The biggest enemy of any child in China was some neighbour’s child. That child supposedly always obeyed every single word of her parents without a slice of doubt; her life’s joy came from doing homework and doing homework only; even if you give her comic books to read, or a TV to watch, she would simply ignore them and go back to her calling: homework. And of course, she ate well, went to bed early and woke herself on time without saying.
No matter how hard you tried, she always got (much) better grades; she not only participated in competitions you did’t even realize that existed but also won them easily; she played either piano or the violin or quite possibly both; she was the head girl in her class and won numerous Student Awards every ear. Not sure about you, but I didn’t even work that hard back then which made it even worse.
So one good thing about not going to the desirable school, especially when all the other children in my middle-rise building went there, was that it gave me two years’ of armistice. After all, it was very hard to compare grades from one school to another. Although my parents rightfully suspected that the desirable school had tougher grading guidelines than my school, it was something I categorically denied, time after time.
The war started again after a city-wide exam at the end of the second year of my middle school:
“How come you only got 80%? What is the average in your class? I heard the average in the desirable school is at 85% and a large number of students got more than 90%. You know you will be competing with them in the graduation exam in a year’s time, don’t you?”
“How do I know the average for my class, mum! I am not the class tutor. How did you know the average for the desirable school anyway?”
“I know the average of every school, as a matter of fact. I think your school’s average is only 70%, that is very worrying. Would you ever be able to beat our neighbour’s child?”
“Easy, next time we move, just let me pick who our neighbours are!”