It was the Mid-Autumn Festival, and school was closed. However, there were still quite a few people at the equestrian center.
Wei Cheng went there to work, cleaning horse stalls as usual. Unexpectedly, she ran into her classmate Li Weijin from the Computer Science Department.
Li Weijin was not only well-known among the three classes in their major, but probably the entire Computer Science Department. He was just too good-looking, and was said to come from a very wealthy family.
Wei Cheng heard from her deskmate, Yunshu, that Li Weijin's family was much richer than hers by many times over - they were not on the same level at all.
In Wei Cheng's eyes, Yunshu's family conditions were already quite good. After all, Yunshu used very expensive skincare products, and her bags alone cost tens of thousands. She also bought flowers every day that didn't seem to serve much purpose. The money she spent on flowers was enough for Wei Cheng's living expenses for a month. Yet Yunshu said her family couldn't compare with Li Weijin's at all.
Seeing Li Weijin, Wei Cheng didn't know whether she should greet him or not. After all, they were classmates. But she also felt that Li Weijin probably didn't even recognize her, so it would be awkward to say hi.
Although they were in the same class, it was a large class of over 70 students. It was normal for classmates to not have spoken to each other at all.
Wei Cheng was tall and big, but extremely shy and insecure inside. She was only outgoing around people she was familiar with. So after hesitating for a while, she decisively chose not to greet Li Weijin to avoid awkwardness.
However, when she was shoveling waste from the horse stalls into the cart, Li Weijin unexpectedly came over to talk to her.
"Wei Cheng, why didn't your roommate Su Xiaoqi come today?" Li Weijin asked.
"Xiaoqi is competing in the Top 10 Singers Competition tonight and went to the rehearsal this afternoon," Wei Cheng obediently replied before realizing - wow, Li Weijin actually knows my name? And he even asked about Xiaoqi?
After asking, Li Weijin just walked away.
Wei Cheng was still confused...What did the school prince mean by that?
After thinking through many possibilities, she finally concluded that as a class leader, Li Weijin was probably having a Mid-Autumn Festival meeting with Xiaoqi, who was also a class leader.
That must be the only explanation.
Wei Cheng didn't think more about it. She hurried with her work because Old Man Yu said they could get off work early today for him to go celebrate the festival with his daughter's family. She also wanted to finish early and go watch Xiaoqi sing tonight.
Xiaoqi arrived at the gym where many people had already gathered. Overall, things seemed orderly amidst the busyness.
Probably because there were not many other events at school, but there were many students, so human resources were plentiful and arrangements were made nicely.
Each contestant was paired with a member of the Music Society to assist with any unexpected incidents at any time.
Xiaoqi's assistant was a thin, quiet boy who introduced himself, "I'm a new Finance Major student this year, my surname is Wu, you can just call me Xiao Wu."
Seeing the slightly shy boy in front of her, Xiaoqi was suddenly reminded of the intern who came to pick her up at Lvshan City TV Station.
She felt the school was quite similar to the society in some ways. At times, participating in student organizations seemed like a waste of time, but not necessarily. It was also like gaining experience of society in advance, like having an internship in a small community ahead of time.
If the boy in front of her became an intern at a TV station or worked in related jobs in the future, he would probably be much more composed than now.
There were 20 contestants in total, all of whom arrived on time. Even Xiaoqi's calculus teacher Lu Ruxue showed up looking very spirited, her white hair blown big and fluffy. Xiaoqi went up to greet her.
"Hello Professor Lu, I'm Su Xiaoqi from Class 1 of the Information Management Department."
Lu Ruxue smiled and nodded, "I know you. I've seen clips of your singing. Your voice is great and you sing very well too. Do your best tonight!"
"Your bel canto singing is amazing, so I feel a lot of pressure," Xiaoqi also smiled.
"At my age, I just love lively events, don't feel pressured," Professor Lu said and pulled Xiaoqi along to introduce her to another contestant.
He was an old foreign man with a big beard, neatly combed and very thick. But he was dressed very gentlemanly in a tailcoat.
"This is Garen. He loves Chinese and his Chinese name is Fuluk. He sings very well too."
Indeed, Garen's Chinese was quite good. Apart from greetings like "Hello", "You are beautiful", he could barely understand a few more sentences. Of course his English was more fluent.
Xiaoqi chatted with him in English.
She complimented that his Chinese was great and that he was very talented in languages, since Chinese was a very difficult language to learn.
Through interactions with the English Corner teacher Grace, English speaking teacher Betty and others, Xiaoqi fully felt that foreigners' small talk was not actually about the weather like they learned in high school. It was better to open conversations with compliments which would make them happier.
Also, they had to be frank instead of beating around the bush. Because beating around the bush for half a day, they might not even understand what you meant.
In turn, Garen exaggeratedly complimented that Xiaoqi's English was great, her accent was very pleasant to listen to, and that he was from Australia and really liked Xiaoqi's accent.
Unexpectedly, Professor Lu also had quite decent English at her age. The three of them chatted smoothly in English and got along well.
However, Professor Lu said her best language was Russian, though she rarely used it nowadays.
Their generation learned Russian as that was popular. She even studied in Moscow. Nowadays, learning English was the trend.
Xiaoqi noticed that Professor Lu's English was very grammatical, probably due to her learning experience.
On the contrary, Garen's English lacked proper grammar in many sentences. If asked to take English proficiency tests in China, Xiaoqi wondered whether he could pass.
It was very enjoyable chatting with the erudite and humorous Professor Lu.
Garen was also over 50 years old yet looked very hale and hearty.
Xiaoqi asked why he came to Enhua University.
Garen said, "I used to work at an Australian zoo as an animal keeper. Later I saw the Chinese panda and found it so adorable that I wanted to come to China to be a panda keeper. But I quit my job, came to China, and found the requirements to be a panda keeper were very high. So I ended up being a teacher for you guys instead..."
Xiaoqi: "..."
For his last sentence, Xiaoqi struggled to grasp his humor, vaguely understanding he was mocking or joking. After all, not many Chinese could be treated as well as pandas.
While Xiaoqi was conversing happily with the two teachers, Wu Xinyue from the English Department also arrived. It was commonly believed English majors had better English because while other majors only needed the College English Test Band 4 and Band 6, English majors had to take the Test for English Majors Band 4 and Band 8 which were much harder than CET.
But in reality, the English proficiency of first year English majors was about the same as students of other majors who had just taken the college entrance exam.
Wu Xinyue's English was quite mediocre. She didn't expect to see Su Xiaoqi here, but she should have realized Su Xiaoqi was very good at singing after that episode during class when she sang out loud for the whole grade to hear. However, Wu Xinyue was still confident about her looks. At this moment, seeing Su Xiaoqi chatting so happily with two teachers, and even speaking English with the foreign teacher, she felt a bit irritated.
Somehow, at this moment, she felt Su Xiaoqi was too dazzling. Despite wearing plain t-shirt and shorts, she still made Wu Xinyue feel annoyed. Why did she run into Su Xiaoqi everywhere?
Soon Xiaoqi's assistant Xiao Wu came to say they could start drawing lots to determine the performance order at night.
Xiaoqi drew the 15th place, quite late in the lineup.
Professor Lu drew the 1st place, the opening act. Professor Lu also smiled and said, "Perfect, I'll open the door to good fortune."
The old man Garen drew the 5th place.
After drawing, everyone went backstage to get familiar with the venue and walked through the order. Xiaoqi noticed it was quite interesting that her video introduction would play right before Wu Xinyue's singing performance. Wu Xinyue drew the 14th slot.
At this point, everyone submitted their song choices.
The rehearsal progressed efficiently. Xiaoqi added her assistant Xiao Wu's WeChat so they could contact anytime.
If she needed makeup artists, special accompaniment or anything, the assistant would handle it so the contestants could go back to rest up and deliver their peak performance at night.
Xiaoqi felt the Music Society handled all the details very well, even better than her experience at the TV station. They were probably very experienced running the yearly Top 10 Singers Competition.
Wu Xinyue didn't leave immediately. She lingered behind wanting to take a look at the program schedule.
She chose a Japanese song. She knew her appearance gave her an advantage, that she was suited for dancing, and that her long hair was also one of her strengths. She chose an extremely cute Japanese song, and planned to sing and dance to it - the effect should be very good. She had practiced it privately for a long time, and she had also become popular in high school thanks to this song. Back then she had been a little nervous performing it, but now she could do even better.
She had thought about choosing an English song, but there were too many English teachers at the school, so she was afraid it would expose her weaknesses during the formal competition.
Besides, English songs tended to be more lyrical, less suited for acting cute.
She wondered what song Su Xiaoqi had chosen to perform. As for that white-haired granny and the foreign gentleman, Wu Xinyue didn't take them seriously at all. After all, it was an unspoken rule that the top 10 campus singers chosen each year would be students - the other teachers just participated for fun.
Normally, contestants weren't supposed to know what songs the others had chosen, but Wu Xinyue had always been good at this - a little flirting and acting cute with the boy in charge of the list, and he'd let her sneak a peek.
When she saw the song Su Xiaoqi had chosen, she was stunned for a moment. What kind of song was this? It was ridiculous!
It was the Mid-Autumn Festival, and school was closed. However, there were still quite a few people at the equestrian center.
Wei Cheng went there to work, cleaning horse stalls as usual. Unexpectedly, she ran into her classmate Li Weijin from the Computer Science Department.
Li Weijin was not only well-known among the three classes in their major, but probably the entire Computer Science Department. He was just too good-looking, and was said to come from a very wealthy family.
Wei Cheng heard from her deskmate, Yunshu, that Li Weijin's family was much richer than hers by many times over - they were not on the same level at all.
In Wei Cheng's eyes, Yunshu's family conditions were already quite good. After all, Yunshu used very expensive skincare products, and her bags alone cost tens of thousands. She also bought flowers every day that didn't seem to serve much purpose. The money she spent on flowers was enough for Wei Cheng's living expenses for a month. Yet Yunshu said her family couldn't compare with Li Weijin's at all.
Seeing Li Weijin, Wei Cheng didn't know whether she should greet him or not. After all, they were classmates. But she also felt that Li Weijin probably didn't even recognize her, so it would be awkward to say hi.
Although they were in the same class, it was a large class of over 70 students. It was normal for classmates to not have spoken to each other at all.
Wei Cheng was tall and big, but extremely shy and insecure inside. She was only outgoing around people she was familiar with. So after hesitating for a while, she decisively chose not to greet Li Weijin to avoid awkwardness.
However, when she was shoveling waste from the horse stalls into the cart, Li Weijin unexpectedly came over to talk to her.
"Wei Cheng, why didn't your roommate Su Xiaoqi come today?" Li Weijin asked.
"Xiaoqi is competing in the Top 10 Singers Competition tonight and went to the rehearsal this afternoon," Wei Cheng obediently replied before realizing - wow, Li Weijin actually knows my name? And he even asked about Xiaoqi?
After asking, Li Weijin just walked away.
Wei Cheng was still confused...What did the school prince mean by that?
After thinking through many possibilities, she finally concluded that as a class leader, Li Weijin was probably having a Mid-Autumn Festival meeting with Xiaoqi, who was also a class leader.
That must be the only explanation.
Wei Cheng didn't think more about it. She hurried with her work because Old Man Yu said they could get off work early today for him to go celebrate the festival with his daughter's family. She also wanted to finish early and go watch Xiaoqi sing tonight.
Xiaoqi arrived at the gym where many people had already gathered. Overall, things seemed orderly amidst the busyness.
Probably because there were not many other events at school, but there were many students, so human resources were plentiful and arrangements were made nicely.
Each contestant was paired with a member of the Music Society to assist with any unexpected incidents at any time.
Xiaoqi's assistant was a thin, quiet boy who introduced himself, "I'm a new Finance Major student this year, my surname is Wu, you can just call me Xiao Wu."
Seeing the slightly shy boy in front of her, Xiaoqi was suddenly reminded of the intern who came to pick her up at Lvshan City TV Station.
She felt the school was quite similar to the society in some ways. At times, participating in student organizations seemed like a waste of time, but not necessarily. It was also like gaining experience of society in advance, like having an internship in a small community ahead of time.
If the boy in front of her became an intern at a TV station or worked in related jobs in the future, he would probably be much more composed than now.
There were 20 contestants in total, all of whom arrived on time. Even Xiaoqi's calculus teacher Lu Ruxue showed up looking very spirited, her white hair blown big and fluffy. Xiaoqi went up to greet her.
"Hello Professor Lu, I'm Su Xiaoqi from Class 1 of the Information Management Department."
Lu Ruxue smiled and nodded, "I know you. I've seen clips of your singing. Your voice is great and you sing very well too. Do your best tonight!"
"Your bel canto singing is amazing, so I feel a lot of pressure," Xiaoqi also smiled.
"At my age, I just love lively events, don't feel pressured," Professor Lu said and pulled Xiaoqi along to introduce her to another contestant.
He was an old foreign man with a big beard, neatly combed and very thick. But he was dressed very gentlemanly in a tailcoat.
"This is Garen. He loves Chinese and his Chinese name is Fuluk. He sings very well too."
Indeed, Garen's Chinese was quite good. Apart from greetings like "Hello", "You are beautiful", he could barely understand a few more sentences. Of course his English was more fluent.
Xiaoqi chatted with him in English.
She complimented that his Chinese was great and that he was very talented in languages, since Chinese was a very difficult language to learn.
Through interactions with the English Corner teacher Grace, English speaking teacher Betty and others, Xiaoqi fully felt that foreigners' small talk was not actually about the weather like they learned in high school. It was better to open conversations with compliments which would make them happier.
Also, they had to be frank instead of beating around the bush. Because beating around the bush for half a day, they might not even understand what you meant.
In turn, Garen exaggeratedly complimented that Xiaoqi's English was great, her accent was very pleasant to listen to, and that he was from Australia and really liked Xiaoqi's accent.
Unexpectedly, Professor Lu also had quite decent English at her age. The three of them chatted smoothly in English and got along well.
However, Professor Lu said her best language was Russian, though she rarely used it nowadays.
Their generation learned Russian as that was popular. She even studied in Moscow. Nowadays, learning English was the trend.
Xiaoqi noticed that Professor Lu's English was very grammatical, probably due to her learning experience.
On the contrary, Garen's English lacked proper grammar in many sentences. If asked to take English proficiency tests in China, Xiaoqi wondered whether he could pass.
It was very enjoyable chatting with the erudite and humorous Professor Lu.
Garen was also over 50 years old yet looked very hale and hearty.
Xiaoqi asked why he came to Enhua University.
Garen said, "I used to work at an Australian zoo as an animal keeper. Later I saw the Chinese panda and found it so adorable that I wanted to come to China to be a panda keeper. But I quit my job, came to China, and found the requirements to be a panda keeper were very high. So I ended up being a teacher for you guys instead..."
Xiaoqi: "..."
For his last sentence, Xiaoqi struggled to grasp his humor, vaguely understanding he was mocking or joking. After all, not many Chinese could be treated as well as pandas.
While Xiaoqi was conversing happily with the two teachers, Wu Xinyue from the English Department also arrived. It was commonly believed English majors had better English because while other majors only needed the College English Test Band 4 and Band 6, English majors had to take the Test for English Majors Band 4 and Band 8 which were much harder than CET.
But in reality, the English proficiency of first year English majors was about the same as students of other majors who had just taken the college entrance exam.
Wu Xinyue's English was quite mediocre. She didn't expect to see Su Xiaoqi here, but she should have realized Su Xiaoqi was very good at singing after that episode during class when she sang out loud for the whole grade to hear. However, Wu Xinyue was still confident about her looks. At this moment, seeing Su Xiaoqi chatting so happily with two teachers, and even speaking English with the foreign teacher, she felt a bit irritated.
Somehow, at this moment, she felt Su Xiaoqi was too dazzling. Despite wearing plain t-shirt and shorts, she still made Wu Xinyue feel annoyed. Why did she run into Su Xiaoqi everywhere?
Soon Xiaoqi's assistant Xiao Wu came to say they could start drawing lots to determine the performance order at night.
Xiaoqi drew the 15th place, quite late in the lineup.
Professor Lu drew the 1st place, the opening act. Professor Lu also smiled and said, "Perfect, I'll open the door to good fortune."
The old man Garen drew the 5th place.
After drawing, everyone went backstage to get familiar with the venue and walked through the order. Xiaoqi noticed it was quite interesting that her video introduction would play right before Wu Xinyue's singing performance. Wu Xinyue drew the 14th slot.
At this point, everyone submitted their song choices.
The rehearsal progressed efficiently. Xiaoqi added her assistant Xiao Wu's WeChat so they could contact anytime.
If she needed makeup artists, special accompaniment or anything, the assistant would handle it so the contestants could go back to rest up and deliver their peak performance at night.
Xiaoqi felt the Music Society handled all the details very well, even better than her experience at the TV station. They were probably very experienced running the yearly Top 10 Singers Competition.
Wu Xinyue didn't leave immediately. She lingered behind wanting to take a look at the program schedule.
She chose a Japanese song. She knew her appearance gave her an advantage, that she was suited for dancing, and that her long hair was also one of her strengths. She chose an extremely cute Japanese song, and planned to sing and dance to it - the effect should be very good. She had practiced it privately for a long time, and she had also become popular in high school thanks to this song. Back then she had been a little nervous performing it, but now she could do even better.
She had thought about choosing an English song, but there were too many English teachers at the school, so she was afraid it would expose her weaknesses during the formal competition.
Besides, English songs tended to be more lyrical, less suited for acting cute.
She wondered what song Su Xiaoqi had chosen to perform. As for that white-haired granny and the foreign gentleman, Wu Xinyue didn't take them seriously at all. After all, it was an unspoken rule that the top 10 campus singers chosen each year would be students - the other teachers just participated for fun.
Normally, contestants weren't supposed to know what songs the others had chosen, but Wu Xinyue had always been good at this - a little flirting and acting cute with the boy in charge of the list, and he'd let her sneak a peek.
When she saw the song Su Xiaoqi had chosen, she was stunned for a moment. What kind of song was this? It was ridiculous!
