Chapter 78: Bastard Cousin
On May 7, the first Friday after Labor Day, Li Ye got up early.
Today, he was going to take part in the first "somewhat important" exam since he traveled through time - the college entrance examination preliminary examination, or pre-examination for short.
The pre-examination system, which has existed in China for nine years, requires each province, municipality, and autonomous region to have unified test questions and examinations.
Therefore, all the high school graduates of 1982 in the entire Dongshan Province, plus all the repeaters, will begin a three-day fateful elimination tournament.
In May in Qingshui County, there was no need for stoves for heating, so a stove was rebuilt in the courtyard of the Erliang Store and a simple shed was set up to serve as a kitchen.
Li Ye got up early today and temporarily served as a cook, making breakfast for a small group of eight people.
However, after Li Ye picked up a plastic bucket in the kitchen, he found that the peanut oil in it was almost gone.
"No peanut oil again? The old man is really stingy, but he runs a grain and oil shop and is short of oil."
People in Qingshui County are accustomed to eating soybean oil. Peanut oil is much more expensive than soybean oil, and the supply is not sufficient.
Jiang Xiaoyan usually uses soybean oil when cooking.
Li Ye, however, likes peanut oil.
Grandpa Li Zhongfa has always taught Li Ye that even if he is rich, he should not forget his roots. It is good enough to have enough soybean oil. Why should he drink peanut oil every day?
As for this soybean oil, it was Director Li who gave a special note to Li Ye and others!
You should know that the supply of oil for urban residents during the Spring Festival in the 1980s was only 4 taels.
The rice cooked with soybean oil is also delicious, but Li Ye will definitely stay away from Jiang Xiaoyan when she is cooking.
People who have never eaten soybean oil don’t know that the smell of soybean oil when it is stir-fried is very strong, and one sniff of it can go straight from your nose to your forehead.
“Sizzle~”
The chopped green onions gave off an indescribable aroma in the boiling soybean oil. Li Ye held his breath and poured water into the pot.
Although Li Ye knows how to cook, he is very lazy.
He was too lazy to make pot stickers, pancakes, or wonton noodles, so he just fried the egg noodles in oil. It was both easy and filling.
Just at this time, Jiang Xiaoyan, Hu Man and others arrived.
Looking at the thick oil floating on the surface of the water in the pot, Jiang Xiaoyan almost grumbled to Li Ye again.
For breakfast, people used to just eat a cold steamed bun, but now, the oil can be used to make two dishes.
There was once a joke that illustrates the current common people's concept of eating oil.
I took a jar to the grain and oil store to get some oil. After I got it, I felt my pocket and found I had no money, so I had to give it back to the owner.
Then go home and use bamboo strips to scrape off the remaining oil on the wall of the jar, and you can make a "rich" meal.
As long as you are thick-skinned enough and go there every few months, there will be meat at home.
"Okay, you do the rest! Two eggs per person!
We will eat lunch in the cafeteria of No. 1 Middle School today. The food there is like feeding pigs. If you don’t get enough nutrition and it affects your exams, I won’t care.”
Li Ye threw away the ladle and gave up the stove.
"You're like feeding pigs. If you tell others about this, you'll be scolded."
Jiang Xiaoyan muttered as she walked to the stove, prepared noodles and eggs, and waited for the water to boil.
After several months of feeding with refined grains, the eight-member group had actually become greedy, but no one could admit it because people should never forget their roots.
If word of this got out, my parents would chase me with a rolling pin and beat me up for two miles.
[Don't you even consider what species you are? Why do you still eat bran? ]
It was almost seven o'clock when Wen Leyu came leisurely over to eat. Although her steps were lazy, she was in very good spirits.
This is Li Ye’s important training result - the credit of beauty sleep.
In the past, the little girl was malnourished, had poor sleep, and her whole face was pale and bloodless.
Ever since she was discovered by Li Ye, he has been telling her all the benefits of "adequate sleep" on the skin and appearance.
The girl was a little confused, but fortunately she was obedient. After slowly getting used to it, her complexion is much better than before. She has developed an irresistible habit of staying in bed, just like Li Ye.
After finishing their hearty meal of egg noodles, the small group of eight went to the county’s No. 2 Middle School and joined the team that was about to set off.
Because it is a province-wide unified examination, it is impossible for each middle school to arrange the examination venue by themselves, and it is impossible for the invigilators from other places to invigilate in the rural middle schools dozens of kilometers away.
Therefore, all candidates in Qingshui County take the preliminary examination in high schools and junior high schools in the county.
One person at one desk, it’s no different from the college entrance examination.
"Stop talking, I'll repeat the rules. Follow orders for all actions. Raise your hands and report if there is anything. The four columns are not allowed to set out randomly!"
The director of studies, Jin Feiyu, gave a brief speech and then led the candidates from the County No. 2 Middle School out of the school.
They took advantage of being in the same county town, and they were able to arrive at the examination center on time by setting off together this morning.
However, students in township high schools such as Hebin Township and Liuqiao Township, which are thirty or forty miles away, must arrive in the county town one day in advance.
This is not the future, where 20 kilometers can be traveled in less than half an hour by car, and a large number of students need to walk.
You walk for four or five hours in the morning and then take the exam?
Just fooling around!
After arriving in the county, only a few people stayed in hotels. Most of them stayed at the examination schools. Since there were not enough dormitories, they had to bring their own bedding and sleep on the floor in the classroom.
So the scene of hundreds of people walking with bedding on their backs was like a military march. It is quite interesting to think about it many years later.
At this time, if there is a student whose parents have strong connections and can provide support with a large truck, he will definitely be the proudest kid in the whole school.
The walking team from County No. 2 Middle School crossed paths with the team from County No. 1 Middle School when passing the entrance of the Post Office.
Perhaps because of the nervousness about the pre-exam, everyone was silent and the atmosphere was very depressing.
Li Ye was somewhat surprised to see Lu Zixue in the team of the County No. 1 Middle School, because Lu Zixue was a freshman in high school this year.
In the early 1980s, many provinces, like Dongshan Province, used the "ten-year" textbooks.
That is, elementary school is five years, junior high school is three years, and high school is two years. Therefore, high school in Qingshui County now only has two years. It was not until around 1984 or 1985 that it was changed to a three-year system.
Therefore, it is not an act against heaven for Lu's self-taught high school students to take the college entrance examination in advance. One more experience of failure will be of great benefit for the formal college entrance examination next year.
As for Lu Zixue's initial victory and successful landing, Li Ye thought there was little hope.
As the top student in the county's No. 2 Middle School, Lu Jingyao could compete with the top three students in the county's No. 1 Middle School, but he was able to go to Beijing University of Foreign Studies by "taking advantage".
In the early 1980s, when there was an extreme shortage of foreign language talents and basic English education was extremely backward, a candidate who scored well in the English test in the college entrance examination could end up with a score 20 or 30 points below the admission score.
Lu Jingyao scored almost full marks in English last year and was admitted as an exception.
To be honest, her basic scores may not even be enough to get into an undergraduate program.
So no matter how well Lu Zixue studies, as a freshman in high school, can he compete with those high school entrance exam hopefuls in the repeat class?
Moreover, there is an undergraduate student in the family, and with Lu Zixue's inferiority complex and arrogance, and his first time trying the waters, would he be willing to fill in a junior college application when applying for college?
Failing the exam is a sure thing.
At the intersection in the north of the city, the students of County No. 2 Middle School were divided into two, going to County No. 1 Middle School and Yuhong Middle School respectively.
Li Ye was assigned to the No. 1 Middle School in the county. After arriving, all the students were completely reshuffled and mixed with students from two rural high schools into classrooms for the first and second grade of high school and a repeater class.
Naturally, the small group of eight people could not get together. Only Jiang Xiaoyan and Li Ye were in the same examination room. There were also a few students from repeater classes one and two, whom Li Ye barely knew.
However, shortly after he sat down, someone sat down at the desk on his right.
It turned out to be Cui Aiguo, my eldest aunt’s cousin.
Li Ye was surprised for two seconds and finally decided to say hello to him. However, that bastard turned his head and pretended not to know Li Ye.
[Okay, that's great. We don't know each other. Whoever talks to whom is an idiot.]
. . . . . . .
The first test is Chinese.
The invigilator was very strict. He yelled a lot about the exam room disciplines and made cheating sound as serious and scary as if it would cost at least five years.
He didn't know if it was an illusion, but Li Ye always felt that when the foreign female teacher emphasized discipline, her eyes were always on him, which made him very confused.
[Is it because I am too handsome? Or is it because of my watch? ]
Li Ye was not showing off today. He wore the jeans that Jin Peng and others brought back for him, but he was wearing a Swiss Tissot watch, which he didn't know whether it was a smuggled one.
Knowing that Li Ye had an exam on May 7 and needed to manage his time, Hao Jian immediately sent an urgent telegram to Sanshui who stayed in Yangcheng, asking him to buy a high-end watch.
Because in 1982, to buy a Shanghai watch, you also needed a ticket for a Shanghai-made watch, and there were smugglers in Guangzhou, so I went around in Sanshui and paid for this Swiss product.
Li Ye had never played with watches in his previous life, so he couldn't tell whether they were real or fake, but the style and fur of the watches were very exquisite and eye-catching.
Just now, when Li Ye stretched out his arm and took out the watch from his sleeve, his bastard cousin Cui Aiguo next to him almost stared at him.
[Tsk, you're so greedy, don't recognize me! ]
After the test paper was handed out, Li Ye picked up the pen and began to fill it out, the rustling sound of the pen never stopping.
It’s too easy. The first part of the questions are pinyin questions, but they are definitely not rare characters, they are just very common and commonly used characters.
[This question is really tricky. ]
As soon as this thought came to Li Ye's mind, he heard the very stern voice of the female teacher on the podium.
"You are not allowed to look at other people's papers. If you are caught again, your papers will be confiscated immediately."
[Which poor student is so unlucky? He needs to cheat on this question? ]
Li Ye looked up and saw a few students, who turned their heads back in a hurry. It turned out that the target they were secretly looking at was him, Li Ye.
Among these students, there are those from the No. 2 Middle School in the county, my cousin Cui Aiguo, and even Jiang Xiaoyan.
[Didn't I tell them to pay attention to the rules in the exam room? Why are they still so careless? It's not a good thing to be noticed by the teacher.]
Li Ye didn't understand Jiang Xiaoyan's behavior, but five minutes later, Li Ye saw that there was a hint of sweat behind Jiang Xiaoyan's ears.
He suddenly realized that Jiang Xiaoyan's pinyin level should not be very good.
Li Ye mainly tutored everyone in the Erliangdian in subjects such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, and English, which are easy to increase scores.
Because he didn't have much advantage in Chinese and politics, especially politics, he didn't touch it at all to avoid revealing his true colors.
I have had some knowledge of Chinese, but it was just some quick-learning content like writing skills and quick results.
So he really didn't understand the Chinese language level of Jiang Xiaoyan and others. At most, he knew how many points they could get in the exam and what their ranking was in the class.
[This psychological quality is really worrying! ]
(End of this chapter)
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