Speaking of An Changhe, he was already twenty-three or twenty-four years old. When he first took the college entrance exam—in his final year of high school, he was full of youthful vigor. His family wasn't well-off either; if his grades had been poor from the start, given the situation in Sancha River village, they would never have let him retake the exam.
As it turned out, he ended up retaking it for four or five years. With each passing year, the glasses on his nose grew thicker, and his back became a bit hunched, making him look like a little old man. Now, his retaking was free of tuition, and he cut corners on living expenses as much as he could—there was no way around it, his family had long been unable to support him. He now depended on his married younger sister, hoping that a good university would improve his future life.