First Experience at the 37th Physics Competition

Two weeks ago the notification for the second round arrived. I’d only entered the first round on a whim, so getting through was unexpected. In any case it was an invaluable experience.

The morning of departure, everyone else seemed still to be sleeping through class. The bus to the exam site had a soundtrack of mobile game sound effects—someone was deep into an action game with the volume up. The road to Nanjing was long.

The hotel near the exam site looked, from outside, like an unfinished building—no exterior cladding, raw concrete walls. Inside, it was perfectly functional, if spartan. Our group checked in and then, with the exam the next day and nothing else to do, went cycling.

Nanjing in August is hot and heavy. We rode along the old Ming city walls, through the Sanpailou area, where road works forced us down back alleys. Bought some snacks at a street stall. The walls are remarkable: enormous, built for a city that was once the most populated on earth. They make you feel small in a pleasant way.

That night: someone’s roommate stayed up studying past midnight. Chen FY sang 「勾指起誓」 at around 11pm with more feeling than the original recording. Gong ZQ attempted a Lin Junjie song and was persuaded to stop. Someone produced roast chicken and skewers from a bag and we ate them in the hallway at midnight.

The exam was held at Nanjing Normal University Affiliated High School. Female students: notably rare, perhaps one in six. The exam hall was quiet in the way exam halls always are, which I find clarifying.

The exam itself: I may have gotten one or two questions correct. On the dimensional analysis problem I made a sign error early on and propagated it through to the end, which is the worst kind of mistake. Afterward, on the bus back, someone had put on Dragon and Tiger (a Chinese drama), and we watched most of it with the kind of detached, post-exam calm that feels like a minor altered state.