After a simple rebirth

Going to bed late means getting up early. At seven o'clock in the morning, Fu Ying heard Teacher Li getting up and washing, so she got up too.

I didn't sleep well last night. I haven't slept in a hotel for a long time, so I wasn't used to it. Plus, my junior must have been nervous and was used to her bed, so she tossed and turned, which affected Fu Ying a little.

Fu Ying and the other two took turns washing up and going downstairs to have breakfast. The competition was to start at 8:30, so they had to finish eating early and check out the venue.

When we arrived at the restaurant on the second floor, we finally saw a lot of people, mostly students.

Looking around, one can see faces that are yellow to black, and it is obvious that most of them are students from villages and towns.

Because children in villages and towns have to help their families with farm work in addition to studying, and they don't care about using umbrellas or applying sunscreen, so most of them get tanned. Not wheat-colored, but really black.

More importantly, the ultraviolet rays in the plateau area hit the face strongly, forming plateau red for a long time. The red in the dark affects the appearance, especially for boys, almost all of them look like Ding Zhen in the early days, but without that sharp-edged and regular face.

It is difficult to produce handsome men and beautiful women in the northeastern part of Yunnan Province. In addition to the plateau environment, there is also the influence of genes.

Genes mean that boys are generally less than 1.7 meters tall, with long faces, big noses, and big nasal bones, and they still retain the facial features of early humans. In addition, the Yi, Miao and other ethnic minorities intermarry, and their appearance is very different from that of the plains.

The last part is the impact of clothing. The dust in the mountains makes everyone look gray, and everyone wears dirt-resistant colors, which makes people look very rural.

Now the restaurant display is more obvious.

The few people with fair skin, wearing new and clean clothes with bright colors, with arrogant and disdainful expressions on their faces, are naturally the city people who enjoy a comfortable life.

After all, no matter how poor a place is, there are always rich people.

Those with darker skin, wearing dark clothes, eyes full of curiosity about the hotel environment, and slightly restrained and nervous behavior are students from township schools like Fu Ying.

The crowd in the restaurant also tacitly split into two groups. The city people, boasting of their superiority, sat on one side chatting and laughing, while the rural students and some of their accompanying teachers sat on the other side, enjoying the deliciousness and novelty of the buffet restaurant.

The atmosphere was a little strange because the teacher was there, but no one was causing trouble.

Fu Ying didn't look at these people carefully. She just followed Teacher Li and went wherever the teacher went.

After finishing their meal quickly, Fu Ying and the others went back to their room to pack their things.

The preliminary round will begin soon.

At first, Fu Ying thought that the competition would be completed in one go and the best candidates would be selected. Later, she realized that there were too many schools and it was unrealistic to complete the competition in one go.

As for Wumeng County, there are 15 high schools directly under its jurisdiction, and several of them are privately run.

The entire city has nine counties and one district, with a total of hundreds of high schools. If we assume that each high school takes five minutes, it would take nearly eight hours to continuously compete, which is too long.

So this competition is divided into preliminary and final rounds. In the preliminary round, students from each school have two minutes to present their speeches, which are scored by the judges and the top 20 are selected. The final round will be held in the afternoon to select the first, second and third prizes.

After hearing this, Fu Ying thought, no wonder the city doesn't often organize competitions, they can't afford it! It's hard in the city, and even harder in the schools down there.

At eight o'clock, Director Chen came over to lead them to sign in and draw lots. Fu Ying drew 15 and the junior sister drew 63, which was quite far behind.

Fu Ying was a little unsure whether to change her cheongsam for the preliminary round. If she could make it to the finals, putting her cheongsam in the finals would be a big hit and maximize her advantage. But if that was not possible, making sure she made it to the finals was the top priority.

Fu Ying hesitated for a moment and decided to wait and see how the students in front of her performed. Although she was going to start at the very beginning, she could infer everyone's overall level from the performance of the students in front of her. The 14 people in front took about half an hour, which was not too slow.

Amid everyone's nervous anticipation, the competition officially began. The host was a female teacher who was introduced as a staff member of the Education Bureau.

The first girl who came on stage was very nervous and she even stumbled over her speech. Later, because the time limit exceeded, she ran off the stage without even bowing.

The second student was influenced by the first student and also got stuck in the middle, but he managed to memorize the entire script and felt relieved when he left the stage.

After looking at five or six people, Fu Ying had a rough idea in her mind. It was indeed as Teacher Tan said, because everyone had little practice, their spoken English was relatively not that good. Fu Ying could hear some pronunciation problems of words, not to mention the fluency of the manuscript presentation. At the same time, because everyone was nervous and unconfident, the ones who had performed so far were not very amazing.

After sorting it out, Fu Ying felt relieved. The ranking in the preliminary round was not that important, so she saved her trump card for the final.

After looking at the two students again, Fu Ying said goodbye to Director Chen and Teacher Li and went to the bathroom. She had to take care of her physiological problems first, so as not to be nervous and think about this before entering the stage, which would affect her morale.

At the same time, she has to tie her hair up. Her stage image affects her stage presence, her stage presence affects her performance, and her performance affects her score. They are all closely linked.

Her hair now can only be tied into a half ponytail, so she tied the upper half of her hair up, revealing her forehead and ears, which makes her look very energetic. Beauty is important, but spirit can add more points.

When she was fixing her hair in front of the mirror, a girl suddenly rushed in nervously. She didn't go to the toilet, but was washing her hands nervously. Fu Ying couldn't help but look at her in the mirror. She was pale, her hands were shaking slightly, and she looked like she was about to cry.

Fu Ying couldn't just comfort someone she wasn't familiar with, and to be honest, she was like this before she even went on stage. She needed to slowly improve her ability to withstand stress. This was a competition, there was no sympathy involved.

It can't be said that she was wrong to be nervous before the game, but it was time to win glory for the school, so she should control herself and not dwell on the failure that hadn't happened yet, and stimulate her emotions with all sorts of things. She could only ask the teacher for help, and participate in more competitions and practice in the future, but at the moment, no one could save her except for her own breakthrough.

Fu Ying tidied herself up and returned to her seat. Teacher Li immediately asked her,

"Are you ready? It's your turn soon."

Fu Ying nodded.

"I'm ready now. What's my number now?"

"It's already 11th. Go wait over there. You don't have to wait for others to call you. It will delay you."

Fu Ying nodded, went to the waiting area, told her number, and then stood there and continued watching.

After No. 13 came on stage, the teacher in charge called out to No. 14 to get ready, but no one answered. The teacher was so anxious that he shouted everywhere, wanting to ask the school teachers. However, because the preliminary round was based on the order of the draw, and the school was not emphasized, even if the teacher knew which school the person was from, he did not know where the person sat, and therefore could not find the person in time.

Since time was urgent, she could only call number 15. Fu Ying answered the call. The teacher ran over and asked Fu Ying if she could go first. Fu Ying nodded and said she could go anytime.

But what I was thinking was, how could this happen again? I also appeared early at the last school celebration.

Fu Ying was also curious about where No. 14 had gone. Suddenly, she had an idea: Could it be the girl in the bathroom? Was she so nervous that she couldn't get out of the bathroom? Or was she just running away?

The teacher quickly went to find the host teacher and explained the situation to her. The host teacher nodded to indicate that she understood. After No. 13 came down, she announced that No. 15 was now on stage, and reminded the judges not to give the wrong score.

After taking the microphone from the host, Fu Ying walked onto the stage with a smile, and on a sudden inspiration, she introduced herself in English as No. 15 from Gumang Middle School. The students before her all went on stage and started their speeches directly, but Fu Ying emphasized her number because she came on stage early, which caught the judges' attention and also happened to be a highlight.

Afterwards, Fu Ying spoke clearly and delivered her script perfectly. She bowed and left with a smile.

Many technical secondary schools have modern etiquette courses. They may seem like useless knowledge, but in important occasions, details matter.

As a good student, Fu Ying naturally studied this course seriously. Maybe she didn't understand it well enough, but she could do it.

When she participated in various competitions, her teacher also emphasized to her the appropriate smile and posture when entering and leaving the stage. She remembered the knowledge learned in class and the teacher's instructions.

And now, she was sure that these etiquette moves added a lot of points to her performance.

After the performance, she returned to her junior schoolmate's side. Seeing the affirmation in the eyes of the two teachers and the admiration of the junior schoolmate, Fu Ying felt more at ease.

Her preliminary round was over for now. Now she just needed to watch other people’s performances, cheer for her junior sisters, and wait for the final results.

The students behind continued to come out in order. Fu Ying saw a teacher and a girl talking to the teacher in charge in the waiting area at the edge of the stage. The girl was timid and did not dare to speak, and the teacher sounded pleading.

Fu Ying suddenly had an idea. This should be the number 14 that she had just skipped.

The teacher would definitely be very dissatisfied with her behavior of not being able to find someone before the performance. Even if she really went on stage again after the teacher's efforts, the experienced judges would pay special attention to this student because of the unique number that suddenly appeared, and it would be easy for them to pay close attention to her performance. In addition, this girl was already nervous, and she must have felt that the sky was falling after this mess, and it would be difficult for her to perform well, so it was destined that this girl would not score high.

As expected, she went on stage after No. 19, interspersed with No. 14. Everyone in the audience exclaimed in surprise. Fu Ying couldn’t see the judges’ reactions, but the girl nervously picked her fingers and recited her script in a low voice with her head down. You knew the score would be very low without waiting for the result.

The subsequent competitions went smoothly. Some schools did not come, or only had one student, and they all performed on stage normally.

The final preliminary round lasted for more than three hours. At 3:, the preliminary round ended. After waiting for another ten minutes, the list of contestants for the afternoon final was announced.

As expected, the junior student did not make it to the finals. She was so nervous that she got stuck and repeated one sentence three or four times before continuing. Although she completed the speech within the specified time, it somewhat affected her score.

Fu Ying entered the finals with the third place. Fu Ying was not surprised by this result, but was very satisfied with it.

She was not a student of a well-established key high school in the city, had never made herself familiar to the judges, and a two-minute performance could not show her full strength, so Fu Ying felt great to be able to enter the finals.

More possibilities will be revealed in the afternoon. With her outstanding performance in the morning, the judges' expectations have been raised. If she works hard in the afternoon and overtakes others, she will have a better chance of getting a good result.