by Andy Zhang

Spring in my hometown of Harbin is often frigid. Layers of ice had begun to melt. On the soggy ground, there were small footprints left by us—a group of second graders who were lucky enough to have a school to go to. Because many schools were destroyed and many teachers were tortured to death during the Cultural Revolution, each student had gone through vigorous testing before being admitted to the elementary school. In China , millions of children had no school to attend that year.

There were several reasons for me to be happy that spring. First, my mother, Mama, allowed me to peel off one layer of clothing every other week. I began to feel thankful for the warming weather. Second, and more importantly, the government finally cleared our names from false allegations against our family. Any family with ties to relatives living in non-communist countries was considered counterrevolutionary. My father, Baba, had a brother who lived overseas. He was accused of being a “capitalist spy” and a “loyalist to the bourgeoisie.”

For years, we lived in deep fear and under 24-hour surveillance by our Communist-party-member neighbor, who lived next door. Our daily conversations were compiled into reports collected by the government and all of us in our family were outcast in our community. No child in the neighborhood wanted to play with me. We were shunned by them as if we had the plague. Even though our daily life changed very little, our spirits began to soar with the rising temperature that spring, when the government declared our innocence after the Cultural Revolution ended.

Food was still in short supply. My lunchbox often contained half the amount of food I needed. However, that was the ration our government imposed on everyone except high-ranking Communist officials. It was kind of strange for me to finally find myself having equal status as the other students who were my age at school.

My childhood was full of humiliations from other children in our neighborhood. They called me “the son of a spy.” Their gazes wounded me even more, like sharp objects pierced into my skin. For days and months in the classroom, I was expecting someone to stand up and call me the same words from my neighborhood, but nobody ever did. I finally felt relief that spring, after I became a second grader, when the Revolution was over and our past started being forgotten and dropped by people around us.

Our principal was an old man with a long nose and gray hair. He resolved to find us an English teacher for our school. “It is easier to learn a foreign language when they are young,” he said in a hoarse voice followed by a dry cough. Many teachers soon found the idea unrealistic saying, “Nobody has been allowed to study English for over a decade. It is impossible to find someone who knows English.” Other teachers also expressed doubts, “What’s the use in learning a foreign language when our nation has no connection to the outside world? We became enemies with our neighbors in the Soviet Union . The only nations we are still close to are Bulgaria , North Korea and Cuba .”

No one expected our principal’s vision would be realized until one day a young woman showed up in our classroom. She looked too young to be a teacher. Her face resembled a high school girl. The only thing that made her look more mature were her glasses. “Look at her glasses,” I murmured to my friend. “They are as thick as coke bottles. I have never seen anything like that.” Her dark brown suit was very elegant. Its quality and style wasn’t something we could find in China in those days.

She was my first English teacher. Our principal said she had just graduated from Oxford University in the United Kingdom and had been the only Chinese student in her classes there. “We are lucky she came back to China and volunteered to teach English in our school. It’s a true miracle. Many of the best schools in Beijing have no such luck.”

As it turned out, my English class was extremely boring and disappointing. Day after day, we learned the alphabet and words. There was no fun, only memorization. Two weeks later, our first exam came. Although I could read and write many Chinese words, it was difficult for me to learn English at first. Our English teacher was very strict with us and a few of us began to rebel. I joined a group of three other boys and we skipped the English class. While other students were learning more English words, we were playing marbles on a deserted field near the school, chasing wild geese, and making hats with leaves and branches.

Right before I could slip through our school’s front gate for another play session, my English teacher grabbed my left arm. “Follow me to my office,” she said sternly. As soon as we arrived in her office, I was certain she was going to leave me there for the rest of the day until Baba picked me up. Knowing how much Baba valued education, he would be furious. When she closed the door behind her, I had difficulty breathing. “Sit down,” she said.

I sat down on a chair near the window. My pulse quickened.

“You may not understand the importance of learning a foreign language,” she explained, “but if you continue to waste your time, you will regret it when you grow up. Ignorance was considered bliss during the Cultural Revolution, but those times are changing. When you grow up, our country will become more connected to other nations and without a foreign language, you cannot communicate with others. I don’t want to force you to learn it, but I want to see you try your best.”

I was speechless.

“I am willing to spend an extra half-hour with you after school to help you catch up. You have missed quite a lot of material now. You can bring other students along, too.”

It wasn’t the punishment I expected, but for some reason, it was weightier than any punishment I had ever had.

She was certainly the most patient person I had ever met. For hours each week, she repeated each English word many times until I could pronounce it just the same as she did. I tried to persuade my friends to join me, but they declined. “I think it is more useful to learn Japanese rather than English,” said one of the boys who always had smart excuses for everything. “At least Japan is closer to us,” he added. Months later, the English class began to feel more fun as we began to compose simple sentences such as “I like orange.”

On our blackboard, the teacher wrote a few words for us to use to compose more sentences, then turned around. “Any volunteers?” For the very first time in my English class, I raised my hand. Her eyes sparked with joy as she called my name immediately.

“He like apples,” I said.

“Very good,” she responded as she began to write on the blackboard. “The only thing I would change is to add an ‘s’ so the sentence becomes ‘He likes apples.’”

After she wrote down the sentence, her face turned red and her hands trembled a little. “I am very overjoyed that you have begun to learn and participate in my class. This is not a small feat,” she said.

I was stunned by her reaction. She looked like she was the happiest person on earth. The rest of that class became a blur as I maintained my state of shock.

When class was over, I summoned courage to talk to her. I climbed up the stairs and stepped into her office. She was sitting in front of her desk, holding and staring at two pictures without even noticing my presence. When I was less than a few feet away from her, she looked up.
“Come closer,” she said, “I want to show you these pictures.”

She moved the first picture closer to me. It was a gentleman who stood in front of a pine tree holding a little girl in his arms. “This is my father and me. He risked his own life and smuggled me and my mother out of China so I could learn. The border guards shot him to death but we escaped to Hong Kong .” I felt a chill run up my spine. I could hardly imagine what it would be like for her to see her own father killed.

Then she showed me the second picture. It was a picture of her and she was wearing a gown. A tall foreigner was handing a roll of paper to her. “This was my graduation from Oxford ,” she said gently. “I decided to teach English to more children in China , so they could see the outside world one day.”

Many years later, I became the first person in my family to speak fluent English. I have received advanced degrees in the United States , and traveled to more places than all my siblings. My childhood memories begin to fade and I cannot even recall her name. But I can still see her eyes. Those pair of eyes lit up with joy and encouragement every time I spoke an English sentence. Through her eyes, I saw unrelenting hope. The hope for myself, my family, our people, and China .