Chapter 34: Recruitment fair
July arrived. The year 2002 had crossed its halfway mark and entered its second half.
From an ordinary person's perspective, nothing seemed to have changed much, except that the London planes on campus were slowly turning yellow and showing signs of shedding their leaves. Except that the campus swimming pool drew increasingly large crowds as Monday gave way to the weekend. Except that the lights in the study rooms stayed on later and later, even deep into the night, right through until dawn...
The university seemed unchanging, with a red sun forever hanging at an angle in the sky, lawns baked until they gave off the scent of grass, and leaves spiraling slowly down beside people like a scene from a film. It gave the illusion that time had frozen, like a lifelike backdrop before which the performance never ended and the curtain never fell. And everyone could still throw themselves into acting out their youth on this stage, whether wild and uninhibited or a riotous dance of demons.
In fact, though, every secondary school and university in the country was steeped in the atmosphere of approaching final exams.
Middle school students worried about their entrance exams, while high school students anxiously counted down the days until the Gaokao. Those who had made it through the Gaokao the previous year, squeezing out of the vast army charging toward that single narrow bridge, remained in their freshman days with lingering trepidation. Yet they often failed to notice the expressions of the seniors walking past them with bags on their backs.
Freshmen were fortunate. Every year, there were grand welcoming events and recruitment drives, all looking forward to vibrant youthful energy. As for the graduates, apart from familiar figures often appearing at the secondhand book stalls, most left