It wasn't until dinner that Shen Qingqing remembered that she had told her father about the competition she was going to participate in on Saturday.
"Do you want me to take you there?" Shen Rongzhou agreed.
Shen Qingqing shook her head: "No need, I'll ride my bicycle there myself. After the exam, I'll go back to school and ride back."
Then she looked at her mother and asked, "Mom, could you burn a smaller auspicious knot for me to wear?"
“Okay, I’ll make it for you after we finish eating.” Li Xunli naturally agreed.
In the Shen family, studying is of paramount importance, and exams and competitions are of utmost importance. They cannot easily let their children be in a bad mood, lest it affect their grades.
Early Saturday morning, Shen Qingqing put the auspicious knot that her mother had placed on her desk in the middle of the night around her neck, grabbed a transparent exam bag, threw it into the basket on the front of her bicycle, and went to school.
After she leisurely parked her bicycle and entered the classroom, feeling that she had arrived quite early, she discovered that everyone else was already there except for her.
Shen Qingqing was completely dumbfounded. She arrived fifteen minutes early, so how did she become the last one?!
The Chinese teacher standing on the podium looked at the students and then at her watch: "That's about it. The driver is almost here. Those of you who need to use the restroom, go to the restroom. Once you're ready, we'll leave the school and get on the bus."
Shen Qingqing was the youngest and shortest, following behind the Chinese teacher, with four older students behind her.
The car parked at the school gate was a seven-seater van, which could easily seat all six of them.
The competition venue is Yanqi Primary School in the next town, which is about a half-hour drive away at a steady pace.
The school, which should have been quiet on Saturday, was transformed into a hub for students in all sorts of school uniforms because of this competition.
Shen Qingqing and her group arrived at 8:40 a.m. The exam was not to start until 9:30 a.m. They entered the exam room 15 minutes early. The Chinese teacher in charge of the group took out a map of the exam room and explained the exam rules to them.
The exam lasts two hours, from 9:30 to 11:30. The rest are the usual exam rules: no whispering, no peeking at other people's papers, etc.
While waiting to enter the examination room, Shen Qingqing originally wanted to stroll around the school, but she didn't expect that her seniors were all struggling with the exam, and even in such a short waiting time, they were making the most of their time to review their materials.
This made Shen Qingqing too embarrassed to go out and play by herself, so she could only obediently stay by their side, holding the documents and lost in thought.
This first round of the competition can actually be called the preliminary round of the city competition. Five of the strongest students were selected from eighteen schools to compete with students from other cities.
However, in terms of teaching quality, Chaocheng is indeed somewhat inferior to other cities.
Not to mention the provincial capital, it can't even compare to the neighboring city of Shantou.
Therefore, the teachers did not put much pressure on their students. While Shen Qingqing was looking at the materials in a daze, she had already heard several teachers telling the students to relax and treat it as an opportunity to expand their extracurricular knowledge.
At 9:15 a.m., the broadcast at Yanqi Primary School came on time, instructing the students to enter their respective examination rooms as soon as possible.
Teachers usually prefer to have older students participate in these kinds of competitions, and Shen Qingqing didn't see any students like her who were first-year students participating in the competition in her exam room.
Because each student wears a name tag indicating their school and grade, and Shen Qingqing's seat is at the first table near the entrance, she can see every student who comes in.
The proctor on the podium opened the exam papers according to regulations, then distributed them, informing the students that they were not allowed to answer questions before 9:30.
As soon as Shen Qingqing received the test paper, she flipped through it. There were only three types of questions: multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank, and true/false.
There are 30 multiple-choice questions, each worth 1 point; 40 fill-in-the-blank questions, each worth 1 point; and 30 true/false questions, each worth 1 point.
For each question type, approximately 60% are from domestic classics and 40% are from foreign classics.
At 9:31, the broadcast reminded the candidates to start writing their answers.
Shen Qingqing answered the multiple-choice questions very quickly, especially the section on Chinese classics. She hardly needed to think; the answers were just muscle memory. Except for a few foreign classics whose authors were a bit confusing and required some sorting out, which took a little time, the multiple-choice questions were almost over before she finished.
The exam lasted two hours, but Shen Qingqing finished it in less than an hour and a half. The main problem was that there were a lot of questions, a total of one hundred. Even if each question took one minute, it would still take her an hour and forty minutes.
Because the maximum time to hand in the exam paper early is 30 minutes, Shen Qingqing checked the paper three or four times before finally managing to hold on until 11 o'clock and immediately raised her hand to signal.
As the first student to hand in her exam paper, Shen Qingqing walked out of the classroom with the gaze of the entire classroom following her.
The teachers leading the teams all went to their offices for tea, leaving only a few teachers waiting outside the examination hall for their students.
The Chinese teacher was one of them. He was quite surprised to see Shen Qingqing come out so quickly and hurried over to greet her: "Qingqing? Why are you out? Do you need to use the restroom?"
Shen Qingqing honestly shook her head: "I finished answering the questions and handed in my paper early."
"You..." The Chinese teacher was a little speechless. After thinking about the test questions she had received, she didn't say much. Such a large amount of knowledge to remember, and each question was different. Shen Qingqing was only seven years old, so it was indeed a bit difficult for her.
It's better to come out early, so as not to sit inside and suffer, which is also uncomfortable for the child.
"Alright, that's enough. Are you hungry? I'll go buy you some bread to tide you over." The Chinese teacher didn't dwell on the topic, lest she discourage Shen Qingqing.
"Teacher, I'm not hungry. Maybe the older brothers and sisters will be hungry when they come out, since they use their brains a lot," Shen Qingqing said sincerely.
Mental activity is indeed very physically demanding.
The other four older students are still just kids. They need to use their brains and memory to do these problems. If they suddenly can't remember something, they will get anxious. The more anxious they get, the more nervous they become, and the faster they will consume their energy and the more likely they are to get hungry.
Unlike her, who is an adult at heart and can solve these childish problems as if they were common sense, she doesn't need to use her brain much.
When the Chinese teacher heard Shen Qingqing's words, he was a little surprised. He didn't expect that Shen Qingqing would be so relaxed. She didn't care that she couldn't do the problems herself, but was concerned that her older brothers and sisters would get hungry if they did too many problems.
"Okay, then you go with the teacher to buy some bread for the older brothers and sisters and wait for them to come out."
The teacher and student, each lost in their own thoughts, went hand in hand to buy bread for the students who were still working hard in the exam hall.
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