Exercise books

Yang Rui rested properly at home for two days before returning to school with two tins of canned food and a jar of pickles on his back.

It was just noon when he arrived. He had barely put his things down before a dark mass of people crowded in. Some stood on the windowsill, some by the door, and some simply climbed onto the beds. The room immediately grew much dimmer, as though a storm cloud hung overhead.

"What's going on?" Yang Rui jumped, feeling as though a gang of delinquents had blocked his door.

"Brother Rui's back."

"Hello, Brother Rui."

"Thanks for your hard work, Brother Rui."

The boys' greetings inexplicably reminded Yang Rui of films he had seen before... or perhaps he should have called them films he had seen "in the future"...

Cao Baoming pushed the people in front of him apart and squeezed up to Yang Rui, chuckling. "Did you have fun at home, Brother Rui? We missed you to death."

"That tone of yours..." Yang Rui pointed at him. "Who gave me that nickname?"

"It's not a nickname. It's a sign of respect." Grinning, Cao Baoming handed over his notebook. "Everyone finished the problems you gave us. We all thought they were useful. They're different from the exercises we used to do, but they feel good. Still, there are some problems we understand and others we don't..."

"If you want me to explain the problems, just say so. There's no need for all this." Yang Rui pushed Cao Baoming back a little and said seriously, "My main reason for organizing this Study Group was to bring together people with the same goals. If you think the same way I do, I'm willing to help you improve as much as possible. If you don't, showing me respect is pointless."

Everyone nodded, saying, "We share your goals."

"Sharing goals isn't something you just say. I'll be watching." The Study Group Yang Rui envisioned was not an academic organization that would end with the college entrance exam. He hoped to keep it going longer-as long as possible. Thus, he was in no hurry to make his classmates and fellow townspeople full members.

The others had no way of knowing what Yang Rui was thinking, but they nodded along agreeably.

Another pair of thick, dark arms thrust through the crowd, then pushed to either side to open a path. This time, the person who emerged was Xu Jing, the brawny girl who had come second in mathematics.

"Senior Brother, don't stay in this dark room. Let's talk outside. The girls are all waiting." Xu Jing's voice was so loud and clear that even the rafters seemed to shake.

Wang Guohua had taken off even his undershirt upon returning to his dormitory. He hurriedly grabbed it and put it on, saying indignantly, "What are you doing barging into the boys' dormitory?"

"It certainly isn't to look at your ribs." Xu Jing sounded rather pleased with herself. "If I hadn't come in, you'd have kept Senior Brother all to yourselves. What would the girls do then?"

"Couldn't you knock first?"

Xu Jing laughed. "You're being unreasonable, Second Senior Brother. With the doorway blocked so tightly, what good would knocking do?"

"With that loud voice of yours, you could have shouted..." At this point, Wang Guohua suddenly realized he had fallen into a trap and hastily said, "Who are you calling Second Senior Brother...?"

"In our Study Group, Brother Rui is unquestionably Senior Brother. You're a full member. If you aren't Second Senior Brother, who is?"

At Xu Jing's words, everyone burst out laughing and clamored for Wang Guohua to be Second Senior Brother.

After some more joking around, Yang Rui was escorted out of the dormitory to the large pagoda tree nearest the sports field. Liu Shan and the other girls were already waiting there, and they had even brought over a table, chairs, and benches.

Yang Rui looked around and found that more than forty students had crowded together, with still more arriving.

His Study Group currently had eighteen members. The extras could not exactly be called spectators, only less-than-devout "believers."

Yang Rui had anticipated this situation. With a slight smile, he began explaining the problems on the spot.

Naturally, the ones he explained now were those the group members did not quite understand.

First, Yang Rui sorted and marked their questions, then explained problems of different levels of difficulty according to each student's grades and direction.

However, he mainly covered only the basics. Of the difficult problems some students brought him, he selected just two representative examples to explain and left all the rest untouched.

This was the method used in small-group tutoring, which put somewhat greater pressure on the tutor. But Yang Rui had already spent several years as a top tutor; handling a few dozen students was well within his abilities.

By the time the midday break was nearly over, Yang Rui had worked through every problem he had selected.

"Explain some difficult ones," a student called out.

Yang Rui shook his head. "If you get the simple questions right and reach the passing mark, you can pass the college entrance exam. There's no need to cover difficult problems yet."

"But we can't reach the passing mark in every subject, can we?" Quite a few students nodded at this. A foundation was a mysterious thing: if you did not have it, you simply did not have it. Students with uneven strengths were more numerous still.

Yang Rui stood by his approach, but he could not force it on them.

After thinking it over, he said, "How about this? I'll copy out a few basic practice papers for everyone to try. If you want to reach the passing mark, doing difficult problems won't help. Doing more simple ones is the most efficient approach."

Hearing that there would be more problems to do, everyone nodded, and no one shook their head anymore.

Liu Shan looked at Yang Rui with an odd expression. "Of course doing more problems is good, but do you have that many papers?"

Yang Rui suddenly felt rather amused, not because of Liu Shan, but because of what she had said.

Twenty years later, students faced with mountains of exercise books would most likely want to cry. Students in the eighties were different: they searched everywhere for problems to do, only to feel frustrated when they could not find any.

"As long as you're willing to do them, there are plenty of papers. Let me copy out the questions first. Tomorrow or the day after, we'll print them and hand them out." Yang Rui stretched as he spoke, then smiled. "Can you let me out now?"

Liu Shan hurriedly stepped back to make room. Once Yang Rui had passed, she thought indignantly, Everyone was standing in a circle. Why did he have to come through where I was...?

That afternoon.

Yang Rui first found some time to write out several sets of mathematics exercise books from memory and handed them to Wang Guohua and Cao Baoming, telling them to organize the prospective members to print and distribute them.

The exercise books were arranged as practice by unit and category, making them just right for reviewing the basics.

Wang Guohua held the notebooks Yang Rui had given him in both hands, almost wanting to tuck them inside his shirt. At the same time, he asked very hesitantly, "Are we giving them to people who aren't in our group too?"

"Of course. They're all our classmates. Why keep them hidden?" Yang Rui's generosity surprised them both.

Remembering his pledge upon joining the group, Cao Baoming could not help asking, "If people get problems and explanations whether they join or not, what's the point of our group?"

"Copying out questions and explaining them doesn't take much extra effort. Sharing with our classmates costs nothing, and it isn't time to treat people differently yet."

"Copying and explaining questions might not cost money, but mimeographing does. Paper costs money, ink costs money, and we have to borrow equipment from the teachers." Wang Guohua said with a headache, "Where are we supposed to get the money to print papers for everyone for free?"

Yang Rui was taken aback.

For all his talk, he really could not come up with the money for paper and ink.

Wang Guohua sighed and tucked the notebooks away securely. "How about this? I'll ask our classmates. Anyone who wants mimeographed papers can pay a few cents, and we'll pool the money to print them. Anyone who doesn't want to pay can copy them by hand. Will that work?"

Yang Rui quickly nodded and said, "Yes."

With his authorization, Wang Guohua raced around the school like a happy steward, eagerly pushing the project forward.

China in the eighties did not have photocopiers and printers everywhere. Even ten years later, they would still be expensive machines. However, the absence of modern photocopiers did not mean everything had to be copied by hand. As early as the days of the revolutionary base areas, mimeographing had been an invaluable tool for written publicity.

Yet mimeographing was complicated. Someone first had to copy the desired text and images onto a wax stencil with a metal stylus. The stylus was heavy and hard, and the writing had to be smaller than normal. It was much harder to use than a fountain pen, and writing with it was much slower. For an inexperienced person, taking twenty or thirty minutes to copy a page was not even considered slow.

Wang Guohua called six people together. It took them most of the day just to copy the exercise books Yang Rui had written from memory onto wax stencils, after which he called people over to start printing.

This was also exhausting work. With the economy so underdeveloped, Xibao Middle School could not afford even a hand-cranked mimeograph, let alone a legendary high-speed machine. It had only a simple mimeograph roller, requiring each sheet to be printed individually. Not only did it easily dirty their hands, but the stencils also broke easily.

More troublesome still, the roller was not something they could use whenever they pleased. It was an important school asset and could only be borrowed from the principal.

With no other choice, Wang Guohua dragged Cao Baoming along and steeled himself to approach Principal Zhao Dannian.

Cao Baoming was somewhat better off. Wang Guohua, a native of Xibao, had grown up hearing terrifying stories about Old Zhao. During their few occasional encounters, he had always been too frightened to speak.

Ask him for the mimeograph roller and ink? Had Yang Rui's problems not been so enticing, Wang Guohua would rather have died than entered the principal's office.

Ultimately, the college entrance exam held too much appeal and offered too great a temptation.

Zhao Dannian's home was in town, but he ate and lived at school year-round. His office was therefore in the teachers' dormitory area, occupying two connected rooms: an office in front and living quarters behind. This counted as somewhat better treatment than ordinary teachers received.

Standing at the door, Wang Guohua nervously knocked twice, then called, "May I come in?"

Only after a long while did footsteps sound inside.

Wang Guohua stood with his feet together, not daring to move.

"What is it?" Zhao Dannian always greeted students with a smile. But all those terrifying stories had long since given his smile a different flavor.

"We... would like to borrow the mimeograph roller." Wang Guohua sounded considerably more hesitant.

Cao Baoming was more easygoing. Seeing the smile on Zhao Dannian's face, he simply added, "And some ink."

"The mimeograph roller, and ink?" Zhao Dannian repeated, smiling.

Cao Baoming glanced back at Wang Guohua and added on the spur of the moment, "Some paper would be even better."

Wang Guohua's already tense face crumpled. Using the ink was one thing, but asking for paper too-was that not pushing their luck?

He looked ahead anxiously.

The principal smiled. "What do you want to print? Let me see."

Wang Guohua could only take them out. "Just some papers."

"Where did they come from?" the principal asked, unfolding them to read.

"Yang Rui... brought them."

"Yang Rui?"

"He's a student in our class." Right up until the college entrance exam, Yang Rui had shown little presence, and the principal was even less likely to know him.

Zhao Dannian murmured an acknowledgment, his gaze falling on the papers without so much as a glance at Wang Guohua.

This actually allowed Wang Guohua to breathe easier.

"Where did Yang Rui get these papers?" Zhao Dannian suddenly asked. He had been a secondary school principal for twenty years and had a discerning eye. The moment he saw the papers, he found them fresh. Categorized exercises existed, but their method of classification was different.

Wang Guohua said quietly, "He probably bought them in the county town."

"The county's Xinhua Bookstore only has a few sets of mathematics papers. How come I've never seen these?"

"Then perhaps they came from the Xinhua Bookstore in the provincial capital."

"Impossible," Zhao Dannian said firmly. "I only just visited the Hedong Education Department last month."

Wang Guohua had no answer.

Zhao Dannian skimmed all the papers, pondering in silence.

People in the eighties had great faith in authority. They believed the central leadership was right, the government was good, books told the truth, and textbooks were written by great scholars. Yet these papers, supposedly obtained by Yang Rui, struck Zhao Dannian as distinctly fresh and sophisticated. He knew the experts within Hedong Province exceedingly well, but however much he thought about it, he could not think of anyone like this.

I can't take this lightly. Could these be internal teaching materials some school obtained somewhere?

If they have something we don't, we'll lose out.

Could Yang Rui's astonishing score have something to do with this?

At this thought, Zhao Dannian immediately asked, "Where's the rest?"

"That's all there is," Wang Guohua said in a small voice.

Could they not have finished compiling them?

Without betraying his thoughts, Zhao Dannian returned the papers to Wang Guohua. "Give me a copy once you've printed them."

He planned to use his connections and have someone ask around. Since there was mathematics, presumably there would also be Chinese, physics, and other subjects. Reclassifying every knowledge point from scratch was a huge undertaking. No matter what, it would require a dedicated office to complete, and would not be easy to hide.

Wang Guohua breathed a sigh of relief. "You mean we can use the mimeograph roller?"

"Yes. Here's the key. Slip it through the window when you're done."

"We can use the ink too?" Cao Baoming disliked spending money if he could avoid it.

Zhao Dannian grunted in assent. "You can use that too."

"And the paper?" Cao Baoming asked again. Wang Guohua could not stop him and stamped his feet in agitation.

Zhao Dannian had not expected his school to have such a thick-skinned student either. He smiled. "You can have two quires."

Truly afraid Cao Baoming might say something else, Wang Guohua thanked him while dragging Cao Baoming away.