By Zhou Jianqian

“How's the math going?”

A mother asked her child who was seated in front of her struggling over her advanced mathematics homework.“Have you come up with the answer yet?”

“Um,not yet.” Replied the child lost in thought.

“Oh,lordy lordy...tsk tsk,”She grumbled,“Not exactly the sweetest lollypop in the bag today,are we?! A certain young lady has been sitting there chewing on those simple problems for half an hour now and has yet to finish even one.”

“But Mmmoooommm,I don't know what a hectare iiiissss!” The child whined piteously.

“Little dum-dum!” The mother fussed,“Why are you worrying what a hectare is? It's just a unit of measurement.That's all! It's not much different than an acre.But,don't you go worrying what an acre is now.What you should concern yourself with is the math.The numbers! Understand?”

The child sat struggling and straining her brain,her heart beseeching the math god for blessed enlightenment that would never be granted.

“Okay,let's do this,” the mother said stroking her chin turning the situation over in her mind,“I'll give you some other problems to solve and we'll see if it's the hectares giving you trouble or it's that you're just mathematically challenged,okay? Get out some scratch paper.”

The child got some scratch paper out of her book bag.

“Listen carefully.” The mother said,over enunciating for effect,“Here is the first problem:Your father smokes one pack of cigarettes per day,and each packet costs an average of five yuan.There are 365 days in a year.Now please tell me how much money goes up in smoke every year.”

The child skittered and skittered all over the paper,crunching numbers dutifully as she went.Twenty seconds later she raised her head and looked directly at her the mother doeeyed,“Dad smokes away 1,825 yuan per year,Mommy.”

“Correct!” The mother nodded her head in glee,“Now,now let's do problem two.Mister Wayne next door makes 5,000 yuan per month at his job,while your father makes 1,500 per month.So,how many times more money does Mister Wayne make per month?”

The child's hand raced over the scratch paper,frantically working out the figures.15 seconds later the child lifted her head and said,“Mister Wayne's salary is three times greater,plus 500.Gosh Mom,Mister Wayne sure is loaded!”

“He sure is.” The mother was really on a roll now,and the next problem came in quick succession.“Now,try this one on for size.Mister Lee upstairs joined the workforce at 23 years old,just like your father,but at 35 he was already promoted to director of a division.Your father,I suppose,should be 48 years old when he gets promoted to section chief.If it takes him an equal number of years to be promoted to director of a division that it took him to finally be promoted to section chief,then how old will your father be when he finally does get promoted to division director?

This time the child didn't use the scratch paper.Her fingers drew imaginary numbers in the air swishing and swooshing up and down,to and fro etching out the answer in the oxygen molecules all around.After deriving the answer,she said with a quizzical hint of wonder in her voice,“Dad will be 73 years old before he can finally be promoted to division director.But Mom,won't he be Grandpa's age?”

“Bingo!” The mother cackled and chortled and at length remarked,“Fast and accurate,my girl! Fast and accurate.Well it looks like that adorable little head of yours just couldn't wrap itself around the hectares thing after all.”

“Playtime.” she said with a wry smirk as she gave the child's hair a good tousle.“Now scoot!”