Exams feature prominently on a Chinese citizen’s life journey. Successes in a critical exam could mean a difference between wealth and poverty, prestigious jobs and humble positions. Although some guys who failed school still shine later on in their field, no one will deny the importance of exams to Chinese students.

In an entry titled My Timeline, posted in December, 2008 on the blog, I logged my first success in exams. In this entry I will elaborate.

My first teacher, when I stepped upon the first rung of the education ladder in the 1970s, was a country lassie who had just completed two-year high school. There was an acute shortage of educators then. As a result, upon graduation from high school, the teenager was hired by the village head to fill the vacancy in the small school. Actually, the high school graduate was remotely related to my family, for almost all the households in the hamlet belong to the Wang clan. I should call her Great Aunt.

Ms Wang, or rather Great Aunt Wang, taught all the courses to all the three grades of the school. Altogether, the student population amounted to about 20. It was a one-room schoolhouse, with one teacher and three grades under the same roof. The room had only one door but no windows. Yet, the elements were our constant companions the year round. Wind blew through the room, and rain leaked in through cracked tiles on the roof. When Ms Wang was teaching one grade, the other two sat on their stools, with their back turned to the mistress, doing their exercise at the desk, which was a long wooden board on adobe bricks, shared by 5 or 6 pupils.

Ms Wang was prejudiced against me from the very beginning. For one thing, I was not a cute adorable child. For another, I was terribly shy. Some other kids, who ran into her in the village, greeted Ms Wang sweetly to curry favour with her. Born no sweet-mouth, I never showed the slightest inclination to do the low thing. On the contrary, I avoided Ms Wang like the plague.

One of my pals in my class was a close relative of Ms Wang’s. Blood counted in traditional communities. Ms Wang showered attention and praise on Redd, my friend. Even a very insignificant achievement like a right answer to her question would bring forth Ms Wang’s adulation of Redd.

An incident pitched me against Ms Wang in my heart. Because of it, I loathed her like hell. One day my step grandma bought me a rattle drum from the village store. Eager to show it off, I shoved the brand-new drum in my schoolbag and took it to the schoolroom. It became the envy of my mates. During breaks, they took turns to rattle it. One of my friends Mount was playing with it when Ms Wang swaggered in. She came over and snatched it away from my friend.

Later on, Mount said sorry to me, but I did not have the courage to go and ask Ms Wang to return it to me. What she preached to us in the classroom, such as honesty and integrity, led me to expect that she would give the toy back to me after some time. I waited and waited. It never happened. Keen anticipation turned into despair. One day, passing Ms Wang’s cottage, I found my rattle drum in her niece’s hand. The girl was rattling it merrily, as if it were hers. The very sight made me as mad as sad. The incident completely ruined Ms Wang’s image in my impressionable mind. All her lecturing on morality and fairness fell to pieces. “Never will I trust this witch any longer,” I vowed.

Ms Wang taught all the courses there were on the syllabus: Literacy (Reading and Writing), Numeracy (Arithmetic), and Art (Singing and Drawing). There was no PE because there was no ground for it. Our one-room schoolhouse was a property confiscated from a former landlord family. A landlord in those years was politically tagged as “people’s enemy”. Most of his wealth was taken away and became communal assets.

I did not like numbers so Numeracy lessons bored me. Chinese was my favourite. At the beginning of some terms, only Ms Wang had a copy of the schoolbook. We pupils had to handwrite the Chinese characters and the texts into our own notebook for our lessons. Weeks into the term, we were finally granted a book each.

I loved the Chinese characters and the short texts. In a lot of Chinese lessons, though, the one thing I loved best was to let my imagination run wild. Upon reflection, I realise that fantasising in those days was a great way to learn a language without basic resources like books and stationery. What was way beyond reach in your physical world could all be playing out vividly, in your wildest daydreams, in full colours.

In an arithmetic lesson, Ms Wang asked who had got the answer to a problem on the board. A lot of my pals raised their hands. Out of conceit, I followed suit even though I had no clue to the solution. Ms Wang, singling me out, asked me to produce my answer. With a red face, I sheepishly pulled myself up from the stool, only to be lampooned by Ms Wang. “Shengliver,” the mistress taunted, “why did you swell your cheeks to affect plumpness?” Her mock hurt a tender innocent soul in ways she could never have imagined. Even today, over four decades on, Ms Wang’s sarcastic tone still rings in my ears.

During the second term of Grade 2 (it was springtime then), our People’s Commune conducted an exam across all tiers of schools. Students from Grade 1, primary school to graduating classes, high school, all took the exam. In retrospect, the exam itself was so ludicrous. A lot of farmer families did not have enough to stuff their tummies then, but their kids had to sit a scholastic exam.

For my grade, there were two tests, Chinese and Arithmetic. I did not finish the Arithmetic paper, but I sailed through the Chinese test. There was even a composition section in the Chinese paper, where I thought I did a very good job.

When the results were out, no one would believe it. I came out first of all Grade 2 pupils in my commune. At the grand assembly, which both students and teachers from different schools attended, I heard my name announced.

“Is it Shengliver?” I asked my friends, mouth agape.

Casting envious glances at me, they confirmed it. Ms Wang stood there, thunderstruck and speechless. Her pet, Redd, did not shine, the way she had expected.

The grand assembly was not all. After the awards ceremony, all the prize winners were gathered on the dirt-floor central ground. The school district authorities organised a local folk band with traditional Chinese musical instruments such as the drum, the trumpet, cymbals and the sheng. Then the leaders, together with the musicians, escorted the prize winners on a tour to their family houses dispersed in neighbouring production squads. The good news, amid fanfare and pomp, was delivered to the family of each prize winner.

Standing at the centre of my family courtyard, I basked in the glory of the moment, feeling on top of the world, with my ego swollen like an inflated balloon. My parents, my aunt and uncle, mouths agape, would not believe their ears when the message was being read out loud by the herald to them. Attracted by the commotion, our neighbours came over and witnessed the great ceremony.

That day, the party travelled far and wide around the rural communities. Some members quitted the itinerary somewhere. I stuck with the party and visited one prize winner’s family after another. When I came back, it was late afternoon. There was no lunch whatsoever, and I did not mind it.

The prize I won was a red roll of honour, a notebook in a plastic sheath with Chairman Mao’s bust printed on the red front cover, and a fountain pen. The roll of honour was pasted on the wall of the middle room of our cottage. I treasured the notebook so much that I did not want to spoil its beauty by writing in it. Today I can’t remember where the prized notebook ended up. The fountain pen was coveted by everyone, Ms Wang included. Some of my classmates could not even afford a pencil, let alone a fountain pen.

One day, a boy called Paul borrowed my pen and tried it on his book. Unluckily he had the nib broken. I demanded he pay for it. Paul, whose father was on very good terms with our teacher, went to Ms Wang and told her all about it.

That very evening, Ms Wang visited my parents. She explained that in no way could Paul afford to buy me a new pen. Standing some distance away, I heard Great Aunt Wang badmouthing Shengliver all the time.

After she left our cottage, my parents asked me about my behaviour at school. I kept my mouth dead shut. There was no way Ms Wang could have understood such a wounded soul as me.

I am in my early fifties. Looking back to my feat in the 1970s, I have all kinds of thoughts racing in my head. The first exam success was a huge boost to my self-esteem. Poor health plus a shy disposition rendered Shengliver a miserable kid in his childhood. Today an exam conducted on the same scale with the same pomp and circumstance would be unthinkable.

All in all, I am grateful to the quirk of fate surrounding my first miraculous exam triumph that unfolded in 1978.