After a round of preliminary competitions, the Xinhui Chamber of Commerce School of the Hong Kong Four Districts Chamber of Commerce, a little-known poor school, emerged from a group of poor schools with two outliers, Su Yun, who ranked first on the points list, and Zhou Xinheng, who ranked eighteenth on the points list, and forcefully entered the list on the points list that seemed like a ranking list of famous and strong schools in the region.

"Xinhui Chamber of Commerce School? What kind of school is that? I've never heard of it!"

"I have some impression of Zhou Xinheng from their school. I heard that he is an excellent student who wants to be admitted to Yinghua University?"

"It seems that we have met this team in a previous knowledge competition at our school. Unfortunately, our teammates were not good enough to make it to the finals..."

"Now their teammates are really awesome, who the hell is that Su Yun?!"

"How come a fourth-year student is ranked first on the points list?!"

Su Yun walked straight past the group of adults and children who were staring at her, and quickly followed Zheng Guoguang out.

Fearing that she was under too much pressure, Zheng Guoguang packed his things quickly after receiving the invitation letter for the semi-finals and took the children back to school.

When he passed by the school gate, he saw a cart selling ice cream, so he took out some money and bought one for each of the children.

Su Yun, eating an ice cream in her hand, inadvertently looked back at the street outside that was bleached by the dazzling sunlight: large patches of intense summer colors, with no movement except for the occasional sound of vendors fanning themselves with cattail leaves. Everything in front of her seemed to be distorted by the strong summer sunlight.

I don’t know if it’s the filter of the times or some other reason, but I just feel that after eating an ice cream on such a hot summer day, I feel a lot more refreshed.

Even this unbearably hot and humid summer day seemed to be filled with enthusiasm because of this comfortable and refreshing feeling from the inside out. Occasionally, the breeze that passed through the treetops on the campus shook off and swayed on the shoulders, and the star-shaped spots of light on the ground seemed to jump with life.

Sometimes, human emotions are triggered by certain tiny touchpoints at a specific time, and then they come rushing in like a tidal wave. She had worked hard to cultivate her emotions to perform "500 Miles", but now she was hit by the feeling that she was truly in a foreign world. She felt as if she had finally acknowledged this era that should exist in her nostalgic memories and belonged to the youth of her elders.

Accepted this world where she would grow up.

"I will always be with you." Feeling the host's surging emotions, the system, which had been silent for a long time, spoke up.

Thank you.

Su Yun sincerely thanked the system: if it hadn't been for its company, she might have been slowly assimilated by this period of time, forgetting what a peaceful, beautiful and prosperous era she once lived in.

It’s not that this era of hard work is bad, but having seen the advancement of later generations, people will unconsciously look down upon everything that is backward.

After following Zheng Guoguang into the office, Zheng Guoguang took out a stack of drafts from the drawer of the table: "Your performance this time is very good, but sir, I really didn't expect that they would help behind the scenes, so I didn't give it to you..."

"Cheating" means cheating.

Because the Chinese character “猫” in “出貓” is similar to the Chinese character “枪”, which means “spear” and “枪” means being unscrupulous, the term “出貓招” is extended to this.

Of course, there is also a saying that comes from the English word copycat, which means to achieve a goal by falsifying or violating regulations. It can be used in general cheating in exams, playing tricks to deceive people, and even when the MC forgets his words and needs to look at the cue slips commonly known as "cat paper".

The teaching staff of Xinhui Chamber of Commerce School is much weaker than those famous and strong schools. The music class basically relies on one music teacher to teach the whole school. Moreover, this music teacher is also a mediocre person with little ability. He can barely recite from the textbook, but it is difficult for him to innovate...

Therefore, Zheng Guoguang, who taught art and English, had no choice but to take out some lyrics he had written in his spare time and show them to Su Yun and Zhou Xinheng, saying that if they liked any of them, he would try his best to find a music teacher to cooperate in composing the music.

Seeing Zhou Xinheng enthusiastically taking half of the draft and flipping through it, Su Yun, who had her own cheater, could only take the other half to have a look: Anyway, she would say she didn’t like it later and then “compose the music and lyrics” herself… Wait, what is this? !

"I wish I could fly a rocket and take you to the sky, so that we could live together in space..." Su Yun silently recited this unfinished work which only had the first two or three sentences, and her surprise grew even more.

Logically speaking, as a newcomer of her generation, she should not be familiar with these old Cantonese songs, which are much older than hers - but nostalgia and retro were popular at that time, and TBB's series of hit TV series such as Sweet Stories made the old songs into egg fried rice, which these young people who followed the TV series ate up happily.

Along the way, I also learned some other information about these old songs.

As expected, this golden age was an era in which many great works were produced. Zheng Sir, who was a primary school teacher by profession, later became one of the famous lyricists in Hong Kong, and was known as one of the three masters of Hong Kong's lyric world together with Huang Zhan and Lu Hezhan.

A group of pioneers who laid the foundation for the prosperity of Hong Kong music.

Perhaps the name of this older generation of lyricist is not familiar to most people, unlike the popular names such as Meng Ye and Wen Shan in later generations. But as long as you briefly list his works, I believe many people will suddenly realize and slap their thighs: it turns out that these were all written by him!

Even Su Yun, who has only a limited understanding of this, remembers some of the classic hits that are already familiar to people: "I Need You Every Minute", "Wind and Rain Together", "Walking on the Road of Life", "The Wind Continues to Blow" and "I Just Like You"...

But unfortunately, the treasure is there but the time has not come yet.

The nine tones and six tunes of Cantonese meant that lyric writing was subject to more restrictions than English and Mandarin lyrics. Therefore, it was not technically easy to have the lyrics first and then compose the music. Instead, people were used to having the music first and then writing the lyrics. Therefore, most lyricists during this period were called "lyricists".

Zheng Guoguang said before that they would choose the lyrics, which was just to let them choose a style they liked, and then find a music teacher to compose the music and then rewrite the lyrics or write the lyrics - I remember that the number of lyrics written by Zheng Sir in later generations has long exceeded the four-digit mark and the prefix is ​​not 1. He ranks among the top lyricists in the world for his quality and quantity. Su Yun has no doubt about the hard work of this Sir...

The problem is that, there is no doubt that Zheng Sir is a master of Cantonese lyric writing; unfortunately, in today's world, Cantonese songs are seen by the general public as vulgar pop songs and traditional Cantonese ditties.

Cantonese operas were out of fashion, and pop songs were not even acceptable. At that time, people thought English songs were classy, ​​and the popular songs were Mandarin songs from Taiwan...

Even though Su Yun wanted to revive Cantonese songs, the timing was not right yet, so she could only choose English songs in the next competition - to be a good programmer, her English must be good, and her Mandarin had passed 1B and was preparing to move on to 1A, and she didn't want her Taiwan accent to affect the level she had worked so hard to achieve.

"This is just an essay I saw on the news of a rocket launch. It only has two sentences. Do you like this style?" Zheng Guoguang asked.

"I like it very much." Su Yun made no secret of her love for the lyrics and nodded, "But I plan to use an English song in the semi-finals."

Taking various factors into consideration, such as age and education, Su Yun naturally chose songs with nice melodies and simple lyrics, so some fresh English songs became her first choice.

"English song?" Zheng Guoguang put down the draft with some confusion.

"Yes, because of my mother-in-law...so I wrote a song for her." Su Yun took a pen, wrote down some lyrics, and then hummed softly.

I have to say that this body has really good natural talents. It can sing all kinds of tones without any effort and the timbre is excellent enough. In addition, it is still a child's voice, so even the a cappella singing has a fresh, bright, clear and ethereal taste.

Zheng Guoguang teaches English, and this version of the lyrics uses simple vocabulary. Just by listening to the song and looking at the lyrics, you can naturally understand that this song has already beaten all the "original songs" encountered in the previous preliminary rounds. It can even be said that it has reached the quality of being released on an album.

“I didn’t expect you to have such talent! What a pity…” Wang Jiaju barely understood some of the lyrics and was a little surprised, but when he thought of the origin of this song, he felt inexplicably sad.

"What a pity! It just sounds good!" Li Jiefen of course understood the content of the song, but it was not appropriate to mention Su Yun's family's sorrow, so she quickly applauded along with Wang Jiaxiang, who did not understand the content but just thought the song was beautiful.

"Very good music and lyrics, you can use this one in the semi-final." After confirming that Su Yun was self-sufficient, Zheng Guoguang turned his gaze to Zhou Xinheng.

"I haven't made my choice yet...how about you help me choose, Sir Zheng?" Zhou Xinheng responded in a muffled voice.

Zheng Guoguang didn't doubt him and started reading the draft. However, Lai Kit-fen, who had known Zhou Xinheng since childhood, curled her lips and glared at him: "It's their ability to write lyrics and compose music. You just wanted to show up more in front of the teachers. It's better to have a good teammate than a stupid teammate, right?"

From her depressed and gloomy look, it was obvious that Zhou Xinheng, who had always been successful in school, was jealous of Su Yun's talent, and Li Jiefen couldn't stand it.

Su Yun is younger than all of them, but it is a fact that she is better than them in every aspect - although Zhou Xinheng provided the topic information in the preliminary round, the planning of the science and technology projects in the preliminary round was all thought up by Su Yun, not to mention that she sings well, has solid knowledge and is fast, she is definitely the top candidate for the Chinese project in the music project!

"Yeah, I was distracted for a moment." Zhou Xinheng calmed down and felt relieved.

“That’s right, the two of you should work hard and try to beat the others to become the representative of Sham Shui Po on TV!” Lai Kit-fan suddenly became excited.

Zhou Xinheng agreed on the surface, but what he was actually thinking in his heart, probably only he himself knew.

He did not dare to aspire to become the representative of this district, but it was enough for him to get the attention of the British.

However, perhaps his long-cherished hope finally paid off, because that night, a man who claimed to be a teacher at Yinghua Primary School came to Zhou's Electrical Appliance Store.

Of the three students from Ying Wah Primary School this time, two were placed in a fiercely competitive group with a combination of famous and strong schools, and the final hope of the entire group was 1 point short, ranking 31st and missing the chance to enter the rematch, so it was unfortunately ranked last in the ranking of good schools in this area.

This competition is quite prestigious. If we do well and more of them continue to come, it will become the first competition... Then, Yinghua's results will be very bad, and it will even affect the enrollment rate for next year.

Therefore, they targeted the only two students from poor schools among the top 30. This practice has been used in the past. If a good school fails, they will recruit students from poor schools who are lucky enough to advance to the next round to transfer to other schools and continue the competition in the name of good schools.

This operation is indeed outrageous, but for the sake of the school's reputation, most of the heads of major universities have become accustomed to it and tacitly accepted it. And since the students from poor schools can be transferred to good schools without taking exams, both sides benefit, so naturally they will not publicize it.

As for why Ying Wah targeted Zhou Xinheng, who ranked 18th on the points list, instead of Su Yun, who ranked first on the points list, the reason is even simpler: Ying Wah Primary School and its affiliated secondary school, Ying Wah College, are both boys' schools that only accept male students...

Although entering the semi-finals at the same time means that you have to be prepared to compete with your teammates for the qualifying spot, competing between different schools is always more hurtful than competing within the same school.

"I'll think about it." Faced with Yinghua's invitation and conditions, Zhou Xinheng, who had always wanted to study at Yinghua, did not agree immediately this time.

After seeing off Yinghua's people, Zhou Xinheng stood at the door and looked silently at the small stall not far from the door.

His teammate Su Yun and the two brothers from the Wang family are still working hard to set up a stall, and his parents are also working hard to open a shop...

Everyone suffers, but it's all just for the sake of living.