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.