Ambition

As Yang Rui spoke, he also watched Wang Guohua. Seeing that he could take it in and understand it, and that he was hungry to learn, Yang Rui decided to put the idea that had first occurred to him yesterday into practice.

Make Wang Guohua my "student"!

He had come up with this idea because he realized he still had a year until his next college entrance exam.

A year was certainly a tight schedule for an ordinary student, but for Yang Rui, it was a little too much time. Apart from spending some time memorizing politics and Chinese, he could get an extremely high score on the college entrance exam with practically no preparation.

With a whole year available, Yang Rui would much rather put his old profession to use.

Spending a year as a star tutor decades ahead of his time seemed like the most suitable choice for him at present.

It was now 1982. They would be taking the college entrance exam in 1983, which meant they would graduate in 1987.

In 1987, university graduates were still guaranteed job assignments, and the placements were all quite good. Graduates with at least a bachelor's degree who entered government agencies could secure positions at the municipal level at a minimum. Those from better schools or programs even had a chance to stay in the central government. Public institutions and state-owned enterprises that could obtain quotas for graduate placements were themselves quite good employers.

In terms of their individual careers, these students had caught the best of times.

If they went into business, the doors of the market economy would slowly open to them.

If they went into academia, this was the beginning of China opening its eyes to the world again after the mid-1950s. Anyone who knew a little English could publish papers by the ton.

If they went into politics, the vigorous campaign to "rejuvenate the cadre ranks" would smooth their way. Once they were no longer young, the sails of "academic qualifications first" could carry them a little farther. By the time neither their youth nor their qualifications stood out, the "university graduates of the eighties" would themselves have grown into towering trees.

These students were a group of people who would change China and change the world.

The success of the Chinese model was inseparable from their struggles; the regrets of China's development were closely linked to their oversights; the injustices of Chinese society were intimately connected to their recklessness...

Given a second life, Yang Rui wanted to leave something behind.

Change people, and you changed the world.

So Yang Rui would spend a year sowing seeds.

He would carefully select a group of students from his own hometown, improve them, influence them, and reshape them.

He would help these students pass the college entrance exam and send them to university, letting them take important positions and do important things, changing this country bit by bit, strengthening her roots, nourishing her trunk, and spreading her branches and leaves...

At the same time, Yang Rui did not mind making full use of his knowledge along the way and receiving the corresponding rewards.

Trade one year for a lifetime of students everywhere.

No other investment could offer a higher return.

Yang Rui was lost in thought, while Wang Guohua was absorbed in his calculations.

Only after a long while did he exclaim with heartfelt admiration, "That's incredible. Where did you learn this?"

Yang Rui smiled and gave the answer he had prepared. "Didn't I go home to revise for a while before the exam? I hired an old teacher. He gave me a few books, too."

"Where is he?"

"He left ages ago."

"What about the books?"

"I mailed them to Little White Tooth. She has exams to take, too." Little White Tooth was the girl who had confessed her feelings to Yang Rui on the first day of his new life. Her father had been transferred back to Beijing for work, so she had transferred to a school in the capital as well. The day Yang Rui had seen her had been her last day here.

Communication was inconvenient these days, and lost parcels were nothing unusual. Yang Rui would have plenty of excuses to keep his story straight later.

Wang Guohua gave a regretful sigh.

Yang Rui smiled. "The teacher and the books may be gone, but I still remember quite a lot. Want to hear it?"

"You remember it clearly?"

"Piece of cake. Here, tell me what problems you find hardest." Yang Rui looked as though he was leaving the choice entirely up to him.

Wang Guohua hesitated, then said, "Problems with auxiliary lines."

Yang Rui nodded, unsurprised. Drawing auxiliary lines was one of the difficult points of high school geometry. Understanding it took considerable effort, and tutoring centers in later years often reserved specialized lessons on it for their advanced classes.

After a moment's thought, Yang Rui smiled. "I can't explain auxiliary lines in a sentence or two, but I have a mnemonic."

"Go on, go on." Wang Guohua held his pen, his eyes positively alight with excitement.

Yang Rui paused, then recited, "If an angle bisector appears, drop perpendiculars to both sides; for a segment's perpendicular bisector, draw lines to connect both ends. Join the midpoints of two triangle sides, and a midsegment you will find; if a triangle has a median, extend it by its length again..."

Wang Guohua's pen flew across the page.

Yang Rui recited it twice, then added, "The mnemonic helps organize your thinking. To really understand auxiliary-line problems, you still need systematic study."

"Of course. Hang on, let me find a couple of problems." Wang Guohua opened his little notebook and flipped a few pages forward from the back. There were problems copied out in tiny, neat handwriting, with carefully drawn diagrams beside them.

Wang Guohua compared the mnemonic with the standard answers.

Soon, he let out a breath of sudden understanding. "It really does work."

"For simple problems that don't deliberately set traps, this mnemonic will work. Actually, the college entrance exam problems these days are all simple ones. There's no need for them to set traps, either. For a topic like auxiliary lines, practicing the problems in the mnemonic until you know them well is enough." Yang Rui sounded every inch the tutor.

Wang Guohua nodded, bewildered but compliant.

Yang Rui cleared his throat, then continued, "What do you think of the methods I learned?"

"They're good. Of course they're good." As though suddenly waking up, Wang Guohua looked at him as if he no longer recognized him. "You know so many methods. Ah, what a shame about your college entrance exam this time."

"It's fine. I can spend another year revising and get into a good school."

"You're taking it pretty well. True, maybe you could get into a bachelor's program..." Looking at his notes, Wang Guohua voiced a grand ambition.

Yang Rui smiled. "You'd be satisfied with just any bachelor's program?"

"Wouldn't you?" Wang Guohua's eyes widened. "Forget a bachelor's degree. If I could just get into a junior college, I'd burn incense in thanks."

"Then if you could choose, which school would you want to get into?"

"I'll go wherever they'll take me." Wang Guohua was quite firm about that.

Yang Rui pressed him. "There must be a school you want to attend."

Young people always had dreams.

After a moment's hesitation, Wang Guohua lowered his voice as though afraid someone might overhear. "I hear Hedong University is pretty good. But it's a key university. No chance!"

Yang Rui laughed. "A key university is hard to get into, sure, but you don't even dare think about it?"

"Thinking about it is all I can do."

"What if you really could get in?"

"How could I possibly get in?"

"Study with me. As long as you're willing to work hard, you'll have an eighty or ninety percent chance." After building up to it for so long, Yang Rui finally said it.

He was not joking.

The college entrance exams of the eighties did not actually demand a very high level of knowledge, and the scores required were low. In Hedong Province, where Xibao was located, admission cutoffs ranked around the middle nationwide. A science-track score of 370 or 380 was enough, while a score just over 400 gave students grounds to eye the eighty-eight key universities currently administered directly by the central government.

Hedong University was a provincial key university. Usually, a score slightly above the key-university cutoff gave students a chance. With 450 points, they could even take their pick of majors.

As for the difficulty of the questions, apart from the occasional obscure question outside the exam syllabus, the college entrance exams of the eighties were even a little easier than those thirty years later. Take any final-year high school student from that later era and give them two months of intensive training, and getting into a key university would be easy.

After all, high school students in 1982 had largely been left to their own devices in primary and junior high school. Their so-called foundations were weaker than those of later students by no small margin.

Their teachers had also spent ten years carrying out political campaigns or being targeted by them. When it came to handling the college entrance exam, they had little more experience than their students.

Yang Rui was different.

Amid the commercialization of education thirty years later, tutoring-school instructors were seasoned veterans. Star instructors like him, who wanted to start their own businesses, could teach students of every level. They had to teach basic classes for students who scored 200 on the college entrance exam, as well as advanced classes for those who scored 500, and their teaching results had to show in the scores.

Given Wang Guohua's foundations, expecting him to score over 500 like students in later years was indeed a long shot. But under the conditions of the eighties, getting a score in the four hundreds really was not difficult.

So when Yang Rui gave his assurance, his gaze was steady and rather piercing.

Wang Guohua wanted to believe him but did not dare. "You're just bragging."

"Then were those two tricks I just taught you nothing but bragging, too?"

For a moment, Wang Guohua had no reply, but his gaze gradually grew fervent.

After a while, he asked hesitantly, "Yang Rui, do you think I really can get into Hedong University?"

Yang Rui nodded emphatically.

Wang Guohua looked at him, then at the mnemonic in his notebook. Gritting his teeth, he said, "If you can really get me into Hedong University, I'll do whatever you say."

"Really?"

"Really."

Seeing that Wang Guohua truly meant it, Yang Rui finally revealed a little of his plan. "I'm going to organize a study group and bring together like-minded people. You're the first."

"All right." Wang Guohua nodded without hesitation. With a little admiration, he even asked, "You want to teach everyone your study methods?"

"Not just study methods, and not just organized study, either. It should cover a broader range of things. But this study group won't be open to just anyone who wants to join. They'll have to be assessed. For now, it's just the two of us." In his mind, Yang Rui leaned more toward an American-style fraternity. There was no need for so many parties or so much alcohol, and the initiation tests could change, but the essence ought to be the same.

This group would extend from school into society, becoming a means of expanding connections, linking his students together like a circulatory system.

Wang Guohua did not care about any of that. All he wanted was to get into university. Otherwise, why would he have come back to school for this torturous repeat-year class?

Yang Rui looked up at the sky, then thought for a moment. "Starting today, you'll study according to my revision requirements. The first goal is to master trigonometric functions completely."

With a little anticipation, Wang Guohua asked, "How?"

"Memorize problems." Yang Rui quickly searched his mind for some classic problems, then went back to his room for paper and a pen. As he copied them out, he said, "Solve these problems, then memorize them all. When we take the placement test in a couple of days, you'll be able to get at least half the points on the trigonometric-function questions."

Mathematics might be a game of reasoning, but within the broad realm of exam-oriented education, it could also be a game of memory.

For students with shaky foundations who only wanted to pass, memorizing problems was far more effective than solving them.

Wang Guohua had heard of this method. But how could he possibly compile all the different representative problem types himself?

Watching Yang Rui write at such speed, Wang Guohua suddenly found himself looking forward to the placement test he had always hated.

If he could get half the points on every type of problem, wouldn't that mean sixty points in math?

That was a score only the top students in the repeat-year class could achieve.