Chapter 1 - Encounter
That was a summer to remember. This was a summer with no assignments and boring extracurricular classes. Zi ran around the whole neighbourhood with her best friend, Ming. A regular summer day included buying a K-pop magazine, finding a spare bench on a public street, and thirsting after the unrealistically-beautiful boy brand member.
This was 2009. Beijing just recovered from the frenzy of an internationally-proclaimed Olympic Games. Despite the western economic in decline, China was in its hay-day. QQ was filled with propaganda claiming the western media smeared our opening ceremonies through deliberate poor camera skills, and Zhang Yimo’s China was much more glorious. Zi angrily pressed “repost” on all the exposé, cursing the Europeans under her breath. Those negative thoughts didn’t stay with her long, though. Her 20-min internet allowance at grandma’s house was not to be wasted. She frequented internet chat rooms, blocking perverted middle-aged men left and right. Other than that, she prided herself in already reading smuts from K-pop fan-fiction sites, but by no way understood what “sex” actually was.
Both Zi and Ming went to the same elementary school and were heading to the same middle school. They lived around the same area, and both had chubby cheeks and silly demeanour. But there was something that made them different: Zi was about to go to one of the top classes, while Ming one of the bottom classes.
Here was something that set Chinese education apart. Kids were ranked at a very young age, and those who scored lower on a test were publicly shamed. Zi remembered the teacher harshly throwing the test paper on Ming’s face and loudly demeaning her for scoring poorly. Before a student could head to middle school, the excellent students, those who were class presidents and had better grades, were sent for a lottery to be assigned to different schools. That was the first tier of students. Zi did well in class, but she didn’t really participate in any of the “class activities” she deemed pretentious and preformative. She wasn’t recommended to the school district to be in the lottery. Instead, she went in and did a test with the school. 10,000 yuan later, she was promised to be in the top class (1-4). This process was for the second tier students, those who were smart but less “well-behaved”. Then there was the last tier of students. These students were the “degenerates”, the ones deemed “failures” in the parents’ eyes. After the first and second tier of students had their pick of the schools, they were entered into a lottery, randomly assigned to the “bottom classes” (5-8) of middle schools.
Zi didn’t care about that. She was just exuberant that she got to go to the same school as Ming. You might say, “of course she wouldn’t care! She’s a kid”. Well, you’d be surprised how many kids in Beijing developed this early sense of “class” and how the “good” students avoided the “bad” like the plague. The top-tier students with their fancy workbook and little mechanical pencil rolled their eyes at the students who did poorly in math or English. Zi was not about that. She was raised better.
The summer eventually came to an end. Zi had to be back to her parents’. Her parents were fine, but she much preferred her gentle, caring grandma and the chef grandpa who could whip up an impressive meal. Her dad frequently chastised her for “being on the phone too much” while her mom criticized all her emotional outbursts. She locked herself in the room, messaging Ming all day. This was when texts were charged individually. Soon her grandma, who was the rightful owner of the phone number, called to tell her she had overspent hundreds. And that was the end of that.
First day, Zi headed to the school. She discovered that she was sent to class 1. She did a little dance in her head. Class 1 was the prestigious position to be, and she didn’t expect to be placed with the first-tiers.
She saw Han right away. Han was in her elementary class and one of those first-tier students. For context, Zi’s middle school was one of the worst in the district, infamous for public brawls and “gang” activities. Zi remembered how Han and several other “good” students broke into tears and huddled to cry because they were placed in the middle school that Zi was honoured to be at. Talking about dramatics. Zi rolled her eyes in her head and waved.
Han signalled for her to sit, so she did. Han opted for a more stressful summer, involving coming to the middle school with some future classmates to do some extracurricular classes. Han gestured to the girl sitting next to her, “Hey, Zi, this is a friend I made during summer. Her name is Yue.”
Zi was not ready for socializing, and she was not ready to see a girl with a boyish haircut and tomboy demeanour. “Oh shit, I thought they were a boy.”
Yue made an awkward smirk that would become her signature way of expressing annoyance and disgust. Neither one of them knew that this encounter would be the beginning of endless shenanigans for the years to come.
Yue made an introduction that Zi zoned out during the half of. Typical first-tiers. Excellent grades, class president, blah blah. Zi counted the minutes till she could rush to class 6 to meet Ming. Ming delivered the news in the morning, and Zi was excited to meet some cool people from the bottom class. Oh, she really thought she was the rebel.
She dragged her heavy bag to the door of class 6, a behaviour the school was against. Bags must be on shoulders. Out was Ming. Zi gave her a big hug, and they squeaked excitedly as the teenagers they were.
Following Zi was a boy. He was a bit chubby with milk soft skin. The way he walked and waved was feminine and demure. Ming introduced, “This is Xu.” Zi said hi without thinking much, then another boy popped out of the classroom.
He was tall, slim, and tanned.
Photo by Jizhidexiaohailang on Unsplash