Lin Qiaozhi skipped lightly down the stairs and headed outside.
She tried hard to suppress the corners of her mouth, wanting to make herself look more mature.
But the excitement and delight on her face inevitably revealed the lack of composure expected of someone her age.
The school gate was empty, with hardly anyone in sight.
Only a few young people trickled out of the school, some excited, some dejected, some hesitant, dispersing in different directions throughout the factory compound.
“Qiaozhi!”
A bright, ringing shout called out.
Following the voice, Lin Qiaozhi saw a girl in a blue bulaji dress standing beneath the shade of a tree, holding a bottle of orange soda high in the air and waving enthusiastically at her.
Ning Zhenzhu trotted over excitedly and asked impatiently, “How did it go?”
Seeing the anticipation written all over her face, Lin Qiaozhi could no longer suppress her smile, revealing a row of gleaming white teeth. “Take a guess.”
“It must’ve gone amazingly well!” Ning Zhenzhu cheered, pumping her fist.
With a smug grin, she proudly thrust the bottle of soda in front of Lin Qiaozhi. “Look!”
“I knew you’d make it, so I even bought soda to celebrate!”
Then she fished a bottle opener out of her pocket and handed it to Lin Qiaozhi.
The orange soda shimmered with a golden hue, with tiny droplets of condensation clinging to the glass bottle. It was obvious she’d been waiting there for quite a while.
A warmth spread through Lin Qiaozhi’s heart. She took the opener, hooked it under the metal cap, and pried.
“Hiss…”
A puff of white vapor escaped from the mouth of the bottle, while countless tiny bubbles surged through the orange soda.
A cool, sweet fragrance washed over them.
“That’s got some real fizz!”
Summers in Jiangcheng were stifling, as hot and stuffy as a steaming basket. No one could resist the appeal of a bottle of Arctic Ocean soda.
The two girls found a spot beneath the tree, sat down together, and happily shared the soda.
“Six strikes?”
Lin Qiaozhi shook her head.
“Four?”
Leaning close to Ning Zhenzhu’s ear, she whispered as if sharing a secret, “Three.”
“Seriously…” Ning Zhenzhu, a round-faced girl with little dimples in her cheeks, widened her eyes. Then she made a bold guess. “Qiaozhi, do you think you might’ve gotten first place out of everyone this time?”
“There were other trades too. The assessments weren’t the same,” Lin Qiaozhi replied.
As she sipped her soda, she found herself unconsciously thinking back over the assessment, wondering what the teachers had written on her evaluation sheet.
As noon approached, the sun grew hotter, and tempers grew shorter.
The students who had spent the entire morning waiting were restless with anxiety, while the teachers sitting in the classroom had become increasingly impatient. The cicadas outside were so noisy their heads ached, and they wished they could silence them altogether.
After seeing off the last student and closing the door, Wang Baiqiang tossed his pen onto the workbench.
With a dark expression, he stood up, picked up a hammer, and with two heavy blows, snapped the steel rod that several students had failed to break.
After swinging the hammer a few times, Wang Baiqiang finally felt relieved. Tugging at his collar, he said, “Finally got that pent-up frustration out.”
Pointing at the steel rod, he said in disappointment, “Just look at these kids. What kind of standards are those? Boys in their teens, built like that for nothing. And that last kid surnamed Guo, looked honest and hardworking enough, but he couldn’t even keep hold of the hammer. It flew right out of his hand from the recoil, and he even had the nerve to shake his hand and complain it hurt. Back when we were apprentices, our master would’ve kicked us on the spot.”
It was obvious they hadn’t practiced at all. They’d come here hoping to get lucky. Who were they trying to fool?
“Don’t get so worked up. Later, let’s see if the cafeteria has any mung bean soup. Cool yourself down before you end up with mouth ulcers,” Qiao Yuan said with his usual easygoing attitude. “Think about it. The ones who submitted their applications at the very end, what kind of people were they? Anyone who genuinely wanted to learn a trade would’ve signed up long ago.”
Hongqi Factory Technical School didn’t have a low bar for admission. They didn’t accept just anyone.
Many had started practicing alongside older family members as early as fifth or sixth grade. Even those who started later had usually begun looking for a master once they entered middle school.
Almost everyone who had signed up after Lin Qiaozhi had been motivated by her.
“If a girl like her dares to give it a try, why can’t I?”
That was the mindset of the boys who refused to admit they were any worse than Lin Qiaozhi.
Others had been pushed by their families.
“You should go sign up too. Look, even Qiaozhi signed up. She didn’t even have anyone to teach her. Are you really worse than she is?”
Those kids had simply been forced into it.
Sometimes parents were just that confident. They insisted their children try things they couldn’t accomplish themselves.
Wang Baiqiang picked up his metal canteen and gulped down several mouthfuls of cool water, feeling only slightly better.
Walking over to the workbench, he picked up the half of the steel rod Lin Qiaozhi had broken and examined the cross-section. “This girl’s got something.”
“The one who broke it in three strikes? What was her name again? She really wasn’t bad. Her movements were clean and efficient. A pleasure to watch.”
People really were incomparable.
After watching the disastrous performances of the last few students, Lin Qiaozhi’s crisp, decisive three hammer strikes suddenly looked several times more impressive in the eyes of the teachers.
The four teachers chatted as they drank water, stretching their backs and legs while wandering over to the workbench to inspect the cross-section of the steel rod Lin Qiaozhi had broken.
“If she really only started practicing after submitting her application, then this girl’s talent is extraordinary.”
“She doesn’t even have any injuries on her hands!”
“Girls these days really are something else.”
Qiao Yuan glanced at Wang Baiqiang and asked, “Should we tell Master?”
The “Master” he referred to was Engineer Lu. They had all been apprentices personally trained by Lu Feng in the early years.
After thinking it over, Wang Baiqiang said, “Let’s wait and see. If she’s really that gifted, she won’t be able to hide it once she’s in school.”
With that, they each got to work, comparing the four sets of score sheets to make sure there were no mistakes or omissions.
Once they finished checking everything, the final list was ready.
The factory worked efficiently. Since it was the factory’s own technical school and the examinations had been personally supervised by senior skilled workers, there was no need for multiple rounds of complicated procedures.
That afternoon, the copied results were posted on the school’s outer wall.
Names.
Scores.
Just two simple columns.
After eating lunch and sharing their good news, the students gathered in lively groups outside the school, checking for their names and scores.
Among the rows of Pass, Good, and the occasional Excellent, a single perfect score stood prominently beside Lin Qiaozhi’s name.
It was impossible to miss.
A small wave of commotion spread through the crowd, and every student reading the notice couldn’t help looking twice.
“There was actually someone who got a perfect score?”
“Zhao Song, how many strikes did it take you to break the steel rod for your Excellent?”
Lin Qiaozhi left all those voices behind. After reading the posted results, she happily ran home with Ning Zhenzhu.
As soon as they shut the door behind them, Lin Qiaozhi threw herself onto the bed, wrapped herself in the quilt, and rolled back and forth across the mattress.
“Zhenzhu! Did you see it? A perfect score! A perfect score!” Her voice overflowed with uncontrollable joy. “The only one! That means none of them were as good as me.”
Ning Zhenzhu was so delighted that she danced around excitedly, bursting with pride. “If A Shui and Wanwan knew you were this amazing, they’d definitely regret not taking leave with me to come back and celebrate for you.”
Lin Qiaozhi met her eyes, and the two burst into laughter.
She couldn’t help thinking how wonderful it was.
Even in her dreams, Ning Zhenzhu had always been the happiest among them.
She was the Ning family’s youngest child, born late in her parents’ lives. Her parents, grandparents, and maternal grandparents all doted on her, treasuring her like the pearl she was named after. She was also the only girl in their group, besides Lin Qiaozhi, who had been admitted to high school.
When the great movement to send educated youths to the countryside began, Ning Zhenzhu happened to graduate from high school at the same time as Lin Qiaozhi. Fortunately, through family connections and with her solid high school education, the Ning family secured her an iron rice bowl at the Supply and Marketing Cooperative.
Up until the day Lin Qiaozhi died, she would still receive packages from Zhenzhu and A Shui from time to time while living in the countryside.
She wasn’t particularly surprised by the packages from A Shui.
She had protected A Shui since childhood. Their bond had been forged by standing together and arguing against A Shui’s unfair, biased parents.
Before being sent to the countryside, after many twists and turns, A Shui had finally found someone willing to transfer a job opportunity to her, but it required a considerable sum of money.
She hadn’t dared tell her family.
If they found out and paid for it, the job would most likely end up going to one of her brothers instead.
Although all of them had been struggling just to stay afloat at the time, they had each scraped together money to help A Shui.
Lin Qiaozhi had contributed quite a lot herself.
In truth, she didn’t have much money on hand. She had simply gathered up all the toys she had collected since childhood and packed them into a box to give to her.
The toys were well made and popular with children. There were always dual-income families who doted on their kids and had a bit of spare money.
She quietly traded them for quite a bit of cash.
A Shui managed to secure a job almost at the very last minute, barely a week before she was due to be sent to the countryside.
Ning Zhenzhu was different from A Shui. Lin Qiaozhi couldn’t honestly say she had helped Zhenzhu much. She was simply a lucky girl. They got along well and had compatible personalities, and that was how they became friends.
Yet for many years afterward, she continued receiving packages from Zhenzhu.
They came even more frequently than the ones from her parents, especially after her younger brother got married. The things sent from home grew fewer and fewer, and each package arrived later than the last.
Lin Qiaozhi closed her eyes. Of their group of friends, aside from A Shui and Zhenzhu, all the others had been sent to the countryside.
Love and fairness that had to be fought for, were they ever real?
When the critical moment came, the scales would still tip without the slightest hesitation.
“What are you thinking about?”
Ning Zhenzhu waved a hand in front of her face and teased with a smile, “Don’t tell me you’re so happy you’ve gone silly?”
Lin Qiaozhi hugged Ning Zhenzhu as she threw herself at her, thinking of those pairs of bright, sparkling eyes.
They would all be okay.
They would.
She had to keep moving forward, and work even harder to move forward.
…
The workday was over.
Father Lin wiped the sweat from his face with the towel draped around his neck as he walked out.
“Wuqiang, not bad!”
Someone suddenly greeted him with a grin and even gave him a thumbs-up.
Lin Wuqiang looked puzzled.
“What, you still don’t know? Your daughter really passed the entrance assessment for our factory’s technical school. Engineer Wang and Engineer Qiao both gave her perfect scores. She’s definitely going to become a skilled technician now! Who knows, she might even become a Senior Engineer someday!”
As soon as those words were spoken, the people around them erupted into noisy banter.
Father Lin stood there in a daze.
He couldn’t believe his ears.
Although everyone worked at the same factory, people still ranked different trades in their minds.
Loading and unloading was basically the hardest and most exhausting job there was. The only way to earn higher wages was to put in more years on the job.
Father Lin had grown up in the countryside. Back when he first came to the city, he had been lucky enough to get hired by the factory purely because of his physical strength, and after all these years, he had never been transferred.
The best future Father Lin had ever dared imagine for himself was learning to drive heavy trucks and transferring to the transportation team.
A Senior Engineer?
He had never even dared dream that far.
He wouldn’t even dare touch such a dream.
As he listened to his coworkers, who spoke with a mix of envy and joking, saying things like, “We’ll be relying on you in the future, Old Lin,” and “Old Lin, you’re going to have a daughter who’s a Senior Engineer,” Father Lin felt his heart pounding uncontrollably.
Ignoring everything else, he hurried toward the entrance of the factory’s technical school.
There, he saw the especially eye-catching, one-of-a-kind words:
Perfect Score.
He couldn’t believe his own eyes.
He truly hadn’t taken it seriously before. He had thought it was just a child acting on a passing whim.
Without a master to teach her, without much time to prepare, just figuring things out herself and swinging a hammer a few times… how could it possibly be that easy?
Father Lin strode home in great haste, bounding up the stairs to the second floor.
With a bang, he shoved the door open and shouted into the room, drenched in sweat, “Qiaozhi!”
…
It had originally been a trivial matter.
Nothing worth discussing.
But perhaps because so many people had dismissed it beforehand as nothing more than a joke.
Once the results were posted, everyone who found them unbelievable started talking about it. Many factory workers and their family members couldn’t help but seek out Wang Baiqiang and the others to ask whether Lin Qiaozhi’s skills were really that good.
So many people were discussing the matter that even Engineer Lu, who lived in the workers’ residential compound, took notice after hearing people mention the factory technical school’s fitter assessment.
By the time he got home, he had heard every kind of opinion imaginable.
Wanting to get to the bottom of it, he went home, took out some grain coupons and gave them to the children, telling them to take the aluminum lunch pail to the cafeteria and buy a few meat dishes. Then he said to his wife, “Let’s make a few extra dishes tonight. In a bit, I’ll invite Xiao Wang and Xiao Qiao over for dinner.”