Teacher Yin Quanfu, Our Class Adviser

In the spring of 1971, after all the Secondary Schools had been closed for five and a half years following the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, Zhijiang Secondary School was established on the former campuses of Zhijiang Normal School and the adjacent Zhijiang No. 1 Secondary School. The students admitted included those who had been enrolled in the middle- and high-school divisions of Zhijiang No. 1 and No. 2 Secondary Schools before the Cultural Revolution, as well as students who had just graduated from elementary school.

That year, elementary school was changed from a six-year system to a five-year system. Thus, those of us who had completed six and a half years of elementary education and those who had completed five and a half years entered the first year of Secondary School together. Classes 18 through 23 consisted of students from the six-and-a-half-year group, while Classes 24 through 26 consisted of those from the five-and-a-half-year group. There were nine classes in all. I was assigned to Class 19.

Our first class adviser was Teacher Huang Jichang, a refined and gentle music teacher. He had long hair and wore a long gray scarf. Whenever I saw him, I thought of Yu Yongze, a character in Song of Youth. We met him twice. He appointed the class officers, naming me class monitor and Shen Jianzhong deputy monitor, along with the other officers. A week later, he was transferred elsewhere.

His successor was Teacher Sun Xiaochu, a physical-education teacher who had graduated from the Wuhan Institute of Physical Education not long before. He was twenty-six or twenty-seven, about 165 centimeters tall, fit and handsome. Looking at him, one immediately thought of the athletes who demonstrated the movements in the old diagrams for broadcast exercises.

Teacher Sun was sunny and good-looking, and he had a gentle temperament. All the students liked him. His dormitory was right beside the school gate, and after school students often went there, mostly girls. He welcomed students into his room, and it was common for several of them to remain there late into the evening instead of going home.

He was too kindhearted to criticize people harshly, and the students were not afraid of him. When he did scold someone, some of the girls would laugh, making it impossible for him to maintain a stern expression.

At that time, the idea that “studying is useless” was widespread. Universities were not admitting students, factories were not hiring workers, and no one could see any practical benefit in studying. There was therefore little academic atmosphere. During class, some students did not listen, chatted among themselves, or wandered around the room. The teachers complained that Class 19 had especially poor classroom discipline and was very difficult to teach.

Whenever this happened, Teacher Sun would keep the entire class after school and patiently explain why we needed to observe discipline. He had liver disease, and whenever he became angry, he was prone to pain. From time to time, we would see him pressing his hand against his abdomen, his face looking pale and uncomfortable.

Despite his repeated persuasion, classroom discipline did not improve. Once, the school held a general assembly, but Class 19 took so long to assemble that we arrived at the meeting place last, dragging our feet and making a great deal of noise. The leader presiding over the meeting ordered us to return to our classroom and line up again before entering.

This made Teacher Sun extremely upset. After the meeting, he kept the entire class and once again urged us to observe discipline. He must have been terribly angry that time. He kept pressing the area over his liver, sweating and looking deeply distressed. We were frightened and did not dare make a sound.

Things improved for a few days after that, but soon the situation deteriorated again.

Not long afterward, Teacher Sun arranged to transfer back to Shaoyang because his newly married wife was still in his hometown and could not obtain a job transfer to Zhijiang.

After he left Zhijiang, we never saw him again. At one point I heard that he had died of cirrhosis. But a few years ago, our physical-education teacher Jia Lihan told me that Sun was actually in good health and had visited Zhijiang several times, where they had met.

Perhaps we had made him too angry. Or perhaps, after we graduated and left, he simply moved on with his life. In any case, he never contacted any of us.

After Teacher Sun left, Yang Xiaokang became our class adviser. He was an English teacher about the same age as Sun.

Teacher Yang wore thick glasses with white rims. He had a quiet, scholarly appearance, somewhat like an intellectual from the 1950s. He was kind, but more serious than Teacher Sun. He did not joke much with the girls and never invited students to sit in his room. By maintaining a certain distance from us, he had more authority than Sun.

After arriving, he called a meeting of the class officers and asked us to set an example and lead the others properly.

The class officers generally performed well, but the situation in the class remained unsatisfactory.

Whenever there was a problem, Teacher Yang would also keep the entire class and explain things to us. But he was not as patient as Teacher Sun, nor did he display Sun’s exasperated determination to reform us. His speech was somewhat bookish and affected, and some students would secretly laugh. Sometimes he spoke for a long time, and students grew impatient and began whispering among themselves. He was often left helpless.

He explained many principles, but the problems remained unresolved. Class 19 gradually became known as the class with the worst classroom discipline in the entire grade. Whenever subject teachers came to teach us, they felt a headache coming on.

At the beginning of the spring semester of 1972, when we entered the second year of Secondary School, Teacher Yang did not return. The teacher who arrived introduced himself as Yin Quanfu. He became our fourth class adviser in one year.

Teacher Yin had just been transferred from Gong Ping Secondary School in the countryside, about 60 li east to Zhijiang downtown. He taught Chinese Literature and was twenty-nine years old, one or two years older than Sun and Yang. He was a native of Gong Ping, where his wife and children still lived, and he spoke with a strong Gong Ping accent.

He was not tall, had high cheekbones, small eyes, and untidy hair. He liked to roll up his sleeves like a farmer preparing doing something, and in summer he wore the rubber-soled sandals popular in Zhijiang, made from old tires. His appearance gave the immediate impression of a fairly educated but unmistakably rural official—someone like a brigade accountant or a village Party secretary who could speak well and knew how to handle things.

Teacher Yin had only graduated from high school, but he had taught very well at Gong Ping Secondary School, where his students’ results were outstanding. Zhijiang Secondary School was desperately short of teachers, so the school transferred him to us.

Teacher Yin looked and sounded rustic, and this naturally created a certain distance between him and the students. He was not given to smiling or joking, and we could never quite figure him out, so we did not dare misbehave around him.

Behind his back, some students called him “the Eastern Country Stick.” Gong Ping was in the far eastern part of Zhijiang, bordering Huaihua, and “the Eastern Country” referred to that area. “Stick” carried the sense of a country bumpkin or rough fellow, implying that people from Gong Ping were somewhat uncivilized. It was a derogatory nickname. Saying it to his face would have provoked an angry response, so it could only be used behind his back.

Teacher Yin’s Chinese classes had a distinctive character. He was frank and outspoken, willing to say what he thought, entirely different from the cautious style of our first-year teacher, Huang Jiyang. We liked that about him.

He prepared his lessons very carefully and led us in reading aloud in his Gong Ping accent. Before explaining the general meaning of a passage or its central idea, he would ask the students for their opinions. Only after a few students who wanted to show their opinions had spoken would he write his own interpretation on the blackboard.

I liked expressing my opinions, so whenever Teacher Yin asked a question, I raised my hand. Sometimes my answer was close to his; sometimes it was different. If I was right, he praised me. If I was wrong, he did not criticize me. This interaction created a relaxed classroom atmosphere and attracted the students’ interest and attention.

 

Author in the Secondary School

 

He assigned a great deal of composition writing and marked our work very carefully. When a student wrote something well, he would read it aloud in class, encouraging others to write. Many students in our class became enthusiastic writers, including Xu Yanwen, Yang Fenfen, Yin Xiaomei, and Huang Changsong.

The girls in particular liked using adjectives, such as “the deep, deep blue sky.” Such mildly sentimental expressions were not commonly used at the time, and not many people even knew them. Some girls kept little notebooks in which they collected adjectives and proverbs.

Teacher Yin encouraged us to use more adjectives in our compositions and tended to give higher marks when we did. I generally wrote plain facts, without much embellishment, and used very few adjectives and proverbs. As a result, my compositions usually received scores in the seventies out of one hundred. I do not think Teacher Yin ever read one of mine aloud in class.

Once, his comment on one of my compositions was:

“Your writing is clearly organized, your sentences are smooth, your logic is strong, and you make few errors in characters. But your writing lacks literary grace, which makes it difficult to mark.”

My composition must have given him such a headache that he could not help expressing that sentiment. He was right: my writing had no literary grace. But how easy is it to write with literary grace? Even today, my writing still lacks it.

In class, Teacher Yin often revealed the directness and rough simplicity of his peasant background. While teaching The Foolish Old Man Removes the Mountains, he came to the line “His wife raised a question,” stopped, and asked us, “What does ‘wife’ mean?”

Some students answered “wife,” some “madam,” and some “beloved.” He replied, “Wife means your old lady!”

We were left laughing and crying at the same time.

While teaching Asking About Suffering in the Deep Mountains, he loudly read, “Old Chang Bao denounced the crimes of the bandits,” completely unaware that the text actually said “Little Chang Bao.” We wanted to laugh but did not dare, while he continued reading as if nothing had happened.

Teacher Yin’s greatest flaw was smoking, and he smoked heavily. His fingers were yellow. Perhaps because of this, he looked older than his age. At twenty-nine, he appeared to be nearly forty.

One day he read an article about the dangers of smoking and was deeply moved. He resolved to quit. In classical Chinese, he wrote an impassioned “Declaration of Smoking Cessation.” I remember only one line: “One cigarette shortens life by several seconds.” I have forgotten the rest, but I remember the general meaning. He declared that anyone who tempted him to smoke would no longer be his friend, and that if someone tempted him repeatedly, he would sever the relationship. It was practically a Chu Shi Biao—a solemn memorial announcing his decision to quit smoking.

He copied the declaration in small regular-script calligraphy with a brush and pasted it on his door. At that time, many of the young teachers whose wives were still at home in other places often gathered to play cards and chat, so they soon all knew about Teacher Yin’s declaration.

He did indeed refrain from smoking for a while. But after only three or four months, he broke his word. The declaration disappeared, and he began smoking again. I did not dare ask why he had given up so quickly.

Although he had started his smoking-cessation campaign with great determination and ended it in failure, in most other matters he was decisive and kept his word.

After he arrived, he resolved to improve classroom discipline. He did not use the “patient persuasion” method favored by Sun and Yang. He did call a meeting of the class officers, but rather than merely asking us to set a good example, he instituted a rotating duty system.

He provided a notebook for the duty officers and required them to stop students from leaving their seats or whispering during class. Anyone who refused to listen was to have his or her name recorded. At the end of the school day, he would come to hear the duty officer’s report.

Sure enough, every afternoon Teacher Yin came to the classroom to hear the report. He would then keep the students who had violated the rules while allowing everyone else to go home.

This was different from the way Teacher Sun and Teacher Yang had handled problems in the past, keeping the entire class for one or two hours and patiently lecturing everyone. Most students welcomed Teacher Yin’s clear distinction between those who had misbehaved and those who had not, because they no longer had to suffer for someone else’s wrongdoing.

Teacher Yin would leave for a while and return after the students assigned to clean the classroom had finished. Sometimes he asked the duty officers to stay, but most of the time he asked me, as class monitor, to remain behind. While he talked with the students being disciplined, he would send me to the school cafeteria to buy dinner for him, since the cafeteria closed at a certain hour and food would no longer be available.

He, meanwhile, calmly talked with the students one by one. Those who had committed minor offenses were dealt with first. Once the conversation was over, they could go home. The students who had committed the most serious offenses were saved for last and naturally went home last.

If he became hungry, he would eat while continuing to talk, saying, “I’m not afraid of talking late because I’ve already eaten.” This made the hungry students even more anxious.

The method of handling students individually worked quickly. Everyone was afraid of being kept after school. As soon as the duty officer shouted, “Return to your seats! Stop making noise, or I’ll write down your names!” classroom discipline would generally be restored.

Teacher Yin was also very strict with the class officers. When he criticized us, he showed no concern for sparing our feelings.

Once, we went to work in the outskirts of town. On the way back, we passed a pond filled with lotus plants. Tiny drops of water formed crystal-clear beads on the lotus leaves, and the bright droplets rolling across the green leaves were irresistible to play with.

Many students picked lotus leaves and dripped water onto them. I thought picking the leaves was wrong, so I did not pick one. In the end, I found a small lotus leaf that someone else had discarded and played with it briefly. Unfortunately, Teacher Yin happened to see me.

After we returned, he harshly criticized the students who had picked lotus leaves. He began by saying, “With class monitor Shang Lewei as the ringleader and deputy monitor Huang Changsong as his deputy, you led the others in picking lotus leaves. Such behavior is unforgivable.”

In fact, the two of us had been the last to touch the leaves. We had not picked them, much less led anyone else. We were thoroughly wronged.

Teacher Yin also organized criticism meetings for several mischievous students in the class—that is, students who did not observe classroom discipline. He had classmates go up to the front and criticize them.

Although most students spoke in the spirit of offering advice, some, influenced by the criticism articles of the Cultural Revolution, escalated the accusations into political attacks, causing psychological harm to the students involved.

Other teachers organized similar meetings at the time, but they were wrong nonetheless. I do not remember whether I personally went up to criticize any classmates. But as class monitor, I probably did preside over some of these meetings.

Looking back now, I feel ashamed before those classmates.

Regardless of whether we liked Teacher Yin at the time, and regardless of the problems with some of his methods, Class 19 did gradually improve after he arrived.

Previously, our self-study periods were like a marketplace. The classroom was noisy and chaotic. Students wandered around and shouted, and almost no one read seriously. After Teacher Yin arrived, the duty officers were able to control the classroom. It was no longer filled with constant noise.

Sometimes I would find a moving story in a newspaper and read it aloud to the class. The articles always contained plenty of political slogans, but the stories themselves were often sincere and touching, so they held everyone’s attention. As the plot rose and fell, we could hear students sighing or expressing regret.

There were not many genuinely moving articles, however, and most of the time I did not read the newspaper. The classroom remained quiet and orderly, and students voluntarily read or did their homework.

The students in Class 19 paid attention in class and eagerly raised their hands to answer questions. All the subject teachers praised us.

As Class 19 improved, the duty officers had less and less to report at the end of each day. Teacher Yin would simply let everyone go home. No students needed to stay behind, and I no longer had to remain at school to buy him dinner.

Eventually, the class was largely managed by the class officers, and Teacher Yin no longer needed to intervene.

Once, our physical-education teacher was ill and could not come to class. The students did not want to sit in the classroom for self-study and asked to conduct our own physical-education class. I went to ask the school for permission and received approval on the condition that we observe discipline.

Everyone agreed. I led the class to the sports field, where we first did exercises together. Then we went to the physical-education office to borrow basketballs and other equipment. I divided everyone into groups to practice basketball. Those who did not want to play basketball practiced other sports.

This had never happened before. The school made an exception and allowed us to teach ourselves because Class 19 had earned a good reputation.

In addition to improving classroom discipline, the students’ sense of collective honor also grew stronger.

The school held a broadcast-exercise competition. We trained ourselves and improved quickly. The competition took place in the school auditorium. Everyone followed instructions seriously and completed the routine beautifully, winning first place.

Only one year earlier, in that same auditorium, Class 19 had been ordered to return to the classroom and line up again because we had arrived late as a group.

Class 19 did not have many outstanding athletes. Apart from Chen Tingqing’s sprinting among the boys and Xu Yanwen’s sprinting among the girls, no one could place in the top three. But through widespread mobilization, Class 19 had the largest number of participants, and we ultimately won first place in total points at the school track-and-field meet.

All these activities were organized by the class officers and students. Teacher Yin himself did not do very much.

After school, the boys often arranged to meet at the gymnasium to practice vaulting over the pommel horse. We imitated a scene from the Albanian film Brave People, in which students lined up and vaulted one after another. Our performance was actually quite good.

The best among us was Li Qiang, who had a natural talent for gymnastics. He was later selected for the county gymnastics team and then for the prefectural team, and he competed in the provincial games.

During breaks, the boys of Class 19 repeatedly performed group jump-rope routines on the school grounds. The patterns we created were so elaborate that even the girls were astonished.

A classmate named Tang Xingyi was selected for the Qianyang Prefecture badminton team because of his excellent physical ability and competed in the provincial games. He also joined me and Shu Xiucheng in representing the Zhijiang County badminton team at a prefectural competition.

In 1972, Deng Xiaoping returned to power for the first time after the Cultural Revolution and began enforcing teaching quality more vigorously. Teachers started to teach knowledge more boldly, and examinations became increasingly frequent and difficult.

The academic atmosphere in Class 19 grew stronger. The students became highly self-motivated. After every major examination, Teacher Yin required the class officers to rank all the students by total score and post the results outside the classroom door. Not only could we see them; students from other classes could see them as well.

This was extremely unusual at the time. It undoubtedly put pressure on the students, but it also established an atmosphere in which doing well academically was considered honorable.

In the winter of 1972, Zhijiang held a unified examination for the entire county. The average score of Class 19 ranked the top. I was fortunate enough to receive the highest total score, while Xu Yanwen ranked third.

In the space of a single year, Class 19 had changed from a notorious disorderly class into an outstanding collective: united, upward-looking, eager to study, and developing morally, intellectually, and physically.

 

Teacher Yin (second row, sixth from the left), Author (fourth row, fourth from the right)

 

At that time, Secondary School lasted only two years, so after the second year we advanced directly into high school. Because Deng Xiaoping was dismissed again, and because of the influence of Zhang Tiesheng’s blank-paper incident, going to school once more became a matter of simply passing time.

Looking back, during our four years of middle and high school, the only period when we truly learned something solid was the second year of Secondary School, when we were Class 19. It was on the strength of that small foundation that some of our classmates, after the college entrance examination was restored in 1977, went on to enter universities, junior colleges, and technical secondary schools.

Because of the years lost during the Cultural Revolution, not many students from Class 19 entered university. But whether they went to university or not, everyone worked steadily and conscientiously. Many became key members of their workplaces.

One of them, You Jianming, became an educated youth in the countryside and enlisted in the army in 1977. After leaving the military, he worked while studying for the university entrance examination and was admitted to the art department of Huaihua College. After graduation, through unremitting effort, he became a well-known producer. He produced popular works such as The Story of a Noble Family and Eighteen Years in Enemy Camp, both were very popular at the time in China.

Xu Yanwen had been one of Teacher Yin’s favorite students. Her compositions, in particular, had earned his high praise. Although she did not perform well on the college entrance examination, her persistent efforts eventually made her a university professor and a well-known writer. She has frequently traveled abroad as a representative of China.

In 2006, I returned to Zhijiang from the United States for the first time to visit my family. Teacher Yin, already retired, made a special trip from Huaihua to see me. He had an enlarged copy made of our Class 19 graduation photograph (the one showed above) and gave it to me.

I had never received that photograph when I graduated, so this finally filled the gap.

When he spoke about his teaching career, he said with emotion that in his entire life he had successfully taught only two classes, and Class 19 was one of them. He attributed the class’s success to a group of excellent class officers who were responsible, set good examples, and dared to manage their classmates.

Afterward, apart from one other class, he never again encountered such capable class officers, and he was unable to lead those classes as successfully. He deeply missed the days when he taught Class 19 and felt proud of us.

Objectively speaking, it was Teacher Yin who mobilized the enthusiasm of our class officers and enabled Class 19 to enter a virtuous cycle. After all, these were the same class officers who had served under Sun and Yang, when the class had never developed the same good atmosphere.

During that visit, he told me solemnly that Shen Jianzhong had unfortunately died of illness, and that Huang Changsong had also died in a car accident. Two of the leading members of Class 19 had suddenly been lost.

It was clear that he had continued to follow the lives of our classmates closely and had come to identify himself deeply with Class 19.

Several years later, during another trip to China, I saw him once more in Huaihua with some classmates. We ate and talked together.

Teacher Yin died in 2017 at the age of seventy-four.

His rustic manner, unconventional personality, and highly controversial character, together with his sincerity, directness, and devotion to teaching, formed a distinctive personality that I will never forget.

 

January 9, 2019, New Jersey

 

Teacher Luo Huishuo

When the Cultural Revolution began, I was nine years old and living with my father in Muyoupo, Qiliqiao, Zhijiang—the site of Zhijiang Normal School at the time. At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, the Red Guards first rebelled and then traveled around making connections with other groups. The school soon came to a standstill. Some teachers were driven away; others were frightened into leaving on their own. Only a handful remained on campus. Teacher Luo Huizhuo was one of the very few who still lived at the school.

He was probably in his early thirties then, of medium height, fair-skinned, and not given to smiling or joking. He taught Chinese language and literature and had something of the air of an old-fashioned scholar. Once you got to know him, however, you realized that he was not truly pedantic. He was married to Yang Liangzhi, a Chinese teacher at Chengnan (Southern City) Elementary School. Since her school was in town and too far away for her to commute from Muyoupo, she lived in the city with their son rather than moving to Muyoupo. Thus, Teacher Luo usually lived alone at Zhijiang Normal School.

According to Teacher Yang Xiaokang, who later served as my junior-middle-school homeroom teacher, Luo Huizhuo was from Dongkou,Hunan,  and had graduated from the Chinese Department of Hunan Normal College. He was especially accomplished in classical Chinese poetry and prose. Zhijiang also had another teacher, Luo Zhonghua, who had graduated from the same department and was highly accomplished in Chinese studies. People referred to the two of them as Zhijiang’s “Big Luo” and “Little Luo”—meaning that both were outstanding and widely respected.

Although Teacher Luo was more than twenty years older than I was, we would not ordinarily have had much contact. But at that time there were hardly any people left at the school; students and teachers together numbered only a few dozen. We were neighbors, living in the same long, single-story barracks—the former quarters of the Flying Tigers during World War II and later of the American Air Force. It was a long row of rooms with a covered walkway in front. In summer, we often sat on the benches along the corridor or leaned against the railing in front to enjoy the cool air.

Teacher dormitory at Zhijiang Normal Schoolin Muyoupo, Zhijiang—originally quarters for the Flying Tigers and the U.S. Air Force during World War II

The building was later demolished, and another one was moved from Muyoupo, about a kilometer away, to replace it. Since both buildings had been constructed by the American military, they were very similar. There had originally been three such buildings in Muyoupo; the other two were removed. I do not know whether this was the particular building in which I lived.

I remember one time when Teacher Luo and I were sitting on the wooden railing along the corridor, chatting. He said to me, “A person’s life is very short. Once you pass thirty, you begin to go downhill.” As he spoke, he rolled up his sleeves and showed me his arms—he was in his early thirties, after all. What he meant was that even his muscles had already begun to atrophy.

At the time, my mother worked for the county Women’s Federation and lived in town, so she did not come to live with us. My father knew absolutely nothing about cooking. I liked trying new things, so I taught myself to cook. With no one to show me how, I simply experimented on my own. I cut my fingers several times, and the dishes I prepared were not particularly tasty.

The girl next door, Ding Yan, who was a year younger than I was, was much more experienced in the kitchen. During meals, we liked to go outside and exchange samples of our cooking in the corridor. Once, after tasting my stir-fried eggplant, she said, “Your food has a raw-oil taste.”

“That’s because I used more oil,” I replied.

She smiled and said, “It’s because you put the vegetables in before the oil was smoking. You have to wait until the oil smokes before adding the vegetables. Then they won’t have that raw-oil taste.”

That was how I learned that oil was supposed to smoke before vegetables were added. Of course, this applied to the dark oil produced by the old Chinese method of pressing and refining oil with heat. Oil made by the cold-pressing methods used today does not need to smoke and does not have that raw-oil taste.

Gradually, my cooking improved. Although my father neither knew how to cook nor cooked himself, he was not a picky eater and never complained. That allowed me to remain the “head chef” of our household.

There was only one thing he insisted on: he always made me wash the dishes by the river, five or six hundred meters away, saying that the water there was cleaner. I was never willing to go. I argued that our household water came from a well and was cleaner than river water. People washed clothes and bathed in the river, so in fact it was not particularly clean. But he would not listen and forced me to go there to wash the dishes.

I often washed them in a small stream about two hundred meters away. When he discovered this, he even beat me. It was not until a teacher told him that river water was not necessarily clean and that it was best to wash dishes at home with hot water that he stopped forcing me to go to the river.

When it came to my cooking, however, he never interfered. He simply let me do it. People say that a capable mother can bring out a capable daughter. I would say that an incapable father can bring out a capable son.

Teacher Luo cooked for himself. I never actually ate his cooking, but I had the impression that he was quite good at it. I remember that every year, as autumn began, he would start making fermented tofu, or furu. It was delicious, and sometimes he would give me a little to taste.

I once asked him, “Does fermented tofu still have any nutritional value after it has been left to grow mold?”

He replied, “Anything that tastes good has nutritional value.”

At the time, I was only half convinced, but I have remembered his words ever since.

Later, I asked Teacher Luo to teach me how to make fermented tofu. During the first year, I simply watched. Whenever he made it, I would go to his home and observe. He carefully explained every step. Since making fermented tofu involves many stages and takes several months, he would tell me whenever it was time to carry out the next step, and I would go over to watch him.

The following year, I followed his instructions and made it myself.

I found a large bamboo basket and cut rice straw into pieces five or six inches long. I spread the straw in the basket to a depth of about one and a half to two inches. Then I cut the tofu I had bought into pieces about one and a half inches long and arranged them on the straw, leaving about half an inch between each piece. I covered the tofu with another layer of straw, added another layer of tofu, and continued alternating the layers until all the tofu had been placed in the basket.

I set the basket in a well-ventilated place. After about a month, the tofu began to grow mold and fuzz.

Pieces of tofu growing mold on the rice straw

At that point, I began lifting the tofu carefully with clean chopsticks and placing it in a pickling crock, also called a vinegar crock. I laid down one layer of tofu, sprinkled it with salt, added another layer of tofu, and sprinkled it with salt again.

vinegar crock

After filling the crock, Teacher Luo would sprinkle the tofu with liquor, saying that this made the fermented tofu more fragrant. But my father did not drink, and we had no liquor at home, so I had to leave it out.

One could also add chopped chili peppers to make spicy fermented tofu. We did not have any of those either, so I made a mild version.

Finally, I put on the lid and poured water into the groove around its rim to keep out the air. After another two months—by the time the Lunar New Year was approaching—the fermented tofu would be ready to eat.

I was only a child and a beginner. Without liquor or chopped chilies, mine was nowhere near as delicious as Teacher Luo’s, but it was still recognizable as fermented tofu.

The following year, Zhijiang Normal School moved back into its original campus in town. My parents were too busy to look after me, so they placed me with Teacher Feng Wei’s family. I no longer cooked for myself and therefore did not continue making fermented tofu.

About three years later, Teacher Luo and I became neighbors again. By then, we were all living at Zhijiang School, in a two-story wooden building beside the former Normal School auditorium and near the school bathhouse. No one lived upstairs; we all lived on the first floor.

Teacher Luo’s family was next door to us, and Lanlan’s family lived next to theirs. Each household had two rooms and no kitchen, so we cooked in the outer room.

Teacher Luo lived there with his wife, Teacher Yang, and their two sons, Luo Yuan and Luo Wen. Our household consisted of my parents, me, and my younger brother Leping.

I was in junior Secondary School at the time, and my parents were both busy, so I did most of the cooking. One day, Teacher Luo had guests at home and came over to borrow two bowls. When he returned them, he told me, “When you wash dishes, you can’t just wash the inside. You have to wash the outside as well. I noticed that there was grease on the outside of your bowls. You must not have been washing them there.”

Until then, I really had not known that the outside of a bowl needed to be washed too. From that day on, I washed both sides. Once again, Teacher Luo had taught me a practical life skill.

At that time, Teacher Luo taught Chinese to students one grade above me. One day, his door was tightly shut, but I could hear him speaking inside—and quite loudly. In a very serious voice, he said, “Chairman Mao is still alive. How can you use a title like ‘The Life of Chairman Mao’?”

There was no answer.

Then I heard him say, “We can speak of someone’s life only after that person has died. You cannot say this about Chairman Mao. Saying it that way is dangerous.”

I vaguely heard a boy quietly trying to explain himself. He seemed to be saying that he had not meant to suggest that Chairman Mao had died.

Half an hour later, when I passed their house again, the door was still tightly shut. Teacher Luo was still talking with the student, apparently asking him to write another essay under a different title. It was not until an hour later that the student finally left.

Anyone who lived through that period knows that if someone had deliberately made a political issue out of such a thing, it could have been enough to get the student branded a counterrevolutionary and sent to prison. Teacher Luo must not have wanted to see a teenager’s entire future destroyed in that way. That was probably why he called the student to his home and talked to him behind closed doors instead of reporting the matter.

Teacher Luo’s wife, Teacher Yang, had a very good temper and was easygoing. Teacher Luo was a good man, but he took things too seriously and was rather stubborn.

Their elder son, Luo Yuan, did not talk much and seemed fairly easygoing in public. But once, I realized just how much he resembled his father.

That day, the door to their home was again tightly shut. As I passed by, I could hear Teacher Luo angrily scolding Luo Yuan. I could not make out what he was saying, but it was clear that he was berating his son. Only Teacher Luo’s voice could be heard from inside. Luo Yuan remained completely silent.

When I passed their house again half an hour later, the door was still closed. From time to time, I heard a sharp smack—the sound of someone being struck with a wooden stick. Teacher Luo continued lecturing him, repeatedly asking, “Do you admit that you were wrong?”

But I could not hear Luo Yuan’s voice. He did not cry out, plead for mercy, or admit that he had done anything wrong.

This may have made Teacher Luo even angrier, because the smacking grew louder. It continued for at least another half hour before the house gradually fell silent.

Luo Yuan was a few years younger than I was, about the same age as my younger brother. I had not known him well before then, but that episode gave me a lesson in his stubbornness. The spectacle of two stubborn men—a stubborn father and his stubborn son—stayed with me for the rest of my life.

Luo Yuan’s younger brother, Luo Wen, was more like his mother: easygoing and outgoing. He had a much better relationship with his father. He often joked around in front of Teacher Luo, and I never saw Teacher Luo hit him.

Later, Luo Yuan and his father seemed to maintain a reasonably good relationship. At least, they never completely fell out. Perhaps Teacher Yang had helped mediate between them.

Around that time, the school hired a new medical worker, a nurse named Zhang Bin who had graduated from Changsha Health School. She was in her early twenties, young and attractive, and very intelligent. We called her Doctor Zhang, even she was only a nurse, which is a Chinese way to call independent nurses as doctor because they do similar things as doctors, they even have partial prescriptive authority.

She lived at the other end of our building and passed our door whenever she went to the school’s washroom or cafeteria. Whenever Teacher Luo saw her walking by, he would often call out, “Zhuang bing”—a homophone of Zhang Bin, her name, but similar to Zhuang Bing, pretending to be sick . He implied that she was a person who pretends to be sick. It was not an exact match, of course, but if he said it indistinctly, it sounded close enough.

Doctor Zhang would always reply, “Luo hui shuo”—a homophone of Luo Huizhuo, meaning “Luo (Teacher Luo) hui (could, or be good at) shuo (argue)”, implying that Teacher Luo is good at arguing.

That was when I suddenly discovered that Teacher Luo had a humorous and playful side after all.

Later, Zhang Bin married Sun Qiaosheng, one of Zhijiang’s great handsome young men at the time and the older brother of my classmate Sun Yunsheng. They later transferred to Changsha. When I was studying at Hunan Agricultural College, she once tried to introduce me to girl, but nothing came of it. That, however, is another story.

Later, I was sent to the countryside as a educated youth, and then I went to college. I had little further contact with Teacher Luo. But he remained our neighbor, on and off, for many years, and he continued to have a good relationship with my parents.

Sometime in the late 1990s, Teacher Luo developed cancer. In 2000, I asked my parents to come to the United States to help look after my newborn son. When Teacher Luo saw them off, he said, “I may not live long enough to see you return. I may have gone to meet Marx by then.”

My parents urged him to remain optimistic, take good care of himself, and wait for their return.

Around the end of 2001 or the beginning of 2002, my parents, who were still in the United States, received a letter from Zhijiang informing them that Teacher Luo had passed away. He was only in his sixties.

Completed in October 2023.

 

Young members of the Agriculture Support Team

 It was probably around April 1970. I was in the sixth grade at Zhijiang Red Guard Elementary School—the school that had originally been, and is now again, Lotus Pond Elementary School. At around April 20 every year, the school would give us a weeklong spring break. The teachers went to the countryside to help farmers transplant early rice seedlings. Students were also expected to find opportunities to support agricultural work—for example, collecting manure or cutting grass to feed cattle, then delivering it to the school, which would pass it on to the farmers. There were no set requirements for how much one had to do. We could also join agricultural-support activities organized by our parents’ work units, usually for a single day in the fields on the outskirts of town.

The teachers, however, would go several dozen li away and stay there for a week, living with the farmers and helping transplant rice. It was hard work. Anyone who was able to go and stick it out, then return and tell stories about the experience, was greatly admired.

By then, the violent revolutionary storm of the early Cultural Revolution had passed, and life had entered a relatively calm period. Daily life was marked by shortages of food and clothing. Meat could be bought only with ration coupons—one jin per month. Cooking oil, rice, and cloth also required coupons. Even traveling a little distance to visit relatives or friends required a letter of introduction; otherwise, one could get into trouble. Cultural life was still like not exist. There was no television, films were rare, and the Xinhua Bookstore carried only the Chairman’s works, atlases, revolutionary books, and The Brightest Day—a highly revolutionary novel.

We felt that there was nowhere to go and nothing to do. Life was terribly dull. So I began wondering whether I might join the teachers on an agricultural-support trip, take a small risk, and do something surprising.

I asked the school whether I could go, but was told that students were too young and were not allowed to participate. I remember that one young teacher pulled me aside and said, “If you really want to go, come early and leave early. By the time the leaders discover what has happened, you’ll already be there, and they won’t be able to send you back.”

That gave me courage. I went home and told my parents that I wanted to join the teachers’ agricultural-support team. My father was a man who had always dared to take risks. During the factional fighting, he had even sent me into town to find out what was happening—and I had done the job well. Supporting agriculture, by contrast, involved no danger at all, so he readily agreed. My mother did not seem opposed either. She prepared a backpack, a change of clothes, and toiletries, and gave me some money and grain coupons.

The next morning, I arrived at school very early, only to discover that several other classmates had also come. We had not discussed it beforehand; we had simply arrived at the same idea independently. The boys were Li Zecheng and Xiang Guangxiong. The girls were Ma Zongxiang, Zhou Lihua, and Li Yuanfang.

Several young teachers were already preparing to leave. I remember Teacher Tian Zhijian, who taught mathematics, and Teacher Quan Bangda, who taught Chinese. They were only in their late twenties themselves, not much older than the thirteen- and fourteen-year-old students among us, and they admired our courage. Just as we were wondering whether we should seek permission from the school leaders, the teachers said, “Go, go, go! Leave before the leaders arrive. If you ask for permission, they definitely won’t let you go. But once you get there, even if they disagree, they’ll have to accept it.”

So we set off with the young teachers.

Our destination was Luojiu Commune. Following the Hunan–Guizhou Highway eastward along the Wushui River, it was a little more than thirty li (about 15 kilometers) to Luojiu. Another thirty-some li farther east was Huaihua. Luojiu lay roughly halfway between Zhijiang and Huaihua and was an important market town.

Along the way, we were like birds that had escaped from their cages. We were excited, constantly looking around, bouncing along, sometimes running and sometimes walking. The early-spring morning was still a little chilly, but we were young and so wildly excited that we hardly noticed the cold. The air was fresh and faintly cool. Beneath the blue sky, a light mist drifted over the fields. Everything seemed new and beautiful.

We followed the Hunan–Guizhou Highway eastward, with the Wushui River flowing in the same direction on the right. Across the river lay a broad alluvial plain belonging to the Sifangyuan Brigade of Yanqiao Commune, where many rice paddies had already been planted with early rice. On the left were hills dotted sparsely with fir trees as thick as a person’s arm and patches of cogon grass. Along the highway were slopes, some of them steep and freshly cut into the hillsides. The road surface was gravel, and it was well maintained by the local road-repair section. The road curved with the river, which meandered gently through the flat alluvial plain. There were no sharp bends. Traffic was sparse. Occasionally a provincial grain-transport truck or a truck from the Xinhuang mercury mine would pass by. Since long stretches of time went by without a vehicle, we spent most of the journey walking in the middle of the road.

The young teachers, usually so serious and reserved, were now completely different. They joked and chatted with each other, and from time to time they used chalk to draw large arrows pointing east on the road, writing beside them: “Red Guard Elementary School Agricultural-Support Team.”

After four hours, we reached Luojiu Town and moved into several farmhouses beside the highway. The girls, the female teachers, and the older male teachers were assigned rooms. We boys and the younger and middle-aged male teachers slept in the lofts. They were open to the wind on all four sides, with enough headroom to stand only in the middle; near the edges, it was easy to bump one’s head against the roof tiles. To get up and down, we had to climb a ladder. We had never slept in such a place before and found it fascinating, though of course it was also inconvenient.

The school leaders arrived an hour after us. Since we students had acted first and asked questions later—turning raw rice into cooked rice, so to speak—they had not yet had time to get angry. The young teachers kept praising us in front of them, saying how obedient we were and how well we could endure hardship. What else could the leaders say? They accepted the situation.

We spread our bedding on the loft floor and slept there. In early April, lying in a loft with no protection from the wind, we could feel the cold air rushing through all night. We had to pull the quilts over our heads. It was our first trip away from home, and everything felt fresh and exciting. Besides, we were young and unafraid of the cold, so we did not think sleeping in the loft was particularly hard.

Luojiu Town consisted mainly of shops and houses extending a few hundred meters along both sides of the Hunan–Guizhou Highway. At the eastern end was a short road bridge. Every morning we got up a little after five, walked east, crossed the bridge, and then went north down from the roadbed to the fields where we would pull up rice seedlings.

The temperature in mid-April mornings was very low. We still wore long trousers and long-sleeved shirts, and some of the older teachers even put on padded jackets. On our feet were sandals or shoes made from old tire rubber, shaped like straw sandals. They cost a little more than genuine straw sandals worn by farmers, but on the wet, slippery field ridges they provided less traction. Before entering the paddies, we rolled our trouser legs up to our knees, took off the rubber shoes, and stepped barefoot into the water. The first sensation was bone-chilling cold. Once our feet were in the water, our legs gradually recovered from the numbness, and things became more bearable.

Pulling rice seedlings meant removing the densely planted seedlings from the nursery bed, washing the soil from their roots, and tying them into bundles with straw. Each bundle was about as thick as an arm at the middle, where it was tightly bound. We placed the bundles in bamboo-woven baskets, carried them to the edge of the plowed and harrowed fields, and tossed them evenly into the paddies one bundle at a time.

Most of us children were pulling seedlings for the first time and had no idea what we were doing, so the teachers instructed us. The farmers pulled out a large handful at a time; we pulled out only a few stalks.

By eight o’clock, it was time for breakfast. Everyone first washed their hands at the edge of the field or by the river, then headed back to the houses. The boys among us, however, dashed ahead in a single line because we wanted to claim the crispy rice stuck to the bottom of the cooking pot. It was golden brown, fragrant, and crunchy. Our legs were covered in mud, and our clothes were spattered with it—probably our faces were too. But as long as there was crispy rice to eat, we were as happy as if it were the New Year.

After breakfast, we went back to work. By then the weather had warmed slightly, and we began transplanting the seedlings. With the left hand holding a bundle, the thumb separated five or six seedlings, sometimes seven or eight. The thumb, index finger, and ring finger of the right hand caught them and held them at the junction between the roots and the stalks, then inserted them about two inches into the mud. The process was repeated again and again. Skilled farmers moved with perfect coordination, planting one seedling per second—or even faster. The spacing was uniform, and within a few minutes they could create a broad expanse of straight, orderly rows.

Some of the teachers had grown up in the countryside and had done this work before, so they soon became proficient. Others had participated in agricultural-support activities several times. They were not as good as the farmers, but they managed reasonably well. Only we children were completely incompetent. We could do no more than imitate what we saw, awkwardly planting one seedling every four or five seconds. Our rows zigzagged in every direction and bore no resemblance to orderly lines. Sometimes the farmers could not stand watching us and would climb down into the field to move some of the seedlings around, making the spacing look a little better. This gave us a powerful sense of frustration.

After we slowly improved, we could plant one seedling every three or four seconds, and our rows became slightly straighter, though they still looked terrible. Our greatest realization was that we were not really helping much at all. The best we could hope for was not to make things worse.

Another thing that kept us on edge was leeches. They attached themselves silently to our legs and were difficult to pull off. Once removed, they could leave a wound that bled for a long time. Perhaps because the weather was still cold, there did not seem to be too many of them. But whenever one latched onto us, we were terrified.

Although we did not accomplish much, by the end of each day we were exhausted, with aching backs and sore muscles. We finally understood how hard farmers worked. Since we were young, however, we recovered quickly. After one night’s sleep, we were full of energy again.

At first we were still somewhat restrained around the teachers, but living together day and night soon made us familiar with one another. We became bolder and began joking with them. I woke up early. Once I climbed out of bed, I would imitate Zhou Bapi from the puppet show The Rooster Crows at Midnight, holding a stick and banging it against the floor while shouting, “Get up! Get up! Why are you still asleep? You lazy bones! Everybody get up!”

This would wake the sleeping teachers and annoy them terribly, but they could not very well get angry. For one thing, it was funny; for another, it was already time to get up. So they tolerated my shameless prank, which showed no respect for the dignity of a teacher.

Life was hard. Although we had enough rice to eat our fill, there was very little meat. The farmers’ home cooking, however, was delicious. In spring there were rapeseed shoots, leafy greens, broad beans, and peas. What impressed me most were the fresh peas. They were wonderful. The rice in the countryside was newly harvested the previous year and had an extraordinary fragrance. In town, we ate rice that had been stored for several years, sometimes even more than ten, and it had none of the aroma of country rice. I learned that freshly harvested rice could smell so good—and that the crispy rice made from it smelled even better. Of course, we had also worked so hard and were so hungry that everything tasted wonderful. Even I, the “landlord Zhou Bapi,” joined the others in fighting for the crispy rice.

The hardest thing was bathing, because there was nowhere to do it. I think I may have bathed once. It was quite a production: we had to wash inside a room, which meant asking everyone else to leave. We sweated every day and were covered in mud, so all we could do was wipe ourselves down and change clothes. The girls had it a little better because they slept in rooms, but even they could not bathe every day.

And so, after one week, our agricultural-support assignment ended, and we returned home.

When school resumed, the entire school held a meeting to summarize the agricultural-support activities. The six of us students who had managed to join the teachers’ team were praised by the principal. When the class voted for the most active participants, all six of us were elected unanimously, without a single objection.

At the time, I felt that I had done something very daring. I was rather proud of myself. I felt that I had grown up a great deal and had become much more confident.

Written in 2018

 

Teacher Zou and his family

The first time I heard of Teacher Zou Shangchun was not long after the Cultural Revolution began in 1966. He lived in the faculty quarters of Zhijiang Normal School at Qili Bridge in Muyoupo. His family occupied one middle room  in the same row of one-story buildings as ours.

By then, the walls of Muyoupo were covered with big-character posters. Almost every teacher and school leader had been denounced by the Red Guards. Teacher Zou, of course, was among those subjected to criticism and struggle sessions.

The posters said that he had been born into a family of major capitalists, had attended a university in the old society, and was a reactionary academic authority. The Red Guards also dragged teachers through the streets. Teacher Zou was made to wear a placard reading “Reactionary Academic Authority,” and was paraded and struggled against alongside the other so-called “ox demons and snake spirits.”

One afternoon, I was playing near our home when I suddenly heard people shouting, “Teacher Zou is having an epileptic seizure!” As they shouted, they ran toward his room. Curious, I followed them.

The windows were very low, so from outside I could see Teacher Zou lying on the floor, foaming at the mouth and unconscious.

It was the first time I had heard the expression “epileptic seizure,” and I did not know what kind of illness it was. Someone said that people with epilepsy could not withstand emotional shocks and might have a seizure if they were subjected to one. Clearly, the struggle sessions had been too much for Teacher Zou and had triggered his attack.

After that, Teacher Zou disappeared from Muyoupo. Most likely, the Red Guards realized that this bookish man was neither a capitalist-roader nor guilty of any other “counterrevolutionary” activity. He also suffered from epilepsy, and they were afraid that their actions might result in his death. So they probably let him return to his home in town.

I saw Teacher Zou again three years later, when I moved back into town with Father and was placed with Teacher Feng Wei’s family. Teacher Zou and Teacher Feng lived in the same courtyard, with the Feng family on the southern side and the Zou family on the northern side.

By then, the violent, storm-like struggles of the early Cultural Revolution had passed, and society had become relatively calm. Teacher Zou was no longer under attack. He seemed quiet, composed, and perfectly normal.

Gradually, I began to learn something about him. He came from Tianjin. He was about 180 centimeters tall, with large eyes, a high nose, and thick, black hair. He spoke slowly and occasionally stammered. He had the unmistakable air of a scholar. At the time, he was a physics teacher at Zhijiang Normal School.

People said that his father had been a businessman and that the family had been relatively well off. After graduating from Nankai School, Teacher Zou entered Nankai University. After the outbreak of the War of Resistance against Japan, he went to the Southwest Associated University in Kunming. He must have been a fellow student of Yang Zhenning and Li Zhengdao because they studied in the same university at the same time with the same Physics.

Mrs. Zou was from Sichuan. She had graduated from the mathematics department of Sichuan University and was several years younger than her husband. She taught mathematics at Zhijiang No. 1 School.

They had three children: their eldest son, Zou Lin; their second child, a daughter named Zou Tong; and their youngest daughter, Zou Mei. All their names were connected with trees.

Zou Lin was seven or eight years older than I was. Before the Cultural Revolution, he had been one of the top students at Zhijiang No. 1 School, with outstanding grades. Influenced by his father, he could build crystal radios and other electrical devices on his own while still in middle school. He was extraordinarily talented and conducted himself well. Everyone believed that his admission to a prestigious university was a certainty.

In 1966, just as he graduated from high school and was preparing to take the university entrance examination, the Cultural Revolution began. From then on, his fate was completely transformed.

I knew little about Zou Tong. She was also a student at Zhijiang No. 1 School before the Cultural Revolution. Her grades may not have been as good as her brother’s, but she should have had no trouble getting into university. When the Cultural Revolution came, her university dream was shattered as well.

Zou Mei was the youngest, about three or four years older than I was. When the Cultural Revolution began, she had only recently graduated from elementary school.

By the time I was living with the Feng family, Zou Lin had become a worker at the Zhijiang Machinery Factory. Zou Tong had just been sent to the countryside as an educated youth, while Zou Mei remained at home.

The schools were closed, and Teacher and Mrs. Zou spent most of their time reading. Zou Tong rarely returned from the countryside, and Zou Lin was away at work during the day. Zou Mei also liked to read and would occasionally appear outside. Their home was always quiet.

Teacher Zou seemed completely relaxed at home. During the more than a year I lived with the Feng family, I never once saw him suffer another epileptic seizure.

Zou Mei was intelligent, highly competitive, and strong-willed. She had something of a tomboy’s temperament. Since she was three years older than I was, and a girl at that, we had little interaction.

Once, however, we got into an argument for some reason. Zou Mei was quick-witted and very good with words, and I could not outtalk her. In the heat of the moment, I called her “a capitalist’s dog’s offspring.”

This was a common insult during the Cultural Revolution. To call someone the child of a landlord or capitalist was to label that person a bad character—and to insult their parents at the same time.

Mrs. Zou, who had been inside the house, hurried out and called Zou Mei back.

Two days later, Mrs. Zou asked me to come to her home. In a calm and gentle manner, she explained her and Teacher Zou’s family backgrounds. She said that Teacher Zou’s family had not been capitalists. They had merely operated a small business, and they were honest people who had never harmed anyone. Her own family had been made up of intellectuals and certainly had not been capitalist either.

She hoped I would never again call them capitalists.

I felt deeply ashamed and apologized immediately. I explained that I had spoken out of momentary anger and promised never to say such a thing again.

Mrs. Zou also mentioned that Teacher Zou was a bookworm who knew nothing but reading. Once, when everyone else had fled, he had remained at home in Tianjin with his books, unaware that the Japanese had already entered the city. Only later did he find a way to escape and make his way to the Southwest Associated University in Kunming.

I do not know whether that experience frightened him so badly that it triggered his epilepsy, or whether the illness had some other cause.

After Zhijiang School resumed classes, Mrs. Zou taught me mathematics for half a semester. Her lessons were clearly organized, and she spoke very slowly, which made everything easy to understand. Teacher Zou also briefly returned to teaching high-school physics.

Zou Mei was one grade above me at that time and extremely active, especially on the track. She came first in the sixty-meter and hundred-meter races for her grade, and also won the four-by-one-hundred-meter relay. A “Zou whirlwind” swept across the track, and she became a star known to everyone in the school.

When the university entrance examination was restored in 1977, Zou Mei took it and was admitted to the Chinese department of Hunan Normal College, now Hunan Normal University.

I was surprised that Zou Lin did not take the examination that year. I do not know whether Zou Tong took it.

I heard that after working for several years following graduation, Zou Mei took the postgraduate entrance examination. After completing graduate school, she made arrangements to study in Britain. In short, she remained as competitive, hardworking, and determined as ever, giving everything she had to whatever she undertook.

I entered the chemistry department of Peking University in 1978. A year later, in the spring of 1979, we began studying organic chemistry. Our professor was Zhang Pang.

Professor Zhang had studied at Yenching University in his early years and graduated from the Southwest Associated University. He later studied in Britain and earned a doctorate in chemistry from Cambridge University. In 1949, he returned to China and became a professor at Yenching University. After the science departments of Yenching were incorporated into Peking University, he became a professor in its chemistry department.

Professor Zhang was learned and rigorous in his scholarship. He dressed impeccably, and every gesture and movement conveyed the manner of an English gentleman.

His professional knowledge was not the only thing that impressed people. His English was also excellent. At that time, China had just begun opening its doors, and many foreign scholars and professors were coming to lecture. But good interpreters were scarce.

Professor Zhang often interpreted for visiting foreign chemistry professors, and his method was distinctive. Normally, a foreign professor would speak one sentence, and the interpreter standing nearby would immediately render it in Chinese. Professor Zhang, however, would sit below and listen while the foreign professor completed an entire topic—perhaps several minutes or even ten minutes. Then he would go to the front and explain the content in Chinese.

He translated by meaning rather than word for word, and he conveyed everything with remarkable precision. The foreign professors were presenting the latest research. Only someone like Professor Zhang, with a strong professional background, a close knowledge of current research, and an excellent command of Chinese and the ability to reorganize material clearly, could have done this. Everyone who heard him interpret praised him without reservation.

Professor Zhang generally did not teach introductory courses to undergraduates, but he made an exception for the Class of 1977. He wore a suit and polished leather shoes that shone brightly. He arrived in the classroom a few minutes before class began and arranged the material according to his own understanding, in an order unlike that of any textbook.

He had a brief set of lecture notes printed for us, containing several representative chemical equations. In class, he explained everything around those equations. He hoped students would not take notes, but would simply listen attentively.

Yet among the more than one hundred students, I was the only one who did not take notes. Everyone else was afraid of missing even a single sentence. Every sentence Professor Zhang spoke had been carefully considered. His language was concise and exact.

Whenever he finished the day’s lecture and said, “Class dismissed,” the bell would ring a few seconds, ten seconds, or half a minute later, he calculated his lecture time accurately in less than 30 seconds.

Around the third week, after one class had ended, Professor Zhang stood at the front of the room, took out a small slip of paper, and called loudly, “Who is Shang Lewei?”

Everyone was startled. We looked at one another, unable to understand why the stern Professor Zhang was looking for me.

I nervously walked up to him and said, “I am.”

Seeing that I was tense, he immediately smiled and said, “Your neighbor, Teacher Zou Shangchun, has come to Beijing. Do you know him?”

I nodded.

Then he said, “We were classmates at the Southwest Associated University. We met yesterday. He told me that his neighbor’s child had been admitted to Peking University’s chemistry department, and that his name was Shang Lewei. I told him that, as it happened, I was teaching organic chemistry to the Class of 1977. I said I would ask around for him the next day. He wants to see you. Here is his address. Go and visit him.”

I said I would.

Professor Zhang then asked me how Teacher Zou had come to Zhijiang. I told him I did not know. All I knew was that Teacher Zou had already been in Zhijiang when I was very young.

Professor Zhang said, “I hadn’t seen him for several decades, and I had no idea where he had gone.”

The next day, I followed the address and went to see Teacher Zou. He was staying with one of his former classmates. He had come to Beijing especially to visit classmates in Beijing and Tianjin.

We talked for a long time, and I was very grateful that he still remembered me.

During the summer vacation, I returned to Zhijiang and made a special visit to the little courtyard. Teacher Zou was delighted to see me, and we talked for a long time.

His room was filled with various physics instruments. He said that from time to time he conducted physical experiments simply because he found them interesting. I listened as he talked about Newton, Einstein, relativity, elementary particles, and other subjects.

It was clear that he was still following developments in physics and remained deeply interested in the field. A physics teacher of such high ability had spent very little of his life teaching at the front of a classroom, because of political circumstances and his health problems.

For many years afterward, I rarely returned to Zhijiang. When I did, my visits were always hurried, and I had no time to see Teacher or Mrs. Zou.

In 2015, when I returned home to visit my seriously ill parents, I made a point of asking about them. A friend told me that Teacher Zou had died several years earlier, but Mrs. Zou was still alive.

The old courtyard had long since been demolished, and she had moved into the dormitory building of Zhijiang No. 2 School.

I found her home, but Mrs. Zou had gone out for a walk. Zou Lin was there. He had changed very little. Although he was older, I recognized him immediately.

While waiting for Mrs. Zou to return, I talked with Zou Lin. I learned that the Zhijiang Machinery Factory had gone bankrupt long ago. He had later moved to another work unit but had already retired. Since retiring, he had stayed home to care for his parents and was now living with his mother.

I asked him why he had not taken the university entrance examination in 1977.

He said that the central government’s decision to restore the examination had come rather late. He had been away from his studies for ten years and needed time to pick them up again. He had a job, and if he kept working, there would not be enough time to prepare. If he resigned, time would still be tight, and if he failed the examination, he would have lost his job as well.

On top of that, his father’s health was poor and someone needed to look after him. He had therefore hesitated and ultimately decided not to take the examination.

I asked whether he regretted not going to university.

He admitted that he did regret it, but said that this was simply how fate had arranged things. He had long since come to terms with it.

A highly gifted young man had been ruined by history. Yet he did not blame heaven or anyone else. He faced the matter calmly. That, too, was a kind of wisdom. Too many people liked him in China.

He looked healthy. He had not gained weight, and his hair had not turned gray. He did not look like a man in his sixties. He had a wife and children, and his child was already independent. His life was peaceful.

Mrs. Zou returned. She was in her nineties. Although she had become physically frail, she could still go out for walks, which suggested that her health was reasonably good. I was very happy that she had lived to such an advanced age.

I talked with her for a while. Her face was serene, and she still spoke very slowly. Her energy had diminished, but her mind remained clear.

It was almost time to eat. Zou Lin asked me to stay for a meal before leaving, but I quickly rose and said goodbye.

 

Written in 2018.