RYEY -Chapter 395 A Bustling Crowd at the Gates

“Commander Qin, I need to trouble you with something,” Shen Sanleng said. “Our school plans to recruit students on a large scale, and the exam papers have already been mailed from Beijing. As long as the results meet the standard, candidates can enroll in our Traditional Chinese Medicine University.”

“So please help distribute some enrollment notices. Anyone who is interested in a career in medicine, under the age of twenty-five, and has a high school diploma may come and sit for the exam.”

Commander Qin nodded repeatedly. This was easy enough—one trip to the newspaper office would do. Moreover, the recruitment would be conducted in the name of their military district, and after graduation the students would all be assigned to military district hospitals.

This was also the main reason Shen Sanleng had asked Commander Qin to handle it. Their school was affiliated with the military district hospital, so enrollment had to be carried out under the military district’s name.

The newspaper moved quickly. The editor-in-chief personally rushed to Liangzhou University of Traditional Chinese Medicine to interview Shen Sanleng. From the interview, it was learned that as long as candidates passed the political review, they could join the preparatory coaching classes before the exam.

In this way, the number of admitted students would increase, providing a steady and substantial stream of talent for the entire Hexi medical sector.

On the day the newspaper was published, the whole Wuwei region was electrified. Young people who had always been interested in medicine but had failed to get into university before were overjoyed.

As if by prior agreement, everyone flocked to the gates of Liangzhou University of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Commander Qin had long been prepared, setting up barriers to form a winding, snake-like queue, with dedicated personnel maintaining order.

At first, some people tried to use underhanded tricks to get the registration forms earlier—cutting in line, arguing, shouting insults, and even coming to blows.

These people were promptly singled out by the officers assigned to manage the crowd. Their letters of introduction and household registration booklets were copied down, and it was announced on the spot that Liangzhou University of Traditional Chinese Medicine would never admit them.

Only then did those candidates realize that their petty schemes had ruined their futures. They were filled with regret, and some quick-witted ones even began to beg.

But the officers remained unmoved. Director Shen had said before: a doctor must be benevolent and righteous. If someone couldn’t even maintain the most basic standards of being a decent human being, how could they be fit to become a doctor?

A week later, all the registration work was finally completed. Looking at the tall stacks of registration forms, Cheng Qiao and the others were stunned—there were actually so many applicants.

After registration came the review process, which Commander Qin led his men to complete. The pace was fast. In just one week, those with serious past offenses, those over the age limit, and those with insufficient education were all eliminated.

In the end, more than three thousand people met the political review requirements. However, with so many candidates, it was impossible to complete pre-exam coaching for all of them at once, and there weren’t enough preparatory textbooks either.

Cheng Qiao had no choice but to have the coaching materials photocopied, arrange the coaching in batches, and then conduct the exams in batches as well. As a result, their workload suddenly increased dramatically.

At first, Shen Sanleng was somewhat worried. If someone felt it was too hard or too exhausting and simply quit, wouldn’t he be losing talent again?

But everyone present expressed firm confidence, saying that no matter how hard or tiring it was, they would persist. After all, Cheng Qiao herself had even canceled her weekly visits to see her children and father, leaving early and returning late to devote herself entirely to the school.

Day after day passed. At last, the month-long pre-exam coaching classes came to an end. Time had reached mid-January of 1980, and in another month it would be the Lunar New Year.

Director Shen knew that Cheng Qiao would definitely go to Beijing for the New Year to reunite with her family. Her other children were still in Beijing and Xiangyang Village, and her husband and mother-in-law were there as well—she hadn’t seen them for nearly half a year.

So he decided on the exam schedule. There would be two parts: a written academic test and a practical assessment. If a candidate failed the written test, there would be no need to take the practical one.

Though this was somewhat unfair to those with strong hands-on abilities, medicine was not about repairing machines. Without a certain foundation in human anatomy and theory, there was simply no way to begin.

The exams borrowed the military district cafeteria as the venue. Each session could accommodate over a thousand people, so it would take three days to finish testing more than three thousand candidates.

For a time, the entrance to the Liangzhou University of Traditional Chinese Medicine branch campus was packed with people. Candidates entered the exam hall in an orderly fashion, holding paper and pens, taking their seats according to their exam numbers, and then began the test.

The exam questions had all been covered during the coaching sessions. In order to raise the admission rate, Director Shen had even specifically asked the president of Beijing University of Traditional Chinese Medicine to lower the difficulty. Only basic medical knowledge was tested—so long as one was willing to memorize and remember, these were easy points to score.

The real challenge lay in the final question on the fundamentals of traditional Chinese medicine: observation, listening and smelling, inquiry, and pulse-taking. This single question accounted for a hefty sixty points. It was both the easiest place to score big and the easiest place to lose big.

And it was precisely through this question that Shen Sanleng intended to select students. Ordinary students and top students were still different, and in the future, the positions they would hold would differ as well.

Commander Qin led dozens of officers to serve as invigilators. They had already privately decided that anyone caught cheating at such a critical moment would have their name and place of origin recorded and would be permanently barred from admission.

Doctors were a sacred profession. If one’s morals were corrupt, one could never be a good doctor. Thus, they took on the responsibility of a second round of moral screening.

Sure enough, in every exam session, dozens or even hundreds of cheaters were caught. They thought that in such a large cafeteria, with only a few dozen invigilators, there would surely be loopholes to exploit.

But they forgot that the invigilators were soldiers. Their eyesight and alertness far exceeded that of ordinary proctors—any slight disturbance was enough to draw their immediate attention.

Look at those candidates who were too lazy to memorize. They wrote long passages of answers on tiny slips of paper, inside pencil cases, even on their arms, then tried to cheat furtively.

But just after they had written only a few words, a hand would snatch away their exam paper. The smarter ones shut their mouths—once caught red-handed, what was there left to say?

The foolish ones still tried to argue, coming up with all kinds of excuses. But the officer-invigilators kept their mouths shut, directly dragged them out of the cafeteria, had their names and places of origin recorded, and expelled them.

Cheng Qiao did not participate in grading the papers. When Cheng Liguo appeared before her with Cheng Li, who was already on winter vacation, she knew it was time for her to leave.

However, before she could go, Meili stopped her. She also wanted to take Li Chen to Beijing to visit Mother Li. After all, he was also a grandson of the Li family—Mother Li should at least have this grandson in her mind.

Cheng Qiao felt conflicted and at a loss for words. Two days earlier, she had run into Yuan Qin at the clinic during a routine follow-up visit. At a glance, Cheng Qiao could tell from her complexion that the child in her womb was causing her a great deal of trouble.

Moreover, Zhu Qingde had quietly told her some news: Yuan Qin might be overly concerned about the child in her belly. The baby was getting too much nutrition and growing too large—there was a high chance she would face a difficult delivery when the time came.