An Ordinary High Schooler's Youth: Sophomore Year
High school + ensemble cast + friendship
At an ordinary high school in a small Yunnan town, a group of teenagers with middling scores on the high school entrance exam spend their sophomore year.
Some are ambitious, others take things as they come. Sometimes they’re cheerful, sometimes gloomy. They come from different families and carry different hopes, but they’re all pushed forward by the college entrance exam. Their repetitive lives of studying are punctuated by a few precious events: sports meets, arts festivals, soccer games, monthly tests, proficiency exams, finals, and parent-teacher meetings. There are little classroom pranks, notes passed before exams, shoelaces secretly retied during morning exercises, whispers during evening study hall, math problems they can never solve, and key points for the liberal arts exams they can never finish memorizing...
The frictions and bonds between classmates, between students and teachers, and among the teachers themselves play out in turn amid those impossibly compressed daily routines. Everyone gives their time to the college entrance exam, even if their grades don’t reward them equally for it.
A realistic ensemble novel with no absolute protagonists or supporting characters. Everyone’s youth has its own unique value: the fumbling love of adolescence, friendships forged day after day, heartfelt advice from elders, and even the moments of being falsely accused by a teacher or betrayed by a friend. Everything they once wished would end as soon as possible eventually becomes part of the music of their youth, an invaluable memory.
Most of this story is grounded in reality, though some parts are exaggerated or imagined. Through mundane routines and genuine interactions, it depicts the educational landscape of an ordinary Chinese high school and the coming-of-age journey of a generation of teenagers. There’s no triumphant comeback, just unforgettable memories from the lives of ordinary high school students.
I couldn't sleep after watching it at night, it was so much like my high school life. College is so lonely, I really want to go back to high school 😢