Restarting Grade 10

History has a curious inflection point. Rewind the reel once, and the world becomes both familiar and strange.

It was still that China, busily promoting the "Three Represents"; still that city of Hefei, one of the four great centers of science and education; still that same Zhang Tan, son of Zhang Quanshun and Tan Mingxia.

Yet, China now lacked much of what it ought to possess, and was burdened with things it never should have had.

How much Hefei had changed remained unknown; but why, Zhang Tan wondered, did the character for "Fei" in the city’s name have three water radicals?

He felt a sense of disbelief—his world had changed, and even he himself was not the same. He was no longer that half-awake teenager about to enter high school.

The calendar, the television, the newspapers, and the words of everyone around him insisted that this was 2001 and August was drawing to a close. He was about to start high school.

Everyone spoke with conviction, but only Zhang Tan knew that this year should, in truth, be 2016.

They say a man stands firm at thirty, and in this very year, fate had played a trick on him, rewinding his life straight back to his first year of high school. Perhaps the reel had even been swapped by mistake, for all the things he remembered had grown blurred and unrecognizable.

Because next year was the Communist Party’s general election, his uncle and third uncle, who loved nothing more than discussing national affairs, would sit in the front yard each evening, enjoying the cool air and chatting a