did people realize that the concerns of some dissenting experts at the time had not been groundless. During the flooding that followed, flood control and emergency rescue became the central focus. Yet officials in different places also shifted responsibility onto one another, while countless commentaries laid all the most important causes of the floods squarely at the feet of natural disaster.

Su Can's essay had already been selected as an outstanding composition at the time. A senior State Council leader happened to see the first edition among his grandson's new books and specifically brought it up at a fiercely contentious Party meeting, praising it at length. "This piece of literary reportage by a middle school student puts it well. It gets to the heart of the matter and says what countless newspapers, media outlets, and news commentaries dare not say! When it comes to how the floods began and unfolded, we shouldn't put all the blame on Heaven. We need to look for the real causes in our own human activities. How many officials chase political achievements without paying attention to environmental protection? However many Qingshan we clear, however many factories and buildings we construct, that is how much the floodwaters will swallow up! If people leave water no way to survive, water will leave people no way to live. This sounds an alarm for us, and also sets another important benchmark for the new direction of future development..."

Although the leader had only mentioned it in passing, his listeners took it to heart. For a time that summer, the name Su Can of Xiahai City's Third Middle School left a deep impression on many people.

Zhang Chaoyang was, of course, among them.

On this assignment from the central authorities, he had another task in Xiahai City: to interview the young author and bring back a meaningful news story. Upon reaching the provincial authorities, he had unexpectedly found that several provincial leaders already knew about the matter. They were simply keeping it confidential, and word had not spread. They were waiting for the central reporter's visit before watching how things developed.

Zhang Chaoyang had been planning to finish his current work before handling this last task, yet he had run into Su Can just like that. Suddenly, the opportunity was right at hand, obtained without the slightest effort.