That happened during the first monthly exam of Chucheon's senior year of high school... Well, by the way, it was about ten years ago.
Ten years ago, more than three thousand six hundred days ago.
Chu Li was very surprised that someone could remember something that happened so long ago so clearly - including what the weather was like that day, what happened, who showed up, what they said and did, and the expressions on their faces at the time... When the man told the story from a bystander's perspective, indifferently and calmly, Chu Li found that she seemed to be easily put into the story.
It's really not a very beautiful story.
Ten years ago.
At that time, Chu Chuan, who was less than 17 years old, was already famous in high school because his father was a great writer. When his classmates talked about Chu Chuan, they would always say, "Chu Chuan in Class 1, his father is a writer, so amazing."
But that's all.
Because the next sentence will inevitably be——
[Hey, how come he didn't inherit any of his father's genes? His essays are always so bad.]
That's it.
This boy named Chu Chuan, whose father is a famous writer, scored more than 40 points out of 60 in the essay writing section only a few times in the two years after he entered high school. It was not because he was not good at writing essays, but because when other students wrote argumentative essays according to the "classic three-paragraph format" taught by the teacher, Chu Chuan, as the top student, focused on the sentence "Except poetry, the subject is not limited" and frantically wrote one 800-word fable after another...
Because of this, his Chinese teacher had talked to him more than once, but each conversation was almost the same and futile, for example -
Chinese teacher: "Zhechuan, the class representative complained to me again yesterday. You refused to recite the famous people's deeds and the deeds of the top ten people who moved China this year that I asked you to recite. What's wrong with you? You can use these when you write your essay..."
Zhuo Chuan: "…Why would I waste my time memorizing it when I know I won't be able to use it?"
Chinese teacher: "What do you mean by wasting time? Take the last exam for example! The theme of the essay was 'Only those with a strong heart can achieve perfection'. You could have used Edison, Yang Liwei, and Sima Qian as materials, but why did you write your own story instead?!"
Zhechuan: "You start with a parallel paragraph, in the middle you give examples of Edison, Yang Liwei, and Sima Qian, and at the end you continue with the parallel paragraphs to make the point - are you talking about this kind of Edison, Yang Liwei, and Sima Qian?"
Chinese teacher: “…”
Chinese teacher: "I know you want to be innovative, but no matter how cliché the stories of famous people are, they are better than making up your own stories! For example, the top ten people who move China every year are all living, classic positive characters picked from thousands of people. Aren't they more vivid and lively than the stories you make up -"
Zhuo Chuan: "If we are destined to just randomly arrange and combine these celebrity stories and apply them, then what is the point of writing "Any subject except poetry" on the test paper to fool people? It would be better to write "Only argumentative essays are accepted, please write argumentative essays"."
Chinese teacher: “…”
Chinese teacher: "How do you talk to the teacher? Speak properly! Is it up to me to decide what is printed on the test paper? If it is up to me, I will print what you said!"
That atmosphere made it look like he wanted to print these words on the forehead of the young man in front of him, let alone print them on the test paper.
Zhuo Chuan: "My little story has a beginning and an end, and the characters are rich. There is not a single word of nonsense or excerpts from essays from beginning to end... How is it not better than your pile of stereotyped essays?"
"What's the point of eight-part essays! Zhechuan! Stop talking nonsense! As long as you follow the routine, you can get at least 43 or 44 points. Isn't that better than what you have now?!" When the topic gets to this point, the Chinese teacher always raises his voice, "You can get more than 80 points out of 90 in the language knowledge part, and you can easily get 130 or 140 points if you write a casual composition. What's wrong with that! Why do you have to go against the examiner? Do you still hope to meet an examiner who can appreciate your little stories during the college entrance examination? You have read too much chicken soup! Will I harm you? Isn't it all for your own good? One more point in the college entrance examination will step on thousands of people. Do you still remember the senior Jiang Yucheng I mentioned? He stepped on 200,000 more people than you?! It's not too late for you to learn to write argumentative essays now!"
“…”
“…”
"I see."
--I see.
Countless conversations ended with the boy's stubborn answer.
However, only Chu Chuan's Chinese teacher knew that the boy's answer was just a perfunctory one... because in the next exam, he would always use the 40 to 50 minutes to write an 800-word short story that seemed to fit the purpose of the exam question.
He continued to hold on to his pitifully low score of 30 or so points for his composition, as steady as a rock.
He continued to ignore the celebrity materials given by the teacher.
Of course, I will continue to use the argumentative essay format, which is well-formatted and can get relatively stable scores. Thank you Jingmin.
——And he doesn't think there's anything wrong with him.
The Chinese teacher's hairline has been raised by a few millimeters because of him. Before menopause comes, there is a good chance that she will join the glorious typical image of "Mediterranean teacher wearing glasses"...
And just when Zhuo Chuan thought that his writing performance throughout his high school career "should be just like this", things took a sudden turn: during the first monthly exam of the senior year, the mock college entrance examination papers were sealed, and the arts and science classes exchanged papers and revised the scores. Under such circumstances, Zhuo Chuan's short story composition actually received an extremely high score of 58 points from the Chinese teacher of the arts class next door, which was close to a full score!
For a moment, the whole class was in an uproar!
Even Zhuchuan himself was a little confused.
As soon as the monthly exam was over, Zhuchuan's paper was specially asked to be given by the Chinese teacher of the liberal arts class next door. He read it aloud carefully in the four liberal arts classes he taught, and then took the time to copy it. Each student in the class was given a copy, and everyone was required to copy down the copy and study hard.
Total all-star treatment.
Finally, the composition test paper went around for two or three days before it finally returned to Zhuchuan's hands - it was finally time for their Chinese class to explain the composition for this monthly exam... Zhuchuan, who was still a teenager at the time, looked at his test paper with a score of 58. It would be a lie to say that he was not looking forward to or even hoping for something to happen.
...But in the end, nothing happened - his Chinese teacher came and read out all the excellent essays with scores of 53 or 52 in the class, but he didn't mention his essay, which ranked first in the whole grade...
It was difficult for the young Zhuchuan to explain his thoughts at that time. He might be confused or hesitant. The three words "why" emerged in his heart. It was only then that he realized that even if he appeared to be dismissive of the teacher who was willing to teach argumentative essays, he actually hoped to be recognized in his heart.
However.
The first composition lesson was treated as transparent; in the second Chinese class in a row, when everyone collected their test papers and started a new round of questions, Zhuo Chuan watched his Chinese teacher walk step by step to his desk, pick up his composition test paper, read it carefully, and then put it down -
He laughed.
Zhuochuan will probably remember it for the rest of his life. He was sitting in the first row, next to the window, and the teacher was standing under the window. He smiled at him and said, "Well, I don't think it's that good. I don't think your writing is that good. Why did you give it 58 points?"
His voice was neither too loud nor too low, but it was loud enough for every corner of the classroom where students were quietly doing their homework to hear it clearly. Some students stopped writing and looked up in surprise...
And for the young boy, Jungkawa——
That moment.
angry.
disappointment.
Speechlessness and embarrassment as if being humiliated all came flooding back.
"You can deduct ten points, or even twenty points, I don't care at all." The boy stubbornly - for the first time, he used an almost rough movement to pull his composition test paper back from his Chinese teacher's hand, crumpled it up and stuffed it into the desk drawer. He gritted his teeth and emphasized again, "Anyway, it doesn't matter how many points you give me. What impact does it have on my total score ranking?"
In that monthly exam, the top student, Zhuchuan, ranked first in the grade with a total score 25 points higher than the second place... That was also the last time he and his Chinese teacher discussed essay writing.
Chu Li raised his hand and said, "Stop recalling this. Teacher, I have a question: Under such circumstances, it is hard to imagine that Mr. Zhao Guxuan, as a writer, would turn a blind eye to such a situation... Precisely because he is a literary creator, he has the basic judgment of whether an article is good or bad. Why didn't he go to school and teach the Chinese teacher a lesson for you at that time?"
As soon as Chu Li finished speaking, he saw Zha Chuan's mocking expression: "What a good question - why do you think the Zha family's father-son relationship is so 'harmonious' that the entire literary world knows about it?... Don't pretend. I don't believe you haven't heard something from Lao Miao or Yu Yao. If my old man was the one who would stand on my side at that time..."
The man paused, and then the two of them walked to a nearby park, where old men and women were dancing in the square... The harmonious and cheerful atmosphere and the indifference on the man's face formed a sharp contrast like black and white.
Zhuochuan sat down beside the flowerbed. The wind blew by, bringing with it the familiar scent of night-blooming flowers. His voice was almost blown away in the slightly cool evening breeze.
"Sometimes I think that Jiang Yucheng, a well-behaved student who has never scored less than 55 points in his essays and a genius writer who always caters to the tastes of most people, might be more suitable to be my old man's son."
Chu Li looked up at Zhuchuan blankly.
Zhuo Chuan: "My friend's story is not over yet, the worse is yet to come."
First Li: “???”
It’s not over yet?!
Is there anything worse?!
Not good, right? ...
As Chu Chuan said, the story is not over yet.
If I look back through my memories and rank the top three "sadest days" before I die, then the day when my Chinese teacher teased me at school, "I don't think you wrote that well," would definitely be a strong contender.
Because things didn't end with the mold I got into during the day.
When Chu Chuan returned home in the evening, he found out that the Chinese teacher had already communicated with Chu Chuan's parents about the fact that Chu Chuan's compositions were always non-mainstream. The reason was that he was worried that the high score for this composition would make Chu Chuan have the illusion that "it is okay to write like this", and then he would make the same mistake again and again.
So, the boy came home from evening self-study and before he had time to drink a sip of water, he was called into his father's study and questioned why he couldn't write the composition in the way the teacher required, which would be most beneficial for the exam.
Zhu Guxuan, the boss, has a very loud voice. Zhu Chuan guessed that this was probably why the study was required to have a good soundproofing effect during the renovation - not to prevent the people inside from being disturbed, but to prevent people outside from eavesdropping...
"Your teacher always talks about the son of the neighboring Jiang family. Don't think he is much better than you. When it comes to writing skills, how much worse can my son, Zhuo Guxuan, be than him? But he just wrote an argumentative essay in a proper manner and got a high score with his writing skills. He can do it, so why do you have to go off the beaten track?!"
"Your Chinese teacher asked you to memorize the composition materials, but the whole class did it except you - come here, come here so I can see if you have thorns or scales on your spine!"
"You Chinese teachers have a hard time, do you know that?" A student asked him: "Teacher, even if Zhuo Chuan's writing is so bad, he doesn't need to memorize the materials, so why do we have to memorize them?"
"I'm embarrassed for you! The pride of scholars, you're not even a scholar! Where does the pride come from?!"
At that time, Zhuchuan did not say anything. He had answered similar questions hundreds of times, and he was tired of hearing similar questions.
At this moment, he did something that he would never do again if he had a Doraemon time machine and the chance to do it again: his wandering eyes finally stopped at a pile of manuscripts on his father's desk in the study - some of the manuscripts were even yellowed, from the top one with neat handwriting to the messy ones in the middle, and then back to neatness...
A thick stack.
If we calculate based on 300 to 400 words per sheet, then this stack of paper should conservatively have about 100,000 to 200,000 words… This is the handwritten manuscript of Hirokawa, the manuscript of his first novel—he started writing it in the first year of high school, when electronic devices were not so advanced and some magazines even wrote manuscripts for submissions. The boy used his free time during breaks, physical education classes, and Chinese classes to pick up a pen and write the manuscript of his first novel word by word.
About three days ago, he handed them to his father for review.
At this time, probably noticing the boy's gaze, Zhuo Guxuan stopped scolding, picked up the manuscripts, and threw them in front of the boy standing on the other side of the desk: "I stopped reading half of these manuscripts. The structure is disorganized and the imagination is unrealistic. The most important thing is that the hero has no great ideals other than finding his own scabbard and the whereabouts of his father. It lacks practical educational significance-"
The boy looked at the neatly coded manuscript paper flying around, some of which fell to the ground.
"If you have the time to write such meaningless things, you might as well think about how to write high-scoring essays that have a certain format and can be trained for exam-oriented education. It's hard to imagine that you have spent time on such things in the past few years... What is the meaning of literary creation? What is the purpose? What can readers gain when reading? What can they learn? Your things may be sold, but they will always be positioned as 'commodities'-"
The boy bent down and picked up the manuscript that had fallen on the ground.
"This kind of novel that is only for entertainment can never be called 'literature'." Zhuo Guxuan's voice sounded very firm and disgusted. "If you want to write something, then write it well. After the college entrance examination, I can even teach you how to write correctly, but don't waste your time and energy on this meaningless thing now."
juvenile:"……"
No one can bear the disappointment of being let down twice in one day despite having high expectations.
The conversation ended in a completely unhappy ending when Chu Chuan grabbed his pile of hundreds of thousands of words of novel manuscripts, burned half of them and tore up the other half on the spot... As a result, the Chu family father and son had a huge divergence in their ideas about "writing" -
Later.
Zhuochuan never showed his father anything he wrote again.
Zhuochuan never listened to the Chinese teacher's lectures properly in Chinese class again.
Following the third year of high school, there were numerous and frequent monthly exams. With the approval of other teachers in the Chinese language department, Chu Chuan's story writing never fell below 53 points...
I heard that every time the monthly exam essays were graded, there was a small storm, and the center of the storm was a "problem boy" named "Zhuchuan" - the relationship between the entire senior high school Chinese group became a little tense because of him...
Especially the Chinese teacher of the liberal arts class next door, who treated him like his own son. When they graduated, every girl in the liberal arts class had a copy of "Zhechuan Composition Collection", and the initial fan club took shape. As an author who had never signed books or appeared in front of readers, the rumor that "Zhechuan is a good writer and a handsome guy" was probably spread by these old bones.
After that comes the college entrance examination.
When Chu Chuan left the examination room, he knew that he had chosen the wrong multiple-choice question in the language knowledge section. However, when the college entrance examination scores were released, he still scored 147 points - this meant that in the last battle of his entire high school career, he got a great score of full marks in the composition!
Maybe he was lucky, because the "chicken soup that would never appear" that his Chinese teacher had mentioned really appeared... When he returned to school to collect his score slip after the college entrance examination, he personally took his score slip from his Chinese teacher. Facing the Chinese teacher's sullen smile and the question that he asked jokingly "Did you compromise and write an argumentative essay to get full marks in the college entrance examination?", he just smiled, took the score slip and turned away.
The story really ends here.
There was no such thing as a boy’s counterattack, nor was there any such thing as a teacher being slapped in the face and apologizing to the boy——
Looking at the overall situation, it seems that there is no real winner in the whole story.
When the man told the lion "I'm done" in a calm voice, Chu Li was still immersed in shock - her head was filled with so much information that it almost flattened all the wrinkles in her brain... She looked at Zhuo Chuan in amazement, thinking that she should comfort him.
But the words of comfort came to my lips, looking at the other person's super calm face, I couldn't say them... In the end, I could only smile awkwardly: "No way, you were so cruel to yourself when you were young, burning a handwritten manuscript of hundreds of thousands of words without any hesitation--"
Zhuochuan turned his head and looked at Chuli expressionlessly.
Chu Li was stunned. Suddenly she remembered something and the embarrassment on her face suddenly changed. She raised her eyebrows and patted Zhu Chuan on the back: "Hey, I almost got fooled by you! The young genius writer Zhu Chuan became famous at the age of 17 with the book "Eastern Charming Records" - according to the timeline of the story you said, it was just around the time when you burned the handwritten manuscript of your first novel. You even burned the wool you used to become famous???"
“…”
The man changed his sitting position.
He crossed his long legs.
He raised his chin slightly, revealing a lazy expression: "What are those media saying? A talented young writer wrote an essay for the first time with a skillful handwriting and precise wording, as if he has many years of writing experience, blah blah blah... Why don't you think about why?"
Chu Li blinked, her hand still on the man's back.
The man's eyes darkened, but his tone was calm and calm: "Because "Eastern Charming Records" is not the first novel I wrote."
Chu Li's hand on the man's back froze.
At this moment, she saw the man turn his head. In the dark night, he raised the corners of his lips and showed her his neat white teeth: "Guess why the editor-in-chief of "Luohe Divine Book" ended up being you?"
Chu Li: "...Why? Isn't it because I signed this book——"
Zhuo Chuan: "[What's more, Xiao Niao and I, Lao Miao, have always been your fans. We have admired you since your debut work, "Eastern Charming Records".]"
First Li: “????”
Zhao Chuan: "[I sometimes think about it. At the age of 17, your first work showed its brilliance. You were called the most promising young writer. At the age of 19, you already had three works published. At such a young age, you joined the Provincial Writers Association. Your family has a long lineage of scholars... Teacher, are you a genius?]"
Chu Li: "..."
Chu Li silently took her hand away from the man's back.
Zhuo Chuan: "Lao Miao said all the things I hate to hear in just ten seconds."
First Li: “………………”
Zhuo Chuan: "So, I can only ask him to die."
First Li: “………………………………”
Can.
Today, Lao Miao, your death can no longer be considered unclear.
You're just... uh, the villain dies because he talks too much.
Really, to borrow the words of an actor: wonderful, you deserve it.
Aha ...!