Rebirth 2004: A lone figure in the literary world

Chapter 3: A feast of youth literature, did you really miss it?
That afternoon, Chen Huan tried to ask Zhang Chao out for a private chat several times, but Zhang Chao ignored him. He was so anxious that he scratched his head. This good friend seemed to have changed. He was just a little better at studying than him before, but he liked to have fun and was not scheming, just like himself. Why did he suddenly want to become a big yin in the morning? He made Liu Xuyang a horse with his actions.

But at night, Chen Huan also calmed down. Everyone in the dormitory entered the rhythm of the final review before the mock exam, and even Chen Huan was holding a book and pretending to read it.

Although Zhang Chao had review materials in his hands, his mind was actually wandering, and no one knew what he was thinking about. Liu Xuyang went to another dormitory to review and did not come back to sleep until midnight.

Silent all night.

On Monday morning, the 2004 Fuhai City Senior High School First Mock Exam officially began. The first subject was still the Chinese language.

This was not a problem for Zhang Chao, who was already a senior high school Chinese teacher before his rebirth. Moreover, in the original time and space, Chinese was Zhang Chao's strong point, and he was ranked in the top 10 in the county. If it weren't for the support of Chinese and liberal arts, with his poor grades in math and English, he wouldn't have been able to get a good college.

The Chinese language test in 2004 was very different from the later ones. First, the examination of basic knowledge such as pronunciation and character shape was retained and appeared as multiple-choice questions at the beginning of the test paper. Secondly, the reading questions were more trivial, and each text was not long, testing students' specific abilities; instead of conducting comprehensive tests in several long and complex texts as in the later ones.

But overall, the difficulty of the 2004 high school Chinese exam was far less than that of later ones. In an atmosphere where exams are paramount, questions in subjects like Chinese are always getting harder and harder. After 2020, the college entrance examination Chinese exams are increasingly frequently "delegating" professional literary knowledge from the Chinese department of universities.

However, these were not a problem for Zhang Chao, who had rich experience in guiding test-taking. He finished the test in less than two hours, which was quite easy. There were only two dictation questions, which he could not remember due to the changes in the textbook. He was confident that he could get full marks or close to full marks for the other questions.

However, Zhang Chao failed completely in math in the afternoon and English the next morning. He was terrible at these two subjects, and he had wasted 20 years on them, especially math. He sadly found that he could only solve a quadratic equation - but this was not the first year of junior high school!

On Tuesday afternoon, Zhang Chao sat up in shock from his dying illness. Unlike the subject-based exams of the new college entrance examination, the 2004 liberal arts exam combined history, geography, and politics into one test paper, with a total score of 300 and a duration of 150 minutes. The types of questions included both single-subject tests and comprehensive tests that crossed knowledge points from the three subjects.

Zhang Chao was originally a master of liberal arts, and after graduation he also kept up with topics and news related to his discipline, so he could answer many questions with common sense and experience, but he was helpless with a lot of hard-core knowledge points that required memory. The only consolation was that he could basically answer the material analysis questions, so his score shouldn't be too bad.

After the first mock exam, everyone seemed exhausted. During the self-study session on Tuesday night, everyone was lazy, some reading, some chatting. The teacher on duty didn't care and ran to another classroom to talk to other teachers.

Zhang Chao calculated his score this time. Because his English and maths were lagging behind, and his liberal arts scores were also weak, his total score could only be around 300. As far as he remembered, Fuhai's undergraduate admission score this year was over 490, and the score line of the school he had been admitted to was over 500. He was currently nearly 200 points behind.

200 points. 6 months.

Zhang Chao knew that he couldn't fill the 6-point gap in 200 months. In 6 months, he was thankful that he could improve the three subjects of history, politics and geography to the previous level, which was only 70-80 points. There was still at least 120 points left, and whether it was mathematics or English, it was impossible to increase by several dozen points in half a year with his poor foundation.

Zhang Chao's rebirth had no plug-ins or systems, and his brain was still the same as before, and he did not become smarter or have a photographic memory. When he saw the math and English papers during the exams these two days, he couldn't help but feel sleepy, and told himself that it was wishful thinking to have a big breakthrough in these two subjects.

It seemed inevitable that he would not be able to attend an undergraduate school. Zhang Chao's family had no power or influence. His mother worked in a state-owned enterprise and his father was a rural teacher. It was impossible for them to find any backdoor for him.

How should we break the deadlock?

At least, you should be able to go to college. As for where you go, whether it is a second-tier or third-tier university, it doesn't matter. If you want to precisely control your own university, forget about this micromanagement.

As he was thinking, Zhang Chao found himself shrouded by a shadow. He looked up and saw a tall, unkempt boy with long hair. It was the real top student in the class, Shen Ming.

Zhang Chao asked, "What's the matter?" He had a good impression of Shen Ming. Shen Ming was almost indifferent to things other than studying. He was a little aloof, but not cold. What impressed Zhang Chao deeply was that in the second year of high school, a classmate in his class was diagnosed with lupus erythematosus. The school organized students to donate money, most people donated 10 yuan, 5 yuan, and the most was no more than 50 yuan, but Shen Ming donated 200 yuan at once.

Shen Ming's family was not rich, and 200 yuan was almost his living expenses for half a month. He then ate rice and pickled mustard for a month.

Shen Ming said: "I will sit behind you during the exam."

"Huh? Our seats are so close, and they happen to be odd numbers, so don't we always sit very close to each other?"

"You're different this time. You only spent 1 hour and 50 minutes on the Chinese test. In the past, you usually spent 2 and a half hours writing."

"Oh, maybe the questions this time are easy."

"This time, the test was much harder than our usual monthly test. You finished it so quickly, and after the test, I could see that you were very confident. Has your Chinese ability improved again? How did you do it?"

"I am confident? How can you tell?"

"Compared to how you looked after taking the math test this afternoon."

"..." Zhang Chao complained in his heart that he had asked this question unnecessarily.

"Tell me, how did you do it?"

"How do you know my score will be high? Maybe I failed the test."

"When your paper was collected, I took a glimpse of it. It was very beautiful, with neat handwriting and no corrections. It must have been a high score. Even if your score is not higher than before, your speed has improved so much that it is worth learning from."

"Well... let's talk about it after the scores come out... What if I fail the test? Wouldn't it be harmful to teach you?" Shen Ming returned to his seat in disappointment. He was good at all subjects, even Chinese, which is generally recognized as the most "mysterious", and his score was basically around 125. However, Zhang Chao's Chinese score was always slightly lower than Shen Ming's, and he always had a few points higher than him. It was the only subject that Shen Ming had never won first place in the class.

I didn’t expect Shen Ming cared so much about his Chinese grades that he even wrote down Zhang Chao’s test habits.

This statement made Zhang Chao the focus of the class, and many classmates were talking about him. As the "lame king" in the class, although Zhang Chao's Chinese score was very high, his overall score was only just above the second-tier line, so he did not attract much attention.

Now the “lame king” is going to be upgraded to the “naturally disabled king”?

Zhang Chao smiled bitterly in his heart, thinking that when his results came out this time, it would drive Old Wang crazy and would also make his parents angry to death.

However, Shen Ming also reminded himself that his greatest advantage is Chinese, isn't it? Thanks to his father, who is also a Chinese teacher and graduated from the Chinese Department of Xiamen University, Zhang Chao has been immersed in thousands of Chinese professional books and various classics since he was a child, and his appreciation and writing skills are quite solid. As a result, he didn't spend much time on Chinese, and didn't even practice questions, but he could still get around 130 on the test.

Later, he was admitted to the Chinese Department of the Normal University, and became a Chinese teacher after graduation. He published many essays and novels in his spare time, and also serialized some flopped novels on the platform. His writing skills are not outstanding, and he has not become famous, but it is his greatest asset besides 20 years of memory.

Zhang Chao knows that no matter what era, if one wants to succeed, one must start from the field in which one is good at and work within the limit of one's ability.

If you can gain enough social attention through writing before the college entrance examination, then perhaps a university will extend an olive branch to you. There are many examples of this in the history of China's college entrance examination.

But this was 2004, which was a very awkward period for Zhang Chao, who was good at writing.

The period from the late 70s to the early 90s was a period of literary boom after the end of a special historical era, but it was also a mixed bag. Many writers and poets who became famous overnight published works of a quality that is hard to describe in today's eyes.

From a literary perspective, Liu Xinwu's "Class Teacher" is just a high school student's writing style with a few stereotyped characters, which is really average. But it wins in plot and conception, and can be said to have fired the first shot in the literary world's criticism of the four people. As a result, it was not only published in "People's Literature", but also became popular and became the pioneering work of the new era of literature.

As a newcomer in the literary world, Liu Xinwu was fearless and brave enough to use a bamboo pole to poke the sky. However, many of the famous writers had just emerged from the struggle and were timid, which resulted in the newcomers taking the lead. This was both accidental and inevitable.

Of course, these emerging writers did not get their reputations for nothing. The main reason that limited their level was that they missed out on studying and reading during the special era. When the country further opened up in the 80s, a new generation of Chinese writers, including Mo Yan, Yu Hua, Shu Tong, Chi Li, Chi Zijian, Shi Tiesheng, etc., matured at an astonishing speed, and were no less than their counterparts in other developed literary countries.

Zhang Chao asked himself that although he was familiar with various literary genres, writers, and works, his familiarity was limited to the knowledge of professional fields. It was a complete pipe dream to write serious literature and reach their level. The insight into the essence of human life and the ability to control words of top writers were almost innate, and Zhang Chao asked himself that he did not have this talent.

So is it possible to create popular literature?

Not optimistic. Since the early 90s, the influence of serious literature has declined rapidly, and popular literature represented by Wang Shuo, Hai Yan and others has taken center stage. Not only are their works selling well, but their film and television adaptations are also very successful. At the same time, Hong Kong and Taiwan martial arts and romance novels have swept the youth reading market and are invincible.

But at the turn of the century, even popular literature began to be marginalized. The increasingly rich entertainment life reconstructed the reading and cultural consumption habits of the Chinese people. Literary man, writer, poet...these titles are no longer sacred, and even began to become some kind of mocking name.

If you are poor, just say it directly. Why call yourself a poet?
At this time, online literature had just completed content differentiation. The works of the great writers of the pre-online literature era, such as Pi Zi Cai and Murong Xuecun, which were close to traditional literature but were only published on online platforms, began to fade out. On the other hand, the real online literature represented by Qidian, Longkong, and Huanjian was in the ascendant, but it was still not considered elegant.

Even if a serialized online article is good, it takes time to accumulate influence, and half a year is not enough. The key is that in 2004, personal computers were far from being popularized in thousands of households, and Zhang Chao didn't have one at home, so he had no way to write.

However, the opportunity for a high school student to receive an admission letter from a prestigious university based on an essay happened to pass Zhang Chao by.

In 1999, the "New Concept Essay Contest" organized by the magazine "New Sprout" came into being. Top universities in China, such as Peking University, Fudan University, East China Normal University, Nanjing University, etc., opened their doors to the first prize winners and granted them preferential conditions of admission without examination. It caused a sensation across the country. The "New Concept Essay Contest" became a temple that all Chinese middle school campus literature lovers yearned for.

Zhang Chao is no exception. He has been a fan of the "New Concept Essay Contest" since junior high school and has bought the essay collections of previous sessions. He also wanted to submit his essays, but gave up because he was never satisfied with the essays he wrote.

If you want to break the impasse, participating in the "New Concept Composition Competition" and winning a prize is almost the only way at the moment.

However, the competition starts accepting submissions in May every year, the deadline is late November, and the rematch is in January of the following year. He has missed it completely.

While Zhang Chao was busy with the first mock exam, hundreds of his peers were already writing furiously in the Shanghai New Concept Essay Competition. More than a dozen of them were lucky enough to get into first-class universities after the competition, bypassing the college entrance examination.

At this time, Zhang Chao hated himself for reaching out his hand too early when watching the revolving lantern. If he had waited a little longer and clicked on the earlier frames, he would have been reborn to an earlier time, and his chances would have been much better.

All the roads ahead seemed blocked. Even the route of criticizing the system and judging people as a high school student, which was close to sensationalism, had been preceded by Han Han, a middle school boy who won the New Concept Competition. Using this trick to attract attention was just a copycat.

The literary world is like a jungle. The higher the ecological niche, the narrower its width. Especially in 2004, when self-media was not yet popular, media resources were very scarce and no attention would be paid to a follower.

So you can’t be the next someone else, you can only be the first yourself.

Is there really no road?
Zhang Chao looked at the quartz clock above the blackboard: "The New Concept Essay Competition, the most grand feast of youth literature at the beginning of the century, how can I be absent? Who said that if you miss the time, you can't participate?"

(End of this chapter)