It's hard to say how Fan Rui would mend his wounded body and mind after returning home, but the exam paper for the Chinese test quickly spread across the entire internet, and even the traditional media.
After all, too many people were paying attention to Jiangnan Group's independent admissions this time, drawing the attention of almost all national media. However, no one initially paid attention to what Jiangnan Group's exam paper was about, as they assumed it would at most be a slightly more difficult or unusual test paper.
But when a student presented the entire exam paper to the media, the news exploded. Well, after all, Jiangnan's exam questions were not many, and the time given was very long, so it wasn't difficult to memorize them.
After all, the Chinese questions this time were completely different from the normal college entrance examination Chinese questions, and basically, no question was similar. In fact, looking at the entire Chinese textbooks from high school to junior high school, you wouldn't find similar questions. These questions were completely outside the system.
Not only were the students confused by these questions, but the onlookers outside were also bewildered.
That evening, quick-acting media outlets discussed Jiangnan's Chinese exam paper in their talk shows. The experts participating in the discussion immediately divided into two distinct camps.
Some believed that Jiangnan's questions this time were purely for sensationalism, and that the questions were extremely biased and strange. Such questions could not select truly outstanding talents.
But others said that Jiangnan's questions this time were a historic innovation. They argued that college entrance examination Chinese questions, in essence, only tested students' memory or their rigid understanding of certain articles. The final narrative essay was even more formulaic than the ancient eight-legged essay, completely unable to showcase a student's true Chinese ability.
On the contrary, Jiangnan Group's test questions were very tricky. They were specifically designed to test students' real Chinese proficiency, their mastery of words, their ability to simplify and enrich language, and their logical abilities in language and thought. The final task of creating oracle bone script further expanded the divergent thinking in Chinese to the extreme.
These were the questions that could truly test a student's Chinese ability. Compared to these questions, the college entrance examination questions were not even worth mentioning.
These two diametrically opposed views immediately created a fierce clash, causing the experts on the show to argue fiercely, and at their most intense, they almost came to blows.
Of course, this was certainly arranged by the television station, because if everyone discussed things calmly, it wouldn't be interesting, right?
However, the views of these two sides did touch the hearts of all the viewers who saw these questions. The general public quickly took sides, and the arguments raged from online to offline, with millions of related discussions overnight.
Later, some busybodies opened a poll on Facebook, and Facebook, being very cunning, put this poll on its homepage. Within just three hours, over a million users had voted.
The result showed that 69% of users thought Jiangnan University's Chinese exam questions were superior, only 25% thought the college entrance examination questions were superior, and the remaining 6% said both sets of questions were similar.
This was indeed the prevailing opinion online. To quote a netizen's comment, he was 35 years old and currently worked in a government agency for nearly 8 years. He wouldn't reveal his specific position, but he wrote about 3,000 words of various articles on average every day to meet all sorts of needs.
Based on his work requirements over these 8 years, he indicated that the things tested in the college entrance examination Chinese were basically useless. He didn't need to summarize central ideas or incorporate poems and songs into his articles. The only thing that was somewhat helpful was the ability to write narrative essays, but even that wasn't of great help.
Conversely, the things tested by Jiangnan University were very useful. His daily work focused on scrutinizing every word and ensuring that the meaning of every sentence was unambiguous.
At the same time, he sometimes needed to shorten a large amount of text, and at other times, he needed to write thousands of words of filler for a simple matter. Of course, language logic skills were essential. In short, he believed that anyone who scored high on Jiangnan University's exam paper would definitely become an excellent government writer in the future.
Of course, a prominent online personality identified as a writer immediately refuted his article, saying that such exam papers could not cultivate literary talent and the ability to write poems that were spirited, affectionate, and elegant.
He argued that such exam papers would stifle a person's literary creativity, and if the college entrance examination Chinese adopted such papers in the future, China would never produce a great poet or literary giant again.
Then, someone immediately mocked in the comments, "After so many years of college entrance examinations, we haven't produced a great literary giant either!"
In any case, society was divided overnight with intense debate on this matter, which was spreading like wildfire. This made many students and teachers tremble, fearing that if the college entrance examination Chinese really tested these questions in the future, their seven or eight years of studying would have been in vain.
Of course, none of this mattered to the students of Jiangnan University, as they had to continue with their mathematics exam the next day. Compared to the controversial Chinese exam, the mathematics questions were much more conventional.
In fact, they were too conventional. Many students expected to encounter many Olympic Mathematics-level problems. But on the contrary, there were not many Olympic Mathematics problems in the entire test paper, but rather a lot of questions about various fundamental mathematical concepts.
In addition, the number of geometry problems was very large, accounting for almost half of the exam paper. The most peculiar problem among all the questions was a complex calculation problem.
It wasn't that the calculation problem was particularly difficult, but that it had over 20 known data points, and required over a hundred different mathematical operations to reach the final result. If even one step was calculated incorrectly, it would lead to the collapse of the entire structure.
Many Olympic Mathematics experts were stunned when they saw this problem. They were good at various tricky and unusual problems, but faced with problems that only required basic knowledge but extremely complex calculations, they were at a loss.
Finally, the sheer volume of questions was very large, forming a stark contrast with the previous Chinese exam.
The entire Chinese exam paper yesterday had only over 20 questions in total. But this mathematics exam paper had a staggering 200 questions, with some questions only worth 0.2 points, which further bewildered the students.
Well, they had no idea how many times they had gotten confused in this exam. Fortunately, most of these questions were basic, and the exam time was still 8 hours. Otherwise, the students wouldn't know if they could complete the entire paper successfully.
In the end, Fan Rui submitted his paper one hour later than yesterday. He waited at the school gate until 8 PM to see Zhao Yao emerge from the examination hall looking exhausted.
Fortunately, like Zhao Yao, there were quite a few students who finished the exam only when time was up. However, it couldn't be blamed on them, as the sheer volume of questions was overwhelming, even for college entrance examination students who had been through many tests.
"I probably did very poorly in math!" As soon as they met, Zhao Yao said pitifully to Fan Rui.
"The exam is over, what's the point of saying these useless things?" Fan Rui rolled his eyes. "Never mind, I'll treat you to barbecue at a loss today. My mom gave me 100 yuan before I left."
"That's great!" Zhao Yao immediately regained his excitement and cheerfulness. The two students, who didn't have a very good relationship before, now went to the barbecue stall arm in arm.
"I have a feeling!" Zhao Yao said while tearing apart a skewer of squid. "If I can get a job based on this exam, I can treat you to 100 yuan worth of barbecue every day for the rest of my life."
Well, in 2004, a skewer of squid only cost one yuan, and 100 yuan worth of barbecue was indeed a lot, enough to make one stuffed.
"Nonsense, with a salary of 10,000 yuan a month, I only spend 3,000 yuan on barbecue, so of course, you can afford it!" Fan Rui retorted with a roll of his eyes.
"Ah, then I'll eat 1,000 yuan worth of barbecue every day!" Zhao Yao picked up another chicken wing.
"You won't die from overeating!" Fan Rui laughed and then started devouring the food on the table. Opportunities to eat barbecue so heartily were rare. Normally, if his parents found out, he would surely get a good beating.
The next morning, the two of them took the same bus back to their school. They were unsure when the results would be released, but they obediently returned to attend classes the next day.
Their homeroom teacher called them in and asked them to estimate their scores. The two of them shrugged and said, "We haven't seen the answer key, so we can't predict our scores."
"Never mind, even if you score well, it's okay. The college entrance examination is the most important thing, so you must be clear about its significance!" the homeroom teacher said. "By the way, tell everyone in the class that today's Chinese class will be replaced by a math class!"
"Oh!" The two nodded, feeling a bit curious. While it was common for the homeroom teacher to borrow some physical education classes or even humanities classes, borrowing Chinese classes was very rare, as both Chinese and Mathematics were worth 150 points, and neither was considered superior to the other.
"Don't think too much about it. This class will be returned to your Chinese teacher later. He's on leave today and didn't come to class!" the teacher said. The two then nodded and hurried out of the office.
"Strange, Teacher Gu is famously a workhorse. He hasn't taken a leave for two consecutive years. Why would he suddenly take leave to teach just before the college entrance examination?" a nearby teacher asked curiously.
"Well, I heard a rumor about this!" another teacher whispered. "It seems that Teacher Gu spent the whole night answering exam papers yesterday. In the end, he suddenly went mad and fainted. He's in the hospital now!" xxs壹贰
"Teacher Gu has been teaching Chinese for how many years? What kind of exam paper could make him go mad?"
"What else could it be but the Jiangnan University exam paper? There's a craze online for Chinese teachers to also take the exam, and Teacher Gu was probably influenced by it!"
"But I heard that he benefited from misfortune. Only now was a serious condition of cerebral thrombosis discovered. If it had been two more years, he would have been finished. Now, he can still receive timely treatment and have a stent placed!"