毛坦廠中學 中國應試教育工廠

The main street of Maotanchang, a secluded town in the furrowed hills of eastern China’s Anhui province, was nearly deserted. A man dozed on a motorized rickshaw, while two old women with hoes shuffled toward the rice paddies outside town. It was 11:44 on a Sunday morning last spring, and the row of shops selling food, tea and books by the pound stood empty. Even the town’s sacred tree lured no supplicants; beneath its broad limbs, a single bundle of incense smoldered on a pile of ash.

毛坦廠是一座僻靜的小鎮，坐落在中國東部省份安徽，周圍是溝壑叢生的山巒。它的主街道上空蕩蕩的，一個男人在機動三輪車上打瞌睡，兩個老婦扛着鋤頭朝城外的稻田緩緩走去。那是去年春天一個星期天上午的11點44分。在魚塘旁，一排出售食品、茶葉和書籍的商店無人光顧，就連鎮裏的神樹下也沒人許願；在寬大的樹冠下，一柱香在一堆灰燼上悶燒着。

One minute later, at precisely 11:45, the stillness was shattered. Thousands of teenagers swarmed out of the towering front gate of Maotanchang High School. Many of them wore identical black-and-white Windbreakers emblazoned with the slogan, in English, “I believe it, I can do it.” It was lunchtime at one of China’s most secretive “cram schools” — a memorization factory where 20,000 students, or four times the town’s official population, train round the clock for China’s national college-entrance examination, known as the gaokao. The grueling test, which is administered every June over two or three days (depending on the province), is the lone criterion for admission to Chinese universities. For the students at Maotanchang, most of whom come from rural areas, it offers the promise of a life beyond the fields and the factories, of families’ fortunes transformed by hard work and high scores.

一分鐘後，就在11點45分，寂靜被打破了。上萬名少年涌出了毛坦廠中學高聳的大門。其中很多人都穿着同款的黑白兩色風衣，上面印着英文口號“I believe it, I can do it”。現在是午餐時間，而毛坦廠中學是中國最神祕的“備考學校”之一：這是一所強化記憶的工廠，有2萬名學生，人數是該鎮的官方人口的四倍。他們不分晝夜地學習，爲俗稱“高考”的普通高等學校招生全國統一考試做準備。高考每年6月舉行，爲期兩到三天（取決於不同的省份），相當嚴酷，是中國大學錄取學生的唯一標準。毛坦廠中學的學生大部分來自農村，而高考爲他們提供了一個機會，讓他們不被農田和工廠生活所侷限，能靠努力學習和高分來改變家庭的命運。

Yang Wei, a 12th grader at this public school, steered me through the crowd. A peach farmer’s son in half-laced high-tops, Yang had spent the previous three years, weekends included, stumbling to his first class at 6:20 in the morning and returning to his room only after the end of his last class at 10:50 at night. Yang and I met at this precise moment, after his Sunday-morning practice test, because it was the only free time he had all week — a single three-hour reprieve. Now, with the gaokao just 69 days away — the number appeared on countdown calendars all over town — Yang had entered the final, frenetic stretch. “If you connected all of the practice tests I’ve taken over the past three years,” he told me with a bitter laugh, “they would wrap all the way around the world.”

楊維（音）是這所公立學校的高三學生，父親是桃農。他穿着繫了一半鞋帶的高幫運動鞋，帶領我穿過人羣。三年來，楊維每天早上衝去上6點20開始的第一節課，晚上10點50最後一節課結束後纔回到自己的房間，週末也不例外。週日上午的模擬考試結束後，楊維和我在這個精確到分的時間碰面，因爲這是他整整一週中唯一的空閒時間，而且僅有三個小時。現在離高考只有69天了——鎮裏各處都能看到倒計時器——楊維已經進入了最後的瘋狂衝刺階段。“如果把我過去三年做過的所有模擬試卷連在一起，都可以繞地球一週了，”他苦笑着對我說。

Yang and I had communicated on social media for weeks, and the 18-year-old seemed almost giddy to be hosting an American expatriate. Yet there was a crisis brewing. Even with all the relentless practice, Yang’s scores were slipping, a fact that clouded over the lunch I ate with his family in the single room that he and his mother shared near the sacred tree. We were joined by Yang’s father, visiting for the afternoon, and his closest friend from his home village, a classmate named Cao Yingsheng — all squeezed into a space barely big enough for a bunk bed, a desk and a rice cooker. The room’s rent, however, was high, rivaling rates in downtown Beijing, and it represented only part of the sacrifice Yang’s parents made to help him, their only son, become the first family member to attend college.

楊維和我在社交媒體上已經聯絡了好幾周。對於招待一名常駐中國的美國客人，18歲的他好像有點犯暈。然而，一場危機正在醞釀。雖然一直在參加模擬考試，楊維的分數卻在下滑。我和他的家人共進午餐時，這件事搞得氣氛頗爲陰沉。他和母親住在神樹附近的一個單間裏，我們就在那裏吃的中飯。下午來看他的父親也到了，還有他的同鄉同學、最好的朋友曹英生（音）——所有人都擠在這個勉強夠放一張上下鋪、一張書桌和一個飯鍋的狹小空間裏。這間房的租金很高，可以和北京市中心的地段媲美，但這只是父母爲了培養獨子成爲家裏第一個大學生而做出的部分犧牲。

Yang’s mother, Lin Jiamin, quit her garment-factory job to support him in his final year of cramming. Cao’s mother came to live with her son as well. “It’s a lot of pressure,” said Cao, whose family paid more in school fees than Yang’s family — about $2,000 a semester — because of his low marks entering high school. “My mother constantly reminds me that I have to study hard, because my father is out working construction far from home to pay my school fees.” The room went quiet for a minute. They all knew this was the boys’ fate, too, if they failed to do well on the gaokao. “Dagong,” Yang said. “Manual labor.” He and Cao would have to join China’s 260-million-strong army of migrant workers.

楊維的母親林佳敏（音）辭去了製衣廠的工作，來支持他最後一年的備考衝刺。曹英生的母親也過來和兒子一起居住。“壓力很大，”曹英生說。因爲他中考的分數不夠，家裏交的學費比楊維多，每學期差不多1.2萬元人民幣。“我母親總是提醒我，一定要努力學習，因爲爲了給我交學費，父親到了很遠的建築工地打工。”房間裏靜了一分鐘。他們都知道，如果高考沒有考好，孩子們的未來也是一樣。“打工，”楊維說。“體力勞動”。那樣的話，他和曹英生就得加入中國2.6億的農民工大軍。

Yang was eager to be a good host. But as his mother plied us with chicken wings and sesame tofu, his eyelids drooped. Yang’s mother wanted him to study after lunch, but his father interceded. “The brain needs a rest, too,” he told his wife. With hardly a word, Yang climbed into the top bunk and collapsed with his high-tops still on.

楊維很想當好東道主。不過，當他的母親給我們不斷送上雞翅和芝麻豆腐時，他的上下眼皮直打架。母親希望他在午飯後學習，但父親替他求了情。“大腦也需要休息休息，”他告訴妻子。幾乎沒說一個字，楊維爬進了上鋪，倒頭就睡，運動鞋也沒來得及脫。

Nothing consumes the lives of Chinese families more than the ever-­looming prospect of the gaokao. The exam — there are two versions, one focused on science, the other on humanities — is the modern incarnation of the imperial keju, generally regarded as the world’s first standardized test. For more than 1,300 years, into the early 20th century, the keju funneled young men into China’s civil service. Today, more than nine million students take the gaokao each year (fewer than 3.5 million, combined, take the SAT and the ACT). But the pressure to start memorizing and regurgitating facts weighs on Chinese students from the moment they enter elementary school. Even at the liberal bilingual kindergarten my sons attended in Beijing, Chinese parents pushed their 5-year-olds to learn multiplication tables and proper Chinese and English syntax, lest their children fall behind their peers in first grade. “To be honest,” one of my Chinese friends, a new mother, told me, “the gaokao race really begins at birth.”

對中國家庭來說，沒有什麼事情比高考日益迫近更磨人了。高考——分爲理科和文科——是中國古代科舉制度的當代化身。科舉把年輕男性篩選到國家官員體系中，通常被視爲世界上第一個標準化考試製度，延續了1300多年之久，直到20世紀初才廢除。如今，每年有超過900萬名高考考生（參加美國SAT[學術能力評估]和ACT[美國大學入學考試]的學生合計不到350萬）。但是，中國學生自從進入小學的那一刻起，就開始承受着死記硬背和機械重複的壓力。即使是在我的幾個兒子在北京上的一所比較自由的雙語幼兒園，中國父母也讓自己5歲的孩子學習乘法表及正規的中英文語法，以免在一年級的時候落在同齡人後面。一箇中國朋友最近當上了媽媽，她告訴我，“說實話，高考競爭從孩子一出生就開始了。”

China’s treadmill of standardized tests has produced, along with high levels of literacy and government control, some of the world’s most scarily proficient test-takers. Shanghai high-school students have dominated the last two cycles of the Program for International Student Assessment exam, leading more than one U.S. official to connect this to a broader “Sputnik moment” of coming Chinese superiority. Yet even as American educators try to divine the secret of China’s test-taking prowess, the gaokao is coming under fire in China as an anachronism that stifles innovative thought and puts excessive pressure on students. Teenage suicide rates tend to rise as the gaokao nears. Two years ago, a student posted a shocking photograph online: a public high-school classroom full of students hunched over books, all hooked up to intravenous drips to give them the strength to keep studying.

中國標準化考試的馬拉松不僅提高了公衆的文化水平和政府的控制力，還造就了世界上最可怕的考試達人。在國際學生評估項目(Program for International Student Assessment)的上兩次測試中，上海的高中生蟬聯榜首，導致多名美國官員將這件事與更大意義上的“斯普特尼克衛星(Sputnik)時刻”聯繫了起來，認爲它是中國即將超越美國的徵兆之一。然而，儘管美國的教育工作者試圖探究中國人應試能力的奧祕，高考卻在本國遭到了抨擊。一些人說它扼殺了創新思維，給學生施加了過於沉重的壓力，不符合時代精神。青少年自殺率往往隨着高考的臨近而上升。兩年前，一名學生在網上貼出了一張震驚衆人的照片：在一所公立高中的課堂上，學生們埋頭看書，所有人都在打點滴，以便獲得繼續學習的能量。

Beijing is now pushing reforms to reduce student workloads, expand the curriculum beyond core courses and allow universities to consider factors other than gaokao scores. Yet the government efforts have received token compliance from an entrenched bureaucracy and outright resistance from many parents who fear that easing the pressure could hurt their children’s exam results and jeopardize their futures. “China is caught in a prisoner’s dilemma,” says Yong Zhao, a professor of education at the University of Oregon and the author of “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon?” “Nobody is willing to break away, because the gaokao is still the only path to heaven.”

中央政府正在推動改革，以減少學生的課業負擔、讓課程設置不僅限於核心課程，並允許各大院校考慮高考分數之外的因素。然而，政府的努力不僅面臨着根深蒂固的官僚體制的陽奉陰違，還遭到了很多家長的堅決反對，因爲他們擔心，減壓可能會不利於自己孩子的考試成績，危及他們的前途。“中國陷入了囚徒困境，”俄勒岡大學(University of Oregon)的教育學教授、《誰怕那條大惡龍》(Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon?)的作者趙勇說。“沒人願意放棄它，因爲高考仍是通往天堂的唯一途徑。”

Even as cram schools have proliferated across urban areas, Maotanchang is a world apart, a remote one-industry town that produces test-taking machines with the same single-minded commitment that other Chinese towns devote to making socks or Christmas ornaments. The glut of university students may have eroded the value of a college degree, especially as unemployment and underemployment rises among new graduates. And many wealthy families are simply opting out of the system, placing their children in private international schools in China or sending them abroad for an education. But for those of limited means, like Yang, the economic uncertainty has only intensified the gaokao competition; a few points either way could determine whether a student qualifies for a degree that is worth something — or nothing. “The competition is fiercer than ever,” says Jiang Xueqin, an assistant vice principal at Tsinghua University High School. “And rural students are getting left behind.”

中國各地的城市已經涌現了大量備考強化學校，但毛坦廠仍然獨一無二。這是一座偏僻的單一產業城鎮，出產的是應試機器，就像其他一些專門生產襪子或聖誕飾品的中國鄉鎮一樣心無旁騖。大學生過剩可能已經削弱了高校文憑的價值，尤其是在應屆畢業生失業率和就業不足率雙雙上升的情況下。很多富裕家庭乾脆選擇不進入這個系統，讓自家子女就讀中國的私立國際學校，或者把他們送到國外去接受教育。但是，對於那些家庭條件有限的人，比如楊維，經濟上的不確定性反而加劇了高考競爭的激烈程度；幾分之差就能夠決定一個學生究竟是進入學位含金量高的學校，還是一無所獲。“競爭比以往任何時候都更加激烈，”清華附中副校長江學勤說。“而且農村學生越來越落後。”

Isolated in the foothills of Anhui, two hours from the nearest city, Maotanchang caters mostly to such students and prides itself on eliminating the distractions of modern life. Cellphones and laptops are forbidden; the dormitories, where roughly half the students live, were designed without electrical outlets. Romance is banned. In town, where the rest of the students live, mostly with their mothers in tiny partitioned rooms, the local government has shut down all forms of entertainment. This may be the only town in China with no video arcade, billiards hall or Internet cafe. “There’s nothing to do but study,” Yang says.

毛坦廠中學滿足的主要就是此類學生的需求。它被隔絕在安徽的山腳下，距離最近的城市有兩小時路程，以屏蔽了現代生活的干擾爲傲。學生不準使用手機或筆記本電腦；大約一半的學生住宿舍，房間裏特地沒有裝電源插座；不準談戀愛。另外一半學生住在鎮上，大多與母親一起棲身在狹小的隔間裏。當地政府已經取締了一切娛樂場所。這可能是中國唯一沒有電子遊戲廳、檯球廳和網吧的小鎮。“沒什麼可以做的，只能學習，”楊維說。

Town planning is not the only means through which the school instills discipline in kids like Yang, a normally fun-loving teenager from Yuejin whom his father calls “the most mischievous kid in the village.” Maotanchang’s all-male corps of head teachers doles out lessons, and frequently punishments, with military rigor; their job security and bonuses depend on raising their students’ test scores. Security guards roam the 165-acre campus in golf carts and on motorcycles, while surveillance cameras track students’ movements in classrooms, dormitories and even the town’s main intersections. This “closed management practice,” as an assistant principal, Li Zhenhua, has termed it, gets results. In 1998, only 98 Maotanchang students achieved the minimum gaokao score needed to enter a university. Fifteen years later, 9,312 students passed, and the school was striving to break the 10,000 mark in 2014. Yang and Cao hoped to be among them.

小鎮規劃並非學校用來管束楊維這樣的學生的唯一手段。楊維來自躍進村，像很多孩子一樣貪玩，是父親口中“村裏最調皮的孩子”。毛坦廠中學的班主任是清一色的男性，對學生進行軍事化教育，並經常施加懲罰；他們能否保住工作崗位，能拿到多少獎金，均取決於他們提高學生考試成績的能力。安保人員駕駛着電瓶車和摩托車，在佔地面積近千畝的校園裏巡視。教室、宿舍乃至鎮上的主要路口均都安裝着攝像頭，監視着學生們的一舉一動。校長助理李振華說，這種“封閉式管理”能起到效果。1998年時，只有98名毛坦廠中學的學生達到了本科院校錄取的最低分數線。15年後，學校有9312名學生達到了本科線，還想努力在2014年突破萬人大關。楊維和曹英生希望自己能名列其中。

“We can’t disturb him now,” Yang’s father, Yang Qi, whispered as his son fell asleep on the bunk bed. He put on his aviator glasses, and his wife, in an orange dress and sequined high heels, picked up a powder blue parasol. They were taking me for a stroll around the school grounds. No visitors are allowed on the Maotanchang campus, except during these three hours on Sunday afternoons. Yang’s parents often spent this time crowding around school bulletin boards, scanning the lists for their son’s latest test scores. The ritual was gratifying earlier in the school year, when Yang’s marks were rising close to the level needed to enter one of China’s nearly 120 first-tier universities. But now, securing a place in even a second-tier university looked doubtful. “There’s no need to look,” Yang Qi said. “We just want our son to study hard, because his mother and I never had a chance to go far in school.”

楊維在牀上睡着了，他父親楊奇（音）因此低聲說，“我們現在不能打擾他。”他戴上了自己的墨鏡，而穿着橙色連衣裙和亮片高跟鞋的妻子拿起了一把淺藍色的陽傘。他們要帶我在校園裏四處轉轉。除週日下午的這三個小時以外，毛坦廠中學不接待訪客。在這三個小時裏，楊維的父母通常會擠在學校公告欄旁邊，仔細查看相關表格，尋找兒子最近的考試成績。這個學年的早些時候，這個例行活動是讓人高興的，因爲那時候楊維的成績在不斷提高，與入讀中國近120所一類大學所需的水平越來越近。但現在，能否進入二類大學看上去都不確定了。“不用看，”楊奇說。“我們只是想讓兒子努力學習，因爲他媽和我都沒機會多讀書。”

Despite the creeping sense of panic, Yang’s parents seemed eager to show me evidence of the school’s success, as if their own aspirations for upward mobility depended on it. The Maotanchang school began humbly, in 1939, as a temporary oasis for students escaping the Japanese invasion of Hefei, Anhui’s capital. It became a permanent school after the 1949 Communist revolution. Yet half a century later, as China’s coastal economy boomed, it was a neglected hulk, hollowed out by rural-to-urban migration and buried in debt. Its resurrection hinged on China’s decision in 1999 to make what is often referred to as a “great leap forward” in higher education. The radical expansion of the education system has tripled the number of Chinese universities and has pushed China’s student population to 31 million — greater than any country in the world. (The United States has 21 million.) And every student must first pass the gaokao.

儘管有一種隱隱的恐慌感，楊維的父母好像還是迫切地想向我展示這所學校的成功，似乎他們自己對向上流動的渴望靠的就是它。毛坦廠中學是1939年日軍入侵安徽省會合肥後創辦的，當時是作爲接收逃離戰亂的學生的臨時學校，條件頗爲簡陋。1949年的共產主義革命後，毛坦廠中學成了一所永久性的學校。但半個世紀後，隨着中國沿海經濟的繁榮，毛坦廠中學成了一個遭到冷落的空殼。它被從農村到城市的人口遷移掏空了，債臺高築。它的復活則源於中國1999年做出的一項決定。那項決定的內容，常被稱作高等教育的“大躍進”。教育體系的急劇擴張讓中國大學的數量增加了兩倍，大學生人數增至3100萬，比全世界任何一個國家都多。（美國的大學生人數爲2100萬。）所有學生都必須先通過高考。

Like the ancient imperial exam, the gaokao was meant to introduce a measure of meritocracy into an otherwise elitist system, creating a path of upward mobility for students of meager backgrounds. (The top scorers on the keju, after enduring days locked in a windowless cell, had the honor of entering the Forbidden City in Beijing by the emperor’s middle gate.) But rural students are still at a severe disadvantage. Villages like Yuejin, where Yang’s father is the Communist Party secretary, have poor school facilities and a paucity of well-trained teachers. Wealthy urban families can hire private tutors, pay for expensive preparation courses or bribe their way into the best city schools. The university quota system also skews sharply against rural students, who are allocated far fewer admissions spots than their urban peers.

和古代的科舉考試一樣，高考是爲了在精英主義體系中引入一種英才教育的衡量方式，爲出身卑微的學生創造一種向上流動的通道。（鎖在沒有窗戶的小屋裏數天後，科舉考試中的高分獲得者將有幸從平日裏只有皇帝才能走的中門，進入紫禁城。）然而，農村地區的學生依然處於極度不利的境地。在楊維的父親擔任村支書的躍進村，教學設施簡陋，缺乏訓練有素的老師。富裕的城市家庭則能請家教、支付昂貴的補課費，或是通過行賄入讀市裏最好的學校。高等院校的配額制度也明顯倒向不利於農村學生的方向。農村學生分到的招生名額，比城裏學生要少得多。

Rural kids needed extra help, and Maotanchang leapt in to serve their need. At first, the school offered extra exam-prep courses outside the regular curriculum for a modest fee. When the government banned tuition-­based courses from public schools in 2004, the local administrators turned the entire public-school curriculum into an intensive cram course. (In 10th and 11th grades, students are allowed two elective hours per week — music, art or physical education. In 12th grade, no electives are permitted, only gaokao courses.) More audaciously, they opened a private for-profit wing that catered to “repeat” students — high-school graduates who were so desperate to improve their scores that they would pay for the privilege of going through the gaokao mill again. The move paid off. The “repeater” wing, which sits on the same campus as the public high school and uses many of the same resources, is now the school’s biggest profit center, with more than 6,000 students paying anywhere from a few hundred dollars to nearly $8,000 a year in tuition alone. (Students with low scores pay the highest fees — a tuition structure designed to ensure a high rate of success and revenues for the school.) “This school is rich beyond imagination,” Yang Qi said, holding my arm as we strolled past security guards at the gate. His tone was one not of reproach, but of admiration.

農村孩子需要額外的幫助，毛坦廠中學就是應這樣的需求而生的。起初，學校以較低的收費提供課外的應考培訓。2004年政府禁止公立學校進行有償補課後，當地相關部門將整套公立學校教育轉變成了強化補習培訓。（在高一和高二，學生每週可以上兩個小時的選修課——音樂、美術或體育。到了高三，學校不允許學生上選修課，只能上高考要考的課程。）更大膽的是，他們開辦了一所以盈利爲目的的私立學校，接收“復讀”的學生。復讀生已從高中畢業，但非常迫切地想提升成績，因而願意付錢去再次經歷高考的磨難。此舉帶來了回報。“復讀生”所在的大樓，與公立的毛坦廠高中坐落於同一個校園，共用許多資源，是毛坦廠中學盈利最多的中心。那裏的6000多名學生一年交的學費，在幾百美元到近8000美元（約合5萬元人民幣）之間。（學生的成績越差，交的學費越高——這種學費設計是爲了確保學校有較高的成功率和收入。）經過校門口的保安時，楊奇挽着我的胳膊說，“這學校錢多得你想都想不到。”他的語氣裏沒有指責，倒是有欽羨。

Inside the gate, Yang Qi eagerly pointed out the fruits of the school’s recent $32 million expansion: a gargantuan LED screen, a sports complex, giant statues of Chairman Mao and Deng Xiaoping and, up on the ridge above, a glimmering hourglass-shaped building — administrative offices that looked more like an airport control tower or a prison lookout. The grounds themselves were as manicured as an American college campus, albeit one with decorative rocks adorned with the school’s motto: “We don’t compete with intelligence but with hard work!”

進了校門，楊奇迫切地指出了學校最近投資2億元人民幣擴建的成果：一塊巨大的LED屏幕、一座體育中心、高大的毛主席和鄧小平雕像。屋脊上還有一棟微微發光的沙漏型建築，那裏是行政辦公室，看上去更像是機場的指揮塔臺，或是監獄的瞭望塔。校園本身和美國院校的校園一樣，修剪整齊，不過這裏安放着一些裝飾性的石頭，上面刻着校訓：“不比智力比努力！”

The most important new structure is a five-story brick building that houses classrooms for repeat students. As I watched thousands of repeaters flood back into the structure that Sunday afternoon — their weekly breaks are only 90 minutes — I recalled how Yang had referred to them as the school’s “most desperate students.” So many are packed into each classroom — more than 150 each — that, students say, teachers bark out their lessons on bull horns. The boy living in the room next to Yang’s was a repeat student who bombed the gaokao the year before. He was now cramming until 1:30 every night, and his class ranking had risen 2,000 places since the start of the school year, placing him in the top third of his class. “He’s like a ghost,” Yang told me. “But he motivates me, because I never want to go through this again!” His mother retorted, “Even if you fail, we couldn’t afford another year here.”

最重要的新建築是一棟五層的紅磚樓房，復讀生就在其中的教室裏上課。在那個週日的下午，當我看到數千復讀生涌入這棟樓時，我想起楊維說過的，他們是這所學校裏“最拼命的學生”——他們每週的休息時間只有90分鐘。每間教室裏都塞滿了學生，超過150人，學生們說，老師講課時得用喇叭大聲喊才行。住在楊維隔壁房間的男孩就是一個復讀生，一年前高考落榜，現在每天晚上要複習到凌晨1點半。自從新學年開始以來，他的名次已經上升了2000位，進入了年級的前三分之一。“他就像一個鬼，”楊維告訴我。“但他對我是種激勵，因爲我絕不想再過一遍這樣的日子了！”他母親接過話頭說道，“就算你落榜，我們也沒錢再供你在這裏讀一年。”

Yang’s parents and I lingered in front of the rows of dormitories where their son spent his first two years at Maotanchang. Ten students, sometimes 12, bunked in each room. The wire mesh covering the windows — “to prevent suicide,” one student told me later, only half-joking — was festooned with drying socks, underwear, T-shirts and shoes. The dorms have few amenities — no electrical outlets, no laundry room, not even, until a separate bathhouse was installed last year, hot water. There is, students note, one high-tech device: an electronic fingerprint scanner that teachers log into every night to verify that they have conducted their obligatory bed checks.

楊維的父母和我在一排排宿舍前徘徊，他在毛坦廠讀書的頭兩年就住在這裏。每個房間裏住着10名甚至12名學生，全都是上下鋪。窗口覆蓋着絲網，後來一個學生半開玩笑地對我說，這是爲了“防止自殺”。絲網上掛滿了晾曬的襪子、內衣、T恤和鞋子。宿舍幾乎沒有什麼設施——沒有電源插座，沒有洗衣房，在去年修好一個獨立的澡堂之前，連熱水都沒有。學生表示，這裏倒是有一種高科技設備：電子指紋掃描儀。教師每晚都掃描一下指紋，表示自己已經按規定查了房。

Perhaps nobody on campus is more motivated — and exhausted — than Maotanchang’s 500 teachers, whose jobs hinge on their students’ success. Base salaries for teachers are two to three times as high as China’s normal public-­school wages, and bonuses can easily double their incomes. For each student who gets into a first-tier university, the six-member teacher teams (a head teacher and five subject teachers) share a $500 reward. “They make good money,” Yang told me, “but they face even worse pressure than we do.”

在毛坦廠的校園裏，積極性最強也最疲憊的人，或許就是這裏的500名教師了。他們的飯碗繫於學生的成績。該校教師的基本工資是中國普通公立學校的兩到三倍，獎金常常會和工資一樣高。每有一個學生被一類大學錄取，六個人組成的教師團隊（一個班主任，五個不同科目的教師）就能獲得500美元的獎金。“他們掙錢很多，”楊維告訴我，“但他們的壓力比我們更大。”

The head teachers’ schedules are so grueling — 17-hour days monitoring classes of 100 to 170 students — that the school has decreed that only young, single men can fill the job. The competition to hang onto these spots is intense. Charts posted on the walls of the faculty room rank classes by cumulative test scores from week to week. Teachers whose classes finish in last place at year’s end can expect to be fired. It’s no wonder that teachers’ motivational methods can be tough. Besides rapping knuckles with rulers, students told me, some teachers pit them against one another in practice-test “death matches” — the losers must remain standing all morning. In one much-discussed case, the mother of a tardy student was forced to stand outside her son’s class for a week as punishment. For the repeat students, the teachers have a merciless mantra: “Always remember your failure!”

班主任的日常工作非常辛苦——每天17個小時監督100到170名學生——所以學校規定，這個崗位只招年輕的單身男性。班主任崗位競爭很激烈，教員室的牆上張貼着圖表，按照每週考試的總成績給每個班級排名次。到了年底，學生成績墊底的教師可能會被開除，難怪教師用來激勵學生的方法可能會很粗暴。學生們告訴我，除了用尺子敲打指節之外，一些老師還讓學生在模擬考試的“死亡比賽”中較量——輸了就要被罰站一上午。有次罰站的情形讓衆人議論紛紛：一個後進學生的母親，被迫在兒子的教室外站了一個星期。對於復讀的學生，教師們有一句冷酷的口頭禪：“永遠不要忘記你的失敗！”

Maotanchang’s most famous graduate is a skinny 19-year-old with hair flopping over his eyes. His name is Xu Peng, and though he hardly looks like a masochist, he was drawn to the cram school because, as he puts it, “I wanted a cruel place.”

毛坦廠最有名的畢業生是19歲的徐鵬。他身材瘦削，頭髮耷拉下來遮住了眼睛。雖然看上去不像是受虐狂，但是他說，之所以選擇這所學校，是因爲想去一個“嚴酷的地方”。

Xu grew up as one of China’s 60 million “left behind” children, raised by his grandparents while his parents worked as migrant fruit sellers in the distant city Wuxi. His grandfather summoned his parents home to Hongjing village, however, when Xu spun out of control in middle school — skipping classes, sneaking out with his friends, becoming obsessed with video games. The family income dropped when his mother stopped working to devote herself to his education. Despite bearing down to please his mother, Xu still faltered on the high-school entrance exam, ruining his chance to get into the region’s best high schools. His mother was so upset that she barely spoke to him for days. With few options left for high school, Xu turned to Maotanchang. “I only knew that the school was very strict, to the point that some students had supposedly committed suicide,” he told me. “That convinced me. I didn’t believe I could discipline myself otherwise.”

和中國的6000萬“留守兒童”一樣，徐鵬是由祖父母帶大的，父母則在遙遠的城市無錫販賣水果。然而，當徐鵬在初中表現失控時——逃課，與朋友偷偷外出，沉迷於電子遊戲——祖父把父母叫回了宏景村（音）。母親不再工作，一心只管他的教育問題，家庭收入下降了。儘管努力要讓母親高興，但是徐鵬在中考時還是失利了，沒能進入該地區最好的高中。他母親非常氣惱，好幾天沒有和他說話。可供選擇的高中很少，徐鵬選擇了毛坦廠中學。“我只知道這所學校非常嚴格，甚至有一些學生因此而自殺了，”他告訴我。“於是我就相信了。我覺得如果不這樣，我就會管不住自己。”

Not long after arriving at Maotanchang, Xu decided that his teachers weren’t cruel enough. The school’s fixation on raising its gaokao success rate — its biggest selling point — means that teachers work most intensively to lift marginal students past the minimum scores required for second- or third-tier universities. “Their focus is to get everybody above the line,” Xu says. “But if you’ve got good-enough scores to pass, they stop paying attention.” During his first two years, Xu decided he had to develop his own fanatical sense of self-control. He filled every spare moment with study, testing himself between classes, on the toilet, in the cafeteria. Late at night, after the lights went out at 11:30, he sometimes used a battery-powered lamp to keep going.

到毛坦廠後不久，徐鵬就覺得，老師們還不夠嚴酷。這座學校最關注的是提高高考上線率——這所學校的最大賣點。這也意味着，教師要把主要精力放在讓成績較差的學生，達到二類或三類大學的最低錄取分數。“他們的側重點是讓所有人都過線，”徐鵬說。“但是，如果本來成績就足夠好，他們就沒有那麼關注你了。”在這裏的頭兩年，徐鵬決定，他必須培養強烈的自制力。他把所有的空閒時間都用來學習，課間、上廁所、在食堂裏，他都會做自測。有時深夜11點半熄燈之後，他還會開着電池供電的燈繼續學習。

By his third year at Maotanchang, when his mother came to live with him in a rented room in town, Xu’s test scores began rising to the top of his grade — first among thousands. Xu’s head teacher pulled him aside early in the spring of 2013 to tell him that he had a chance to become the first Maotanchang student ever to be admitted to Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University, known as the M.I.T. of China. Over the years, Maotanchang has earned a reputation as an assembly line for second-tier universities. Now, the teacher told him, school administrators were so keen to have a student admitted to one of China’s top universities that they were offering a sizable reward: nearly $50,000 to be divided equally among Xu’s family, his middle school and — naturally — his teachers at Maotanchang.

在毛坦廠的第三年，母親也來到這裏，帶着徐鵬住進了在鎮上租的房間。這時徐鵬的考試成績開始提高到年級第一——幾千人中的第一名。2013年初春的一天，徐鵬的班主任老師把他叫到一邊，說他有可能成爲毛坦廠有史以來第一個考入清華大學的學生。這座位於北京的著名高校被譽爲中國的麻省理工學院(MIT)。多年來，毛坦廠被當成了向二類大學輸送學生的生產線。現在，老師告訴他，學校的管理層非常期望有人能考上一所中國的頂尖學府，他們將給這樣的學生頒發一大筆獎金：30萬元，由徐家、他的初中，當然還有他在毛坦廠的老師平分。

Before the gaokao, Xu holed up in a hotel near the exam site in Lu’an city and didn’t emerge for 48 hours. “My parents thought I was a maniac,” he told me. “They couldn’t understand why I refused to come down from my room. But memorizing this material is like training for the Olympics. You have to keep up the momentum. Skip a day or two, and you can get off form.” The extra push might have helped: Xu scored 643 out of a possible (but never achieved) 750 on the gaokao. Tsinghua’s minimum score for students from Anhui province taking the science exam was 641. He made it by just two points.

高考前，徐鵬躲在六安市考場附近的一家酒店裏，48小時沒有出門。“父母覺得我瘋了，”他告訴我。“他們不明白我爲什麼不肯從屋裏出來。但是記憶這些資料，就像是爲奧運會做賽前訓練，必須保持狀態。休息一兩天，你就不在狀態了。”這種額外的努力可能產生了效果：徐鵬的高考分數爲643分，總分是750分（但從未有人得到過滿分）。清華大學在安徽省招收理科生的最低分數線是641分，徐鵬高出兩分。

Xu’s achievement is so well known in Maotanchang that Yang refers to him as “a cult figure.” The tiny space that Xu and his mother rented out last year is now advertised as the “zhuangyuan room,” a reference to the top scorer in the ancient imperial exam. Maotanchang administrators brought Xu back to campus during the previous school year to give a motivational speech to 300 specially selected students — the top scorers from each class. Just as the Chinese masses are exhorted to “study Lei Feng” — a selfless model soldier who gave his life for the motherland — Maotanchang students are now encouraged to “study Xu Peng.”

徐鵬的成就在毛坦廠家喻戶曉，以至於楊維把他稱作“偶像”。徐鵬和他母親之前租住的房間，如今被宣傳爲“狀元房”。狀元指的是古代科舉考試中的第一名。上一學年，毛坦廠中學的管理層把徐鵬請回校園，向300名經過挑選的學生，也就是每個班成績排名最高的學生，做勵志演講。就像中國號召民衆向把生命獻給祖國的無私戰士雷鋒學習一樣，毛坦廠中學現在號召學生們“學習徐鵬”。

When I met Xu on Tsinghua’s grassy campus last spring, near the end of his first year, he still looked out of place: a young villager in a threadbare blazer, sleeves pushed up his arms. Many of the students around us were members of China’s urban elite, wealthy and worldly young adults armed with iPhones, frequent-flier cards and a nuanced understanding of “Harry Potter” and “The Big Bang Theory.”

去年春天，我在清華大學校園裏的一片草坪上和徐鵬碰面，當時他的第一學年就快結束，但仍然顯得有些格格不入：一個來自農村的年輕人，穿着破舊的外套，袖子捋到了手臂上。我們周圍的很多學生都來自中國城市的精英階層，他們富裕、諳熟世事、使用iPhone手機、擁有航空公司的里程卡，而且對《哈利·波特》(Harry Potter)和《生活大爆炸》(The Big Bang Theory)有詳細的瞭解。

Xu looked gaunt. He showed me his student-ID photo, taken the previous fall, when his face was round and fleshy. “I’ve lost seven kilos” — 15 pounds — “because I can’t get used to the food,” he said. The freedom of university life took adjustment, too. “There are no rules here,” he said. “I was so confused during first semester, because nobody told me what to do.” Xu, an engineering major, is learning to enjoy new things: hanging out with friends, doing volunteer work, spending weekend days in the park. “I’m still studying hard,” said Xu, who wants to pursue graduate studies in the United States. “But now I can finally breathe.”

徐鵬顯得有些憔悴。他給我看了自己學生證上的照片，上一年秋天拍攝的這張照片裏，他的臉圓圓肉肉的。“因爲吃不慣這裏的飯，我瘦了七公斤，”他說。大學生活的自由，也需要適應。“這裏沒有規矩，”他說。“第一學期我很困惑，因爲沒有人告訴我要做什麼。”徐鵬讀的是工程專業，現在正在學着享受新事物：和朋友一起消磨時間、做義工，週末去逛公園。“我學習還是很努力，”徐鵬說，他想去美國讀研究生。“但現在我終於可以鬆口氣了。”

When I returned to Maotanchang in June, the night before the students’ mass departure for the gaokao, the darkened sky was illuminated by dozens of floating paper lanterns. The ethereal orange orbs rose higher and higher, until they formed a constellation of hope. I followed the trail of lanterns to their source: an empty lot near the school’s side gate. There, several families were lighting oiled wads of cloth. As the expanding heat lifted their lanterns off the ground, their prayers grew louder. “Please, take my son past the line!” one mother intoned.

去年6月，大批學生離開學校趕赴考場的前一天晚上，我又到了毛坦廠。幾十盞飄動的孔明燈照亮了黑暗的天空，它們發出空靈的橙色光芒，越升越高，猶如一個象徵着希望的星座。我循跡找到了孔明燈升空的地方，那是學校側門附近的一片空地，一些考生的家人點燃了浸過油的布團。熱氣把孔明燈帶離地面，人們的祈求聲也變得更響亮。“請讓我的兒子上分數線！”一位母親吟誦着。

As the glowing lanterns soared unobstructed into the night air, families cheered. One lantern, however, became tangled in electrical lines. The student’s mother looked devastated — for this, according to local belief, was a bad omen, all but dooming her child to finishing “below the line” on the gaokao.

明亮的孔明燈順利地升上夜空，考生的家人們歡呼雀躍。但其中一盞被電線纏住，放飛這盞燈的母親看起來深受打擊——按照當地的說法，這是個惡兆，預示着她孩子的高考分數會“過不了線”。

For a town that turns test preparation into a mechanical act of memorization and regurgitation, Maotanchang remains a place of desperate faith and superstition. Most students have a talisman of some sort, whether it’s red underwear (red clothing is believed to be lucky), shoes from a company called Anta (their check-mark logo is reminiscent of a correct answer) or a pouch of “brain rejuvenating” tea bought from vendors outside the school gates. The town’s best-selling nutritional supplements are called Clear Mind and Six Walnuts (the nuts are considered mind-boosters in large part because they resemble brains). Yang’s parents did not seem especially superstitious, but they paid high rent to live close to the mystical tree and its three-foot-high pile of incense ash. “If you don’t pray to the tree, you can’t pass,” Yang says, repeating a local saying.

儘管這座鎮子將備考轉變成了死記硬背和不斷重複的機械程序，但是毛坦廠仍然充斥着走投無路之際產生的迷信和風俗。許多學生都有某種“護身符”，比如紅色內衣（人們認爲紅衣服很吉利）、安踏牌的鞋子（對勾形的商標讓人聯想起正確答案），或者從學校大門外的商販那裏買到的“健腦”茶包。鎮上最暢銷的營養品是“腦清新”和“六個核桃”（核桃之所以被認爲可以增進腦力，很大程度上是因爲形狀像大腦）。楊維的父母好像並沒有特別迷信，但是他們願意支付很高的租金，就爲了住得離神樹及樹下大約三尺高的香灰近一些。楊維複述了一句當地的說法，“不拜樹，考不出。”

Just up the alley from Yang’s room, I met a fortune teller sitting on a stool next to a canvas chart. For $3.40, the man in the ill-fitting pinstripe suit could predict the future: marriage, children, death — and gaokao scores. “Business is good these days,” he said with a broken smile. An older man in an argyle sweater and a Chairman Mao haircut watched our exchange. This was Yang Qiming, a retired chemistry teacher, who told me he had seen Maotanchang grow from an impoverished school of 800 students, when he joined the faculty in 1980, to the juggernaut it is today — a remarkable transformation during a period when most rural schools have withered. Even so, he grumbled about the deadening effects of rote learning. “With all this studying, the kids’ brains become rigid,” he said. “They know how to take a test, but they can’t think for themselves.”

就在巷子裏，距離楊維的房間不遠處，我見到一位算命先生。他坐在凳子上，穿着並不合身的條紋西裝，身旁是一面帆布的圖。只需要花20塊，他就可以幫你預測未來：婚姻、子嗣、生死，當然還有高考成績。“這陣子生意不錯，”他尷尬地笑着說。一名身穿花格毛衣、留着毛澤東式髮型的年長男子觀察着我們的對話，他就是退休的化學老師楊啓明（音）。他告訴我，自己見證了毛坦廠中學從一所貧窮的學校，膨脹成今天這種巨大規模的全過程。在他1980年加入教師隊伍時，這裏還只有800名學生，而在這所中學壯大的同時，多數鄉村學校都在萎縮，因而這種轉變殊爲驚人。儘管如此，他對死記硬背造成的壓抑效果仍然頗有怨言。“總是這樣學習，娃娃們的腦子都僵掉了，”他說。“他們知道怎麼應付考試，可是不會獨立思考。”

That night, nearly everyone in Maotanchang seemed to be performing their final rituals. Two girls in school uniforms climbed the long stairway to the Mao statue on their knees, kowtowing at each step as if pleading to an emperor for mercy. In front of the sacred tree, dozens of supplicants — parents and students alike — lit their last bundles of “champion’s incense” and turned the pile of ash into an inferno that would continue to burn through the night. Around the corner, dozens of buses were preparing to carry some of Maotanchang’s more than 10,000 exam-takers to the gaokao site the next morning. The license plates on each bus ended in “8” — considered the luckiest number in China.

那天晚上，毛坦廠幾乎所有人都在做最後的祈求。兩名身穿校服的女孩跪着爬上了長長的臺階，一直挪到毛澤東像前，每走一步都要叩首，彷彿是在求皇帝開恩。在神樹前，有數十名家長和孩子祈福。他們點燃最後的幾柱“狀元香”，而那堆熾熱的香灰還會繼續燒一整夜。走過街角，停着幾十輛大巴車，準備第二天早上送毛坦廠的一萬多名考生趕赴考場。它們的車牌尾號都是8——這在中國被認爲是最幸運的數字。

Yang, however, wasn’t feeling very lucky. His smile had disappeared, along with his banter about basketball and the cousin he hoped to join in Shanghai. Yang’s mother was gone, too. Her anxiety had started to make her son tense and irritable, so he asked if his grandfather could take over for her in the final weeks. Now there was only one day left, and Yang had no time for anything but study. His weary summation of years of unceasing effort: “I’m almost done.”

不過楊維並沒有感覺多麼幸運。他臉上的笑容消失了，不再講關於籃球的笑話，也沒有提希望能在上海碰頭的堂兄。楊維的母親也離開了。她的焦慮開始讓楊維感到緊張而煩躁，所以他問能不能在考前的最後幾周，讓爺爺接替母親。現在，只剩最後一天了，楊維除了學習沒時間做任何事。經過許多年不懈的努力，他疲倦地總結道：“我快要完蛋了。”

Before dawn the next morning, Yang’s parents drove from their home in Yuejin to pick up their son and take him to a rented room near the exam site in Lu’an city. I had stayed the night in a hotel out of town, so they invited me to join them on the bumpy ride into Maotanchang in the mud-encrusted minivan they use to transport peaches. There were no back seats in the van (known in China as a mianbao che, or bread-loaf truck, on account of its shape). I perched on a wooden chair that Yang’s father had placed, untethered, in the cargo area. Yang’s mother sat in anxious silence while his father careered around the curves, sending me and my chair sliding, as he talked about the California peaches he grows on his farm, which he had christened Big Love.

第二天早上天還沒亮，楊維的父母就駕車從躍進村的家中趕來，準備接上兒子把他送到在六安市裏考點附近租到的房間。前一晚我住在鎮外的一家賓館裏，所以他們也邀請我一同前去毛坦廠。我們乘坐着平時用來運桃的麪包車，一路顛簸。這輛麪包車外滿是泥漿，後排也沒有座位。我坐在楊維的父親擺在載貨區的木製椅子上，椅子並沒有固定。楊維的父親飛快地開車擺來擺去，他的母親焦慮地陷入沉寂，我連人帶椅子也滑來滑去。他則一直在談自己在田裏種植的加州桃——他把這種桃子稱作“大愛”。

The 10,000 or so parents who come to live in Maotanchang will do almost anything to enhance their children’s chances on the gaokao. Many of the mothers, like Lin, lack formal education. Yet they are the fiercest enforcers of the unwritten rules that forbid Maotanchang residents to watch television, do laundry or wash dishes during students’ sleeping time. When an Internet cafe opened in town a few years ago, posing a potential distraction to students, the mothers helped the school carry out a boycott that eventually forced it to close. When Yang’s scores slipped, his mother confiscated his cellphone and made him study late at night while she sat next to him, weaving needlepoint slippers with butterfly and fish designs. During the day, Lin timed her cooking to coincide precisely with class breaks, so her son could devour his meals without wasting a second of study time. “We have to do all we can,” Lin said. “Otherwise, we will always blame ourselves.”

爲了提高孩子在高考中金榜題名的機會，來到毛坦廠居住的近萬名家長几乎什麼事都願意做。很多母親像林佳敏這樣，缺乏正規的教育。然而最熱心地執行一些不成文的規定的，也正是她們，比如禁止毛坦廠居民在學生們睡覺的時間看電視、洗衣服或碗碟。幾年前鎮上曾經開了一所網吧。由於可能會分散學生們的精力，母親們幫助學校進行了抵制，最終迫使網吧關門。楊維的成績下滑時，媽媽沒收了他的手機，還讓他一直學習到深夜，自己就坐在他身旁做帶有蝴蝶和魚圖案的十字繡拖鞋。白天，林佳敏會卡着時間做飯，好讓開飯剛好趕上課間，這樣兒子狼吞虎嚥時就不會浪費一點點的學習時間。“我們得把事情做全了，”林佳敏說。“不然就總是會怪自己。”

It was 5 a.m. when we pulled into Maotanchang, but the crowd of mothers gathered around the sacred tree was already three deep. The flames from their bundles of incense were so hot and the pile of ash so big that we almost couldn’t squeeze past to Yang’s rented room. His mother lit some sticks of incense, planted them in the ash pile and bobbed her head forward and back in prayer. A woman next to her gently swung a bag of eggs in the smoke — eggs, given their head-like shape, are considered a symbol of intelligence.

我們進入毛坦廠鎮時是凌晨5點，但是母親們已經把神樹圍了裏三層外三層。她們點燃的香束燃起滾燙的火苗，積起厚厚的香灰堆，讓我們幾乎無法擠過去，繼續前往楊維的出租房。他的母親點了幾支香，把它們插進灰裏，前後晃動着腦袋，口中唸唸有詞。她旁邊的一名婦女在煙霧中輕輕晃動一袋雞蛋——由於形狀像腦袋，雞蛋被當做智力的象徵。

Yang was just waking up when his mother knocked on his window. His luggage was packed the night before — a small bag for clothes, a bigger one for books — but his grandfather seemed agitated. He had wanted to leave earlier to avoid the hundreds of cars and buses that would snarl traffic in town. But there was another reason for his testiness: Somebody — a school official? a neighbor? — had warned him that he would get in trouble for speaking with me. A year after trumpeting its success in the Chinese press, Maotanchang was now seeking a lower profile, in accordance with the Chinese adage that “people fear fame like a pig fears getting fat.” Now, with a trembling voice, Yang’s grandfather asked me to leave. I bid the family farewell and, from a distance, watched them pile into the bread-loaf truck for Yang’s final gaokao journey. As they passed, his father gave a quick toot of the horn.

母親來敲窗戶的時候，楊維剛剛醒來。他的行李已經在前一天晚上收拾好了——一小袋衣服、一大袋書——但爺爺顯得很焦急。他原本想早點出發，避開鎮上將會阻塞交通的數以百計的車輛。不過，他的焦躁還有另一層原因：有人——學校的管理人員？或者是鄰居？——警告過他，和我說話將使他惹上麻煩。一年前，毛坦廠在中國媒體上大肆宣揚自己的成功，如今它卻想變低調一點，正如中國諺語所說，“人怕出名豬怕壯”。到了這個時候，爺爺用顫抖的聲音請我離開。於是我與這家人告別，然後遠遠地看着他們擠進麪包車，踏上了送楊維高考的最後一段旅程。他們經過的時候，楊維的父親快速按響了一聲喇叭。

Three hours later, at exactly 8:08 a.m., the first caravan of buses filed out the front gate of Maotanchang High School and snaked through the cheering throng of parents and townspeople. In the past, this procession was accompanied by thunderous drums and fireworks. This year, the celebration was muted at the school’s request. But some rituals remained: The driver of the lead bus was born in the year of the horse, a reference not just to the current year but also to the Chinese saying “ma dao cheng gong,” which means “success when the horse arrives.” By the end of the day, Maotanchang would be empty, drained of students, parents and the shopkeepers who lived off them.

三小時後，上午8時08分整，第一隊大巴駛出了毛坦廠中學的大門，穿過由加油打氣的家長和鎮民所組成的人羣。過去，這支隊伍行進時會伴隨着轟鳴的鼓聲和鞭炮聲。今年，根據學校要求，這種送考方式取消了。但有些習俗仍然得以保留：頭車的司機屬馬。這不僅代表着當年的生肖，而且還討了中國諺語“馬到成功”的彩頭。當天結束的時候，毛坦廠會空空如也，裏面既沒有學生和家長，也沒了以他們爲收入來源的店主。

Weeks later, when the gaokao results were released, I called Yang. After our last encounter, I feared that he might have stumbled in the exam — and that my presence would be partly to blame. But instead, Yang sounded ecstatic. His score far surpassed his recent practice tests. It wasn’t high enough to qualify for a first-tier university in Shanghai, as he once dreamed of doing, but it would win him entrance to one of Anhui’s best second-tier universities. There’s no guarantee he’ll find a job when he graduates, but he’s eager to learn about the world outside Maotanchang — and outside his narrow schooling. “I studied science there, but the truth is that I like art, music, writing, more creative stuff,” he told me. “I think there are a lot of students like me, who don’t really know much about anything beyond taking the gaokao.” One thing he does know: His life will be different from his parents’ lives on Big Love farm.

數週後，高考成績公佈了，我給楊維打了電話。最後一次見面之後，我一直擔心他會在考試中失利——那麼我的出現也得承擔一部分責任。可是，楊維聽起來挺興奮。他的分數遠遠超過了在最後那段時間裏的模擬測試中所取得的成績。儘管他的得分還沒有高到能夠進入上海的一類大學的程度——那是他曾經的夢想——但是卻能讓他進入安徽的一所最好的二類大學。雖然畢業後能否找到工作，目前還說不準，不過他非常渴望瞭解毛坦廠以外的世界，當然還有他狹隘的學校教育之外的天地。“我在那裏學的是理科，但其實我喜歡藝術、音樂、寫作，這些更有創意的東西，”他告訴我。“我想有很多同學跟我一樣，除了參加高考，對別的東西知之甚少。”有件事情他是知道的：他的命運將與父母在大愛農場上的生活截然不同。

Not all of the news that day was happy. Yang’s childhood friend, Cao, tanked on the exam — a panic attack, Yang said. Cao’s family was heartbroken. His mother had spent years supporting him as he studied, and his father worked 12-hour days, 50 weeks a year, building high-rises in eastern China to pay the Maotanchang fees. Cao still talked vaguely about becoming an English teacher, Yang said, but his future looked bleak. His family could never afford a repeat year at Maotanchang, and Cao wasn’t sure he could endure it anyway. He really had just one option. “Dagong,” Yang said. “He’s already gone.” Days after learning he failed the gaokao, Cao left their home village to search for migrant work in China’s glittering coastal cities. He would end up on a construction site, just like his father.

當天的消息並非都令人高興。楊維的童年夥伴曹英生考砸了——楊維說是因爲恐慌。曹英生的家人非常傷心。多年來，他的母親一直陪着他學習，而他的父親則每天干上12個小時，每年工作50個星期，在中國東部修建高樓大廈，用來負擔毛坦廠的費用。楊維說，曹英生仍然含混地表示，自己想成爲一名英語教師。然而，他的未來看起來並不光明。他的家庭絕對無力承擔毛坦廠的復讀費，曹英生本人也不確定自己能否忍受這一過程。他其實只有一個選擇。“打工，”楊維說出答案。“他已經走了。”在得知自己高考落榜的幾天之後，曹英生就離開了家鄉所在的農村，前往光鮮的沿海城市尋找工作。他將來可能也會在建築工地上打工，就像他的父親一樣。