Apr 29 2008
Zhongguancun #2 Primary School II
Li Dongjiu was our principal at time - that’s 1970s, the little compact lady who sported 阴阳头 only half head of hair was cut, courtesy of her former students during the Cultural Revolution but nevertheless came to guild us with steel hands.
It’s was a cold February morning, I went to school with Aunt Spalding to see her. I just came back from Tianjin, was in the middle of my fourth grade there where the school cycle started in the summer. One look at me - FOB from Tianjin - Madam Li announced slowly, “you can start from the fourth grade.” Was she thinking to put me in third grade?
Due to Mom’s suicide, I’ve been alternating schools between Beijing and Tianjin, and repeated grade due to different starting cycles. I wasn’t pleased. Timidly, I asked if I could try fifth grade instead. Not before reminded me that Tianjin’s kind of, well, not to par with the capital, she eventually agreed two weeks trial.
It was a cake work. So the rest was history. So She started English class in 5th grade, only once a week. That’s well before emperor Mao died. English teachers were in short supply, we ended up learned the 27th and 28th alphabets. Many parents are English proficients, so we came back to school the following day questioning her. It turned out, she majored in Russian, :).
On our first English final, we tested oral and written separately. What’s there to test was beyond me given the fact we had one class per week. I was first to call to the English teacher’s office for oral. She muttered some foreign words and we were supposed to answered it in Chinese.
“Boy.” She said as soon I as sat down.
I looked at other teachers in the room.
“Boy.” She repeated.
I looked out of the window. My bird brain was working very hard, trying to come up a correct answer.
“Boy.” She looked bored.
Oh boy, I gave up. I told you we never talked about boys, my generation any way.
“Girl.” She flipped a page. Gege as brother? Why there are so many foreign words? :))
I left the office in defeat, only scored 80 for my oral but managed 100 for written part. Don’t ask me what I scribed down. Our written exam was watched by our physical ed teacher who didn’t know a word of English. Li Zhanjiang was a rascal, not that he wasn’t smart, just he liked to use his energy elsewhere. Only 15 minutes into our hour long exam, he handed in his answer sheet. We were all dumb founded, because he was always the last one to hand in his sheet. And impressed, might he knew something that we didn’t. When I finished mine and went to the front yard where Li was playing. He bragged, “oh, that’s easy. I just repeatedly wrote the 26 alphabets randomly.. she [the phy ed teacher] doesn’t know any way .. ” He had a point. You can’t do that with Chinese, :).