Chapter Seventy-Five: Excellence Must Be Enhanced

PS: Early in the morning, here's an extra chapter! For those few cups of hot coffee, the very first Grand Protector, and the readers who used their precious tickets to push me to the top spot, I must rise early and stay up late!

"Are you familiar with him?"

"Not really. I just know of him—he doesn't know me. He's from a prestigious banner family, grew up in a grand mansion. Even though they fell on hard times later, their pride remained intact. We're just from a modest background, not the kind who’d mingle with them. For example, your grandfather treasures this cricket gourd, but in their household, they probably wouldn’t even bother to pick it up, thinking it beneath them." Grandfather’s answer left Hongtao rather disappointed; after all that talk, he still didn’t really know the man.

"I’m off to work on the cricket jar, then." Seeing he’d gotten nothing useful, Hongtao returned to his uncle’s room with that fragment of city brick, picked up a steel file, and began grinding the brick over a sheet of newspaper.

Ever since Hongtao took up raising crickets, his grandmother’s kitchenware had been suffering. The next day at noon, after lunch, Hongtao dug out her garlic pestle, poured the brick dust he’d filed into the mortar, and pounded away, trying to make it as fine as possible. After school in the afternoon, he ran to the subway construction site along the Second Ring Road, gathered a bag of pure yellow earth and another of slaked lime, then continued grinding them together in the mortar until dinner time.

That evening, they happened to be having dumplings. His aunt was in charge of making garlic sauce and, unaware that Hongtao had used the mortar, picked it up and went to work. As a result, everyone at the table tasted a distinct lime flavor in their food. Some suspected the vinegar had gone bad, others blamed the sesame oil, but only Hongtao knew the real reason—the mortar hadn’t been cleaned properly. He could only chuckle inwardly, not daring to confess; this was the sort of thing that would draw collective outrage.

After several days of effort, he finally followed Second Uncle’s method and finished preparing the bottoms of five cricket jars. Just as Second Uncle said, the layer of earth on the base didn’t crumble even when the jar was turned over and tapped—it was as smooth and solid as cement.

But that wasn’t the end of it. The jars couldn’t be used yet—they needed to be “seasoned” with tea. Thus, his grandfather’s tea leaves suffered next. Every morning before school, Hongtao would brew a pot of tea, pack a cricket jar in his schoolbag, and bring it along. While other students listened to the teacher, he’d use a calligraphy brush dipped in tea to coat the earthen base. He’d found a new source of amusement—two weeks passed without him dozing off in class, as he busied himself with his cricket jars beneath the desk.

While seasoning the jars, he wasn’t idle otherwise. Besides books, his schoolbag now held pliers, wire, and copper strands from the recycling station. Once he’d finished coating the earthen base, he’d start weaving cricket cages—a craft at which he was quite adept, having made many in his previous life, in all sorts of styles.

In addition to these handicrafts, Hongtao also visited several commission shops, hoping to find more cricket jars for sale. He wanted to assemble a full set—if he was going to play, he wanted to do it properly. Unfortunately, despite several trips, he found nothing. Nor did he run into Second Uncle; it wasn’t that the man was absent, just that by bad luck, each visit found him off helping others with odd jobs.

Since transferring to Class Five, Hongtao seemed to have vanished from school life. He no longer fought for time at the ping-pong tables during breaks; now, Da Jiang had grown braver, able to claim his own rights, and with his rapidly improving skills, didn’t need Hongtao’s help to get a turn. The teachers seemed to have forgotten about this peculiar student. Aside from hearing his name during PE, music, or art, he was nearly invisible in class.

The area around Hongtao’s seat had become a no-go zone; no one played near the back corner. Even during roughhousing, everyone deliberately avoided that spot, because there always sat or sprawled a hulking classmate. Anyone who provoked him would find themselves mysteriously beaten up during recess. Everyone knew it was his uncle’s classmates responsible, but no one could catch them in the act.

Normally, seats were rotated weekly—each row shifted one spot to the right—but Hongtao never moved, always keeping his post in the back left corner. It was next to the window, affording a far view during class, and by the radiator, which was warm in winter and cool to the touch in summer. The homeroom teacher left him be—sit wherever you like; the farther from sight, the less trouble.

At the end of term, Hongtao’s name resurfaced in the minds of all the first-grade teachers. Whether they wanted to or not, they couldn’t ignore the fact that his name appeared at the very top of the honor roll posted in the hallway: all six subjects, either a perfect score or an “Excellent.” The PE and art teachers went further, feeling that “Excellent” was still insufficient, so they added a red plus sign after the mark.

Right beneath Hongtao was Jin Yue, who also scored only perfect marks or Excellents. The sole reason she couldn’t share first place was those two red pluses. Jin Yue once asked Hongtao how she could get the teachers to add a plus after her “Excellent,” but after much thought, Hongtao couldn’t come up with an answer. All he could tell the little girl was to give up on that hope.

No one was happier than Hongtao’s father. His son’s performance was proof that his earlier outburst in the principal’s office had been justified. As for the teachers who disliked Hongtao, he simply dismissed them as shortsighted. At the parent meeting, Hongtao’s father gave another lecture to the assembled parents and teachers on the subject of education, the speech lasting right up to the end of the meeting.

“Xiao Tao, how about this summer Dad takes you to Beidaihe to see the sea? You’ve never seen the ocean, have you?” On the way home, his father, perhaps finding his previous lecture insufficient to express his pride, offered yet another generous reward.

“Dad, maybe I won’t go this year. Let’s wait till next year. My aunt’s tailor shop is about to open, and as her master, how can I not be there?” Hongtao knew his father wasn’t just making empty promises. In his last life, his father had taken him to Beidaihe while he was still in primary school, though it wasn’t just the two of them, but several busloads of people—his father’s work unit’s annual benefit trip.

“Oh, that’s fine too. Your aunt’s had her share of setbacks. She was a good student once, but things fell apart. Just don’t follow in the footsteps of your aunt or uncle—if you don’t study hard, you’ll end up self-employed!” Hongtao’s father had little fondness for his sister-in-law and brother-in-law, mainly fearing they’d be a bad influence on his son. The moment their names came up, he became alert—by now, it was instinctive.

“Do you think there’s no future in being self-employed? Maybe in a few years, they’ll make more than you as a university lecturer.” Hongtao knew discussing this topic with his father was pointless, but he couldn’t help himself.

“What good is earning more? You’ll understand when you’re older—without knowledge, no matter how much money you make, people will still look down on you. Your thinking is off, let me tell you—” As expected, the moment Hongtao spoke, his father slipped into lecture mode, intent on digging into the roots of his son’s thinking and nipping it in the bud.

“Stop! I don’t actually think that way, I was just raising an academic question. It has nothing to do with me. Go on home, I need to buy yellow soybean paste for Grandma—they’re making fried noodles for lunch.” Hongtao gave his father no chance to lecture. If he got dragged into lesson mode, his father would go on for at least an hour and a half, the length of a full class.

“Hey! I haven’t finished yet—this kid! Don’t come home too late!” His father was just getting started when he realized his audience had vanished, all his words bottled up inside, making him quite uncomfortable.

Summer vacation was every student’s long-awaited dream, and Hongtao was no exception. The only thing that annoyed him was that his father, being a teacher, was also on vacation—and insisted on spending one or two hours each morning giving his son extra lessons. Hongtao no longer bothered making up lies to fool him; he’d rather be thought a weirdo than listen to middle school math every day.

So, he acquired two books from his father—one on calculus, one on analytic geometry. Thus, each morning after exercise, a shower, and breakfast, he and his father would drift together on the sea of advanced mathematics. It was a perfect refresher—apart from English, calculus had always been his weakest subject in his previous life. Such knowledge required gradual mastery; he’d never built a solid foundation in high school, so he’d fallen behind in college.

Most of his mornings were thus occupied. After lunch, Jin Yue would come and take over his afternoons. Instead of doing her homework at home, she insisted on forming a study group, doing peer tutoring, and even dragged Zhang Dajiang along. The “peer” for her was herself, and the “tutee” was Zhang Dajiang—though whether the two of them would actually achieve any results, Hongtao seriously doubted.

Still, doubts aside, Hongtao couldn’t tell them not to come. Though he himself never did homework, not even summer assignments, they had to. He couldn’t discourage their enthusiasm. Yet he didn’t want them to take up most of his afternoons, so he devised a plan: he had Jin Yue and Zhang Dajiang sit together in his old bamboo baby carriage, and wheeled them both out onto the street.