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Oulu is a fictional city on China’s southeastern coast. All places, institutions, and characters in this novel are fictional. Plaques and Laurels follows Oulu Medical College as it fights for the right to grant doctoral degrees, pushes for promotion to full university status, and watches its senior figures pursue one of Chinese academia’s most coveted distinctions: election as an Academician. At the center are Jia Qu, Xiaokun Li, and others maneuvering through research projects, institutional platforms, talent recruitment, affiliated hospitals, industry partnerships, and the intricate networks of academic influence. The institution seeks new “plaques”; individuals pursue their own “laurels,” and each lends strength to the other. In the process, research achievements are repackaged, resources redistributed, alliances formed and abandoned, and the boundaries between academic ambition, institutional development, personal interest, and public good become increasingly difficult to separate. Told in a restrained, satirical voice, the novel traces the rise of a provincial medical college while revealing the calculations, compromises, exchanges, and human choices hidden behind the grand language of academic progress.

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