本文发表在 rolia.net 枫下论坛I lived in a archetypical “unit” – a factory compound made up of a manufacturing area, a pharmacy, a daycare, a dinning canteen, a basketball court, residential buildings and a number of cement ping pong tables strewn all over the compound. In comparison to affluent hospital unit, university unit and military unit, my unit was deemed as part of a slum in the city. Most of kids from my unit were dumped into the junior high school I went to.


Life within the compound was simple and fun as no family was really rich and there was no such thing as “privacy” when everybody knew everybody. The familiarity with one another at home made it easier for students to gang up quickly at school.


In a gang clash, confronting sides would vigorously exchange mocking, intimidating and bluffing obscenities. Normally, a third gang or an influential individual would be invited to step in and diplomatically talk both sides into backing off. Therefore, those gang fights never made me worried as long as there was a prospect that a mediator was arranged. Along with other gang members, some clapping bricks, some brandishing home-made iron chains and some waving clubs, I did everything I was supposed to do - glaring, yelling, cursing, threatening, posing, but with one foot turning the other way ready to bolt if the situation turned violent. I would excuse myself from a fight if I sensed there were no mediation possible, for I knew, with testosterone running high on both sides, there always happened to be an idiot who, against everyone else’ wish,would escalate the fight and eventually send someone into hospital.


Not for long, my gang abandoned me. Once disowned, I was also quite undesirable to other gangs. I had become unaffiliated through the rest of the junior high years, lonely and disoriented. And sometimes, I missed Two Bars and had wondered what she was doing. I found myself studying English again.


Maybe it was because I was among a few who knew what English was all about and even could make some odd sounds, I was chosen as the liaison for my English teacher, in charge of collecting English homework and leading morning English reading. I had to admit that I had to fight a strong urge to throw chalks at anyone who dared to snore in my presence, only stopped by a fact that virtually the whole class was at various stages of daydreaming.


At the end of first year in my junior high school, even to my own astonishment, my exam scores were the highest, not only in my class, but also in the entire grade. All of sudden, I became an emblem of good students and all kinds of doors were open to me. I was a celebrity in the school and invited to join all clubs, both curricular and extracurricular.


I was thriving and blooming and I enjoyed it.


Now I had a reputation to live up to and I had to maintain this expectation. I ramped up my efforts in study and extracurricular activities. It wasn’t long before honour certificates covered all over the walls in my room, trophies cluttered on my table. My parents looked several inches taller when talking to someone about me. My confidence and ego were fully restored and boosted to a new high.


It was in the second year of junior high, there was one girl attracted my attention and I found my taste had changed. I tended to gravitate towards “bad girls”. This girl was wild, the kind that all teachers frowned upon and other girls despised on mere mentioning of her name, but she was a magnet for boys. She defied all school’s orders on dress code – she let her hair loose cascading over her shoulders; wore a bright orange jacket smuggled from Hong Kong that made her particularly gorgeous in a blue and gray world and a slinky white pants that wrapped her curvy buttock and legs tautly and abruptly loosened up at her ankles like two upside down calla lilies. Nasty things and lewd cartoons about her were knife-carved on the desks and drawn on walls in the toilet. Rumours had it that she had done “that thing” with a number of boys, both inside the school and from outside. I did not believe any of those rumours. On the contrary, it only made her all the more mystifying to me.


I wanted to have “that thing” with her despite her reputation.


But we were living in different worlds. We never really talked and I did not even know where to start to get closer to her. Then a brilliant plan came to my mind. It sounded a bit far-fetched, but not entirely unreasonable. The idea was I volunteered to help her with her English like what Two Bars did to me, as I was the leader of the school’s English Club, it would be natural for me to approach her from that angle. To make the plan an official one, I went to my teacher’s office to get an approval which I did not really need.


“I would like to get all the students interested in English study, eventually, get some of them into my club.” I suggested in a casual tone I could possibly manage.


My teacher was surprised. “Are you sure you could handle the workload? It may affect your academic performance.” He looked little concerned, not sure what significance it might have.


“I would like to start from Qinghong Zhang. If I could make her pick up the book again, I could motivate others.” I said resolutely.


“Who? I don’t think this is a good idea. She is a nutcase, are you sure you want to do this?” He said incredulously. But he must have seen some kind of bright ring over my head because I saw moisture in his eyes.


“I will pull out if I find it useless, besides no harm in trying. We should not leave any students behind.” I pressed on, pushing him into a corner.


“Ok, two weeks, on trial basis. Don’t put too much time into this.” He probably thought I was crazy, but I didn’t care for I already flew out of his office.


One day, an opportunity that I could be with her alone finally presented itself when she wasn’t surrounded by boys. After making sure l looked calm and official, I sidled up to her desk when she was grimacing at a small mirror in her palm, suppressing excitement and patting myself on the back for finding such a genius way to near her.


“Our teacher asked me to help you with your English study, I understand...” I started my little plan with the official excuse.


She scowled at me in surprise as if I was speaking Greek, and then gave me a what-the-fuck-do-you-know-about-life look. Without waiting for me to finish my well-rehearsed statement, she nosily crammed her stuffs into a bag, stood up, flung the bag on her shoulder, brushed me aside on her way out.


For all the scenarios I have prepared and practised, I did not anticipate this. “That is...cool.” I muttered.


She did not look back and that was the last time I saw her. I heard she dropped out and ran away with some guys.


I had nothing else to do but studying since then. And I lost interest in girls. Half of the girls in class were from suburban families who were supplying fruits and vegetables to the city. Because of their duties in the field, their hairs were always unkempt, cheeks chubby from over exposure to the sun, clothes reeks of fresh earth and garlic; the other half of the girls were violent and foul-mouthed, using “fuck” in all their sentences. I still prefer neat, clean, decent city girls.


Time was flying, before I knew it, I was in grade three in senior high.


In that spring, I led a team to participate in an English contest organized by the municipal Education Bureau. Out of 256 contestants from 31 schools, I ranked number 251. Rankings from 252 to 256 were also from my school. This contest alone had shattered my newly restored confidence, kicked me down to a new low and made me realize how suck my school was. There were only two ways to get out of the school: one was to take entrance exams of senior high schools and get myself accepted by a different school; one was to bribe someone to transfer to a desired school.


To transfer to a different school in the mid of the term, I need both consent from the municipal Education Bureau and the receiving school. My family tried bribery on my behalf. I remembered all my family could come up with for bribery were two bars of cigarettes and two tins of canned fruits. My mother and father even debated bribery strategies: to bribe someone who was the most critical and capable of pulling some strings on our behalf verses to split bribery resources evenly between someone from the Education Bureau and someone in accepting school. The first option made more sense.


Next step of bribery was to find out whom to bribe, which was also the most difficult one. My father was basically useless in this regard; the task naturally fell on my mother’s shoulder. She was so amazing that she was able to contact someone in the factory whose niece was working in the same unit with someone whose father had went to war together with someone whose son was working in the Education Bureau and who knew someone... We did not know where our bribery ended up eventually along this connection chain; it did not help me at all. My father and mother were so enraged that they even discussed how to trace and recover bribery fortune for a long time.


To the delight of my parents, I managed to go to a decent senior high.


Looking back now, I’d say those years in junior high were indeed my most glorious days which had forever shaped my life afterwards.更多精彩文章及讨论，请光临枫下论坛 rolia.net