Chapter 514 - Zhang Yes nationalistic youth spirit! (2/2)

”That's right.”

”Leader, it's not your fault.”

The other team members were also offering their consolations.

Teacher w.a.n.g Yiming, who was the team leader, and Peking University Mathematics department's Han Henian, who was here as observer, were with them too.

w.a.n.g Yiming was a forty something year old middle-aged man. He was a soft-spoken person and did not say much.

But Han Henian's expression was extremely bad. When they came out, he immediately said with a straight face to Huang Lingling, ”You even practiced a similar question to the one that was given to you just now, why did you still get it wrong?”

The other Chinese mathematicians were also full of sighs.

Huang Lingling was still wiping the tears off of her face.

Her younger teammates did not know how to react and were blaming themselves for breaking their teachers' trust, as well as the expectations of the whole nation. Their mood right now was at rock bottom. At their peak, the Chinese team had gotten first place in the International Math Olympiad for three years running, but due to a small mistake last year, they had lost their hold on the champions.h.i.+p. This year, not only were they unable to gain back first place, but they couldn't even defend their second place position.

The deputy leader of the team, Xin Ya also joined the group. She did not look like she was in a great mood either. Having worked so hard in the past year, from the team selection, training, and preparing for the compet.i.tion, their results had dropped even further than before. This made her disappointed and she said, ”We'll come back again next year!”

Huang Lingling said tearfully, ”Teacher, I'm sorry.”

The rankings for this year's compet.i.tion were announced.

In first place, the United States.

In second place, United Kingdom.

In third place, China.

Seeing this, many of the visitors who had come to Summer Palace Park did not have the mood to watch on anymore. They were all preparing to leave, but an announcement mentioned the next round of events for the International Math Olympiad would be starting soon. When they heard this, they stopped in their tracks.

It wasn't over yet?

There were still further compet.i.tions?

It seemed like this International Math Olympiad was really not ending here and, according to previous years practice, an event would be held after the youth compet.i.tion. The student partic.i.p.ants, teacher leaders, and even the general public were allowed to take part to foster friendly international relations.h.i.+ps among mathematicians of all countries and to create an opportunity for the exchange of information. They might not be able to communicate through their spoken languages, but Mathematics was their common ground and their medium of communication.

In this event, each partic.i.p.ating country would set a topic and put up an equivalent prize to it. It was similar to the outdoor activities that were catered to the park visitors earlier that morning. If anyone could answer the topic satisfactorily to the requirements of the topic setter, they would earn the right to take home the prize.

The prizes were generally items that were representative of the countries. For example, China's prizes would usually be a national level paintings or the four treasures of the study, items that were either antiques or masterpieces. Some of the western countries had also put up a masterpiece oil painting in the past, but no one had been able to win it as the questions were too difficult to solve, though not unsolvable. Even if there were so many mathematics experts present, there were always some topics that were very tough and would take more than one to two days to complete. This was also one of the reason why some of the prizes were such treasures. There were also examples of some countries that put up money as the prize, handing out several tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands worth of scholars.h.i.+ps. All of this depended on how difficult the topics were. Of course, there were also countries who were here to make friends and exchange knowledge with the others. Like United Kingdom for example, they were always gentlemanly in their behavior and put up a good prize every year for their topics which were relatively easy in comparison.

In short, each country had their own style.

The event this year was also another chance for the different countries to measure up each other's abilities and face off again on compet.i.tive terms. If they did not place too much importance on it, the partic.i.p.ants would just chat and exchange their learnings with each other, contributing to a harmonious feel. Some countries who did not enjoy such good relations would prefer to fight it out and have a victor declared. These were the types of incidents that would attract the attention of the most people every year after the main compet.i.tion was over, as there would surely be some countries whose mathematicians would battle it out with the other countries resulting in furious battle situations. But of course, such incidents were usually not reported by the media. The newspapers and television news agencies tended to not report such happenings.

The event began.

The official time the event ended was at: 5PM.

—Almost a whole day was allocated to this event and only at the end of it would the International Math Olympiad be considered complete.

If there was a compet.i.tion, then there was always a resulting victor and loser. Many of the Chinese park visitors were still hoping for a chance at revenge, so they stayed behind to watch the going-ons.

”What are the prizes this time?”

”I don't know, but I'm really looking forward to it.”

”Let's win the prize that the Americans put up for their topic!”

”Right, we have to show them what we're capable of! They've caused our children to be in tears!”

”The children might have lost their round, but the adults will surely win, won't they?”

Even though the Chinese Mathematics world has not contributed much with any breakthroughs to the Mathematics world, everyone knew very well that the Chinese were smart and had very high standards in Mathematics. Like Xin Ya, w.a.n.g Yiming, and the other mathematicians present, all of them were considered as tops in their field of mathematics. This was also the reason why everyone was paying a lot of attention to the second round of compet.i.tions.

One of them was Zhang Ye, who was seated at the outermost area away from the crowds. He was not interested in the compet.i.tion itself, but rather on those kids who were China's representatives at the International Math Olympiad. Hearing the chattering from the park visitors, he had realized just how much time and effort these kids had put in, even delaying their studies and wasting away their youth just to be here for a chance at glory. Now that he saw how the student leader, Huang Lingling was crying with her team mates and the adults not caring about their feelings, he felt very uncomfortable. This bunch of mathematicians, including Old Wu's childhood friend, Xin Ya were really too much. The children had already given it their best, so what if they lost? Was it so difficult to give some consolation to encourage them? Why were all of them putting on dark expressions at the children? If Old Wu were not here and if not for her sake, this bro here would have already gone ahead to give all of you a scolding! What the heck was this!

And that bunch of foreigners too!

f.u.c.k, how dare they bully our kids?

At this moment, Zhang Ye's nationalistic youth spirit was burning strong. His focus swept towards the group of people in the compet.i.tion grounds. Everything just seemed wrong and unpleasing to his eye right now!

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