Chapter 375 – The Situation of the Educated Youths
Shen Qingqing lived up to expectations. After such a long period of diligent review, she finally saw the results.
She got accepted into a junior college!
Although it was just a junior college, it also meant that she had seized the opportunity to change her destiny and successfully moved forward.
From the tone of her letter, it was easy to see her excitement and joy.
Lu Xia was also very happy for her.
Furthermore, Shen Qingqing got accepted into a university in the same province and had no plans to return to her hometown.
In her words, they could send her to the countryside when she was so young, not caring whether she lived or died, and hadn’t contacted her in so many years, so she didn’t need to go back.
In the future, she would live as if she had no family!
Lu Xia felt both relieved and heartbroken when she read this. This child had endured so much over the years!
Now she was finally going to make it.
Apart from her, there were two others from the educated youth spot who got accepted into universities.
One of them was Shen Yifan, the person who always dressed like a scholar and carried books. He got into a mediocre local undergraduate program in their hometown…
The other one was Feng Xuegong. It could be said that, aside from Shen Qingqing, he was the most diligent one after the revival of the college entrance exam among the educated youths.
He got into a junior college as well, and it was in a particularly remote place. The school’s address seemed to be in a small town, and he was studying something related to ceramics manufacturing. It wasn’t clear whether it was reliable or not, but no matter what, he had made it!
He didn’t complain and left happily after receiving his admission notice.
Because her school was in the same province, Shen Qingqing didn’t rush to leave.
She also talked about the situations of the other educated youths.
Those who received their admission notices happily went off to school.
As for those who didn’t receive admission notices, since the next exam was still over a year away, they didn’t plan to stay in the countryside any longer.
Returning to the city wasn’t as troublesome now, and most applications were likely to be approved. However, the city was crowded, and finding a job after returning was challenging.
But despite all this, everyone who could leave had already left the educated youth spot.
It could be said that the male dormitory in the educated youth spot was now vacant.
On the female side, besides Shen Qingqing, there was only Zhou Lai’er left.
Judging from her appearance, it was clear that her family’s situation wasn’t great, and they treated her poorly. So it was understandable that she didn’t want to go back. Moreover, she had been divorced before, and if she returned home, she would probably be married off to someone without much consideration for her welfare. She didn’t plan to return.
However, she had taken the university entrance exam twice but didn’t get in. Now, it was heard that she was looking for an alternative path.
She had been on a few blind dates recently, but her standards were high. She wanted someone better than Hu Jianjun, so none of the potential matches had met her criteria. Even though she claimed to be “untouched”, the fact that she had been divorced made her a less attractive prospect for the suitors she met during the blind dates.
This frustrated her immensely, and in the end, she didn’t need the matchmaker from the village anymore. It was said that she had been frequently visiting the county town recently, though no one knew what she was up to.
Apart from her, Shen Qingqing also mentioned the situation of another person.
Because they didn’t pass the first exam, everyone worked especially hard in their preparations for the second one.
But there was one exception.
That person was Zhao Hua.
After learning that Su Man’s admission notice had been taken by Zhuang Hongmei, he believed that he had definitely passed the exam, but someone had taken his admission notice.
He followed Su Man’s example and went to the post office to inquire.
However, the postal worker said they had never received his notice. He didn’t believe it and thought it might have been lost at a different stage.
So, he went to the county’s post office as well, but they also had no recollection of it.
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Chapter 376 – Zhao Hua
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Even so, Zhao Hua didn’t give up. He still didn’t believe he hadn’t passed the exam and went as far as making a scene at the Education Bureau.
However, the Education Bureau wasn’t as easy to deal with as the post office, and they couldn’t simply help him check.
After a long struggle, it was only when the Education Bureau’s leadership saw how persistent he was and the negative impact it was having that they finally agreed to check for him. The result they found confirmed that he hadn’t passed.
In the end, he had to return empty-handed.
But even so, he remained steadfast in his belief that he had definitely passed; the admission notice just hadn’t reached him.
All this commotion took up his time until just before the second round of college entrance exams. Needless to say, he didn’t have time to study again, and unsurprisingly, he failed the second round as well.
With this result, even the villagers and the Shi family, who had initially believed him, stopped trusting his claims. After all, if he had passed the first time, how could he have failed the second time? He couldn’t even get into a mediocre college?
This time, Zhao Hua couldn’t come up with any excuses.
After all, Xie Guifang’s case had become widely known nationwide, and the villagers had heard about it too. Coincidentally, it was the time when admission notices for the second round of college entrance exams were being sent out. The country took this matter very seriously, and newspapers reported on it daily. Even when the postal workers delivered the admission notices, all the villagers had to be present to verify that the recipient was indeed the right person.
Under these circumstances, there was absolutely no room for mistakes, especially since the newspapers reported that they had conducted a thorough investigation into the previous college entrance exams and identified cases of impersonation. Zhao Hua was not among those cases.
So, he really hadn’t passed.
Now, regardless of what the villagers thought, the Shi family was furious.
Originally, they didn’t want him to take the exams, but he had confidently insisted that he would definitely succeed and even planned to bring Shi Chunyan with him to the city once he did.
After failing twice, the Shi family had had enough, and they didn’t want him to take the exams anymore.
Zhao Hua remained silent for a few days, thinking he had no other options. However, unexpectedly, he suddenly left for the city.
But he and Shi Chunyan had registered their marriage, and for registered marriages among the educated youths, it wasn’t so easy to return to the city.
Yet, he managed to leave very smoothly, almost without a trace.
When the Shi family learned of this, he was already gone.
The Shi family quickly tried to figure out what had happened, and that’s when Shi Chunyan revealed that they had divorced!
Although Zhao Hua and Shi Chunyan had previously had a very unhappy relationship, after Shi Chunyan couldn’t conceive, the Shi family’s attitude toward Zhao Hua had changed for the worse. Zhao Hua had started to appease Shi Chunyan, and she gradually became compliant, allowing him to have his way in everything, including his desire to take the college entrance exams, which the Zhao family had initially opposed. But now that he hadn’t succeeded, Zhao Hua wanted to return to the city. He coaxed Shi Chunyan into agreeing to a fake divorce, saying that once he had settled in the city, he would come back for her.
Shi Chunyan was easily manipulated, and she also yearned for city life, so she agreed in a daze. When she finally came to her senses, Zhao Hua was already gone.
This turn of events infuriated the Shi family even more.
They were especially disappointed in Shi Chunyan.
But they didn’t want to let the cooked duck fly away.
So, two days before Shen Qingqing wrote her letter, Father Shi took his son and daughter and made a determined trip to Zhao Hua’s hometown. It seemed that they wouldn’t give up until they extracted some compensation.
Lu Xia sighed when she read this part. She never expected Zhao Hua to end up like this.
She still remembered her initial impression of Zhao Hua when they first arrived in the countryside. While not as responsible as Sun Shengnan, Zhao Hua had appeared to be someone who knew how to handle people and situations, a smooth talker.
But it seemed that they had all been deceived by his initial impression.
However, Lu Xia couldn’t help but think that Zhao Hua had brought this upon himself. It was a case of reaping what you sow.
Somehow, when I read those kind of stories, I sometimes wonder if in the 70s, half the Chinese population were scammers, hooligans and criminals…
Probably not. Aside from era-typical troubles most people of any time period live an ordinary life but to write a story regardless of the genre you need to come up with exciting incidents for your characters. So just think of it as the author focusing all the incidents in a hundred mile radius onto one village instead.