4 How I started doing math

I played the accordion for almost ten years and the best memory was when I was selected one of three to play, out of thousands test takers of the accordion level test, in a hall in the national music institute of China. A blank of memory rather than a memory, I remember going up stage, looking down the stage, seeing complete darkness. I looked up, saw a big neon light. I was terrified, but it was warm. I looked right and my mom was there at the entrance of the proscenium. I played my song, bowed and left. I have no memory of how I played the happy Chinese spring festival song but muscle memory has probably done it correctly for me because I had practiced so many times. And I was fine when I later watched it in educational news.

I said my parents had a plan is because back then, there are three ways you get admitted to a high school. Specialty, random allocation, and money and relation. (Someone once commented relation is the grease of the Chinese society. I think it's more universal however. Relation creates trust, the way ideally it works.) However, you're never randomly allocated to a good high school. So my accordion learning falls under the category of specialty. (Students and high schools now in Beijing)

In the 5th grade, a few of my friends stopped going to school. The parents realized that school doesn't teach them enough, so the parents started other ways to teach kids English, math, computer etc. Despite my father's conservativeness, I am still amazed how my parents decided for their child to do the unconventional. They had no exact plans this time. I just had fun at home watching TV etc. for the first few days. Then I found that boring and I happened to have a few math Olympiad books for primary school students. So I started reading that and worked with a friend ZH who lived nearby on problems that I couldn't figure out.(ZH)

In the end, we took this primary school math competition and I won the first prize, the 13th place in Beijing.

Then, I started schooling at RDFZ. When I was a child, I only remember people calling. But the math competition is a great deal because the educational department cancelled the normal high school entrance examination and this virtually replaced that. The funny part is how we've always chosen government officials based on their literal ability, but now the first important test in a Chinese child's life is a purely mathematical one. The decision retained it seems and I don't know exactly how it works now. But a few things the educational department decided didn't give me a very good impression on their wisdom (elaboration under construction).