On September 4, 2004, Jiang Yubai had just turned nine years old when he transferred to a new school.
He was assigned to Class 4(1).
The homeroom teacher was a woman in her thirties. She had shoulder-length hair, wore framed glasses, a white shirt, and a linen skirt, with a slightly serious expression.
The principal, vice principal, and academic director all stood at the door of Class 4(1), whispering with the homeroom teacher. She immediately displayed a brilliant smile and said warmly, “Jiang Yubai, I’m your homeroom teacher. My name is Wu Xiqian.”
Jiang Yubai stood straight and replied, “Hello, Teacher Wu.”
Wu Xiqian smiled even more deeply: “Jiang Yubai, please enter the classroom. This period happens to be my Chinese language class. I’ll let our classmates get to know you.”
Teacher Wu raised one hand and knocked on the door of Class 4(1).
In an instant, the entire class went quiet.
Teacher Wu stepped into the classroom, her shoe soles making a muffled sound on the plastic floor. Jiang Yubai, carrying his backpack, walked without making any noise, like a quiet ghost, and stood on the three-foot platform.
“Everyone’s attention please,” Teacher Wu clapped her hands and introduced, “Our class has a new transfer student this semester. His name is Jiang Yubai.”
There were forty-eight students in the class. After Teacher Wu finished speaking, forty-eight gazes focused on Jiang Yubai’s face.
Jiang Yubai wore a light-colored t-shirt and black athletic pants. His height, build, and appearance were superior to all the boys in the class.
The fact was evident to everyone—Jiang Yubai was the most handsome boy in the entire grade, even the entire school. His features could withstand the most critical scrutiny.
He introduced himself: “Hello everyone, my name is Jiang Yubai. ‘Jiang’ is the ‘Jiang’ from the Yangtze River, and ‘Yubai’ is…”
From the last row of the classroom, a girl’s voice continued: “‘The river is blue, birds surpass white, mountains are green, flowers about to burn.'”
“The river is blue, birds surpass white, mountains are green, flowers about to burn.”
That’s right, this poem, from Du Fu’s pen, was also the source of Jiang Yubai’s name.
Who was speaking?
Jiang Yubai looked toward the voice and saw a pretty girl with a ponytail. She still had a childish innocence, with clear bright eyes, looking past the many classmates in the classroom, gazing at him with interest.
There was an empty seat beside her.
She had no deskmate.
Jiang Yubai was a bit distracted. He thought his name’s origin was obscure and that no classmate would know it, but a random girl in class could recite it?
At this moment, Teacher Wu knocked on the blackboard. The homeroom teacher wrote “Jiang Yubai” in large characters on the blackboard, diligently instructing the entire class, and finally added: “Jiang Yubai has attended a private elementary school in Singapore for three years. He just returned to the country with his parents this summer. If his Chinese language skills aren’t good, classmates, should you help him?”
The whole class shouted in unison: “Yes!”
Teacher Wu nodded and said loudly: “You are the third batch of students I’ve taught. Every time Teacher Wu takes on students, I always start from first grade and teach until sixth grade… Why? Because this way, Teacher Wu and the students become like a family, very close, right? Our class is also the experimental class for the entire grade, setting a good example for everyone. I’ll be blunt upfront, if anyone dares to bully the transfer student in my class, don’t blame me for not showing mercy, understood?”
The students answered sparsely: “Understood!”
Teacher Wu wiped the blackboard clean, patting off the chalk dust with two “pats.”
The dust particles scattered in the brilliant sunlight, each speck taking on a concrete form.
They fell on Teacher Wu’s clothes, stuck to her hair, like a snowfall from the sky, causing Jiang Yubai to unconsciously take a step back—he had always had mild mysophobia.
Teacher Wu faced the whole class and urged again: “Speak louder! Didn’t you have breakfast this morning? Did you hear what Teacher said?”
The students immediately answered in a more spirited tone: “We heard!”
Only then was Teacher Wu satisfied.
She turned to Jiang Yubai and said, “Alright, see where there’s a seat and choose one yourself. Or Teacher can help you choose one…”
Jiang Yubai hesitated briefly, then walked directly to the last row of the classroom. He sat down next to the girl from earlier. Before he could speak, the girl said to him: “Hello, my name is Lin Zhixia.”
He politely answered: “Hello, my name is Jiang Yubai.”
“Haha,” Lin Zhixia laughed sweetly, “I already know your name is Jiang Yubai.”
Jiang Yubai unzipped his backpack and took out a black leather notebook. He placed the notebook on the desk, stuffed his backpack into the drawer, and prepared to listen attentively.
His and Lin Zhixia’s seats were in the corner of the last row of the classroom. Lin Zhixia was next to a glass window, with the blue cloth curtain folded with a one-inch curl, hanging on the side.
She was very curious about Jiang Yubai, occasionally turning her face to secretly glance at him, until she finally annoyed him.
He asked in a low voice: “Why do you keep looking at me?”
Lin Zhixia secretly asked back: “How old are you?”
Jiang Yubai answered truthfully: “Nine years old.”
Lin Zhixia asked again: “Did you grow up in Singapore?”
Jiang Yubai shook his head: “I went abroad with my parents when I was six, and returned this year.”
Lin Zhixia rested her chin on one hand: “Can you speak English then?”
Jiang Yubai modestly replied: “Not very well.”
Despite saying this, Jiang Yubai deliberately opened his math notebook in front of Lin Zhixia, with each page containing math notes recorded in English, because when Jiang Yubai was preparing for the TIS and PISA math tests in Singapore, he could only find English-language teaching materials. So his math notebook was full of content like “base conversion” and even two pages of “complex number operations.”
Lin Zhixia’s eyes lit up, seeming very happy: “Complex numbers, have you studied complex numbers?”
She was so excited she didn’t know what to do, talking non-stop to Jiang Yubai: “Complex numbers are such a wonderful invention! They made me realize that physics is the most wonderful subject in the world! The combination of real and imaginary parts makes wave superposition calculations so much easier! Even quantum computation can be simplified using complex numbers. The product of a complex number and its conjugate becomes a real number, and quantum computation first needs to determine a series of possible positions where a particle can be observed, so we can use complex space to do the Hilbert inner product…”
Jiang Yubai’s mind went “buzz.” He couldn’t understand what Lin Zhixia was talking about.