读书与我

文/伊卷舒

I learned English when I was about 8, not from school, but from the father of my friend, Jing-tian. They lived next door.

English was not offered in school at the time I grew up in China in the early 1970s’. Neither was much else. The only classes taught at the elementary school were Chinese and mathematics, and sometimes music and physical education.

It so happened that the University where my parents worked was closed, and both of my parents had been sent to labor camps. The campus looked empty with only youngsters running around, the only ones still staying in the faculty apartment buildings. Libraries were closed because books and magazines were under scrutiny for anti-revolutionary ideas; museums and child centers were not open. Though a few stores remained open, many things were rationed because they were so scarce. Since the entire country was closed to the rest of the world, everyone believed that there was no need to learn English.

In the months after my parents were sent away, things grew even worse, as I found myself to be picked on and mocked by the neighborhood kids, after my dad was categorized as a rightist and taken to the labor camp furthest from the city. I watched, lonely, as other kids played games in the yard, like jump-rope, hopscotch, and hide and seek. Sometimes I became the targets of catapult bullets, which left me bruises, and yet I could not tell which direction the catapult bullets came from.

Jing-tian was my only friend. She was a quiet girl with pale skin and two braided pigtails. She was in a similar situation, but for a different reason. Jing-tian and her family had been diagnosed with TB a couple of years ago. Jing-tian’s Dad, Mr. Han, a professor in the English department, was just about the only adult I knew who was not sent down to a labor camp. Perhaps that was because he walked with a cane, or maybe because of his TB.

One day Jing-tian and I were playing with building blocks at their dining table. Though we had grown out of blocks a long time ago, the blocks were the only toy we had. Professor Han asked if I wanted to learn English with Jing-tian so that we two girls could practice English together.

I nodded without knowing what I was getting into. I did not have much homework, no extra-curricular activities, and no games. The only activity I had was on weekends when I made the trip to the suburbs to pick mulberry leaves for the silkworms I was rearing.

On the day of our first English lesson, Professor Han made sure that their apartment door was locked well. Then he went to his bookshelf, removed several red-covered books of Chairman Mao’s quotations and Mao’s selected works, stretched his arm to the far end of the bookshelf, and reached for an old book with curling corners and a dark brown cover.

I immediately liked the cover. It was impressive. The word “English” was quite small, while 900 was huge and repeated three times in different colors. Professor Han said it was an old version of English 900 by the Macmillan Publishing Company of the USA. There were 900 sentences, Professor Han explained, most of which were conversational. If we knew all of them, we could go to any foreign country and survive well.

The first lesson had only one word, “Hello.” That was amazing. I liked the pronunciation of “HELLO,” both “Hi” and “Low” sounded rising in tune and pleasant. The best part was that HELLO could be used to greet everyone. In China, we had to greet different people with different titles. For the elderly, for example, we had to use words of respect whereas for people of the same age, we had to use something else. In contrast, “Hello” in English could be used for everyone. It sounded like one treated all people as equals. If people were greeted in the same way, that meant they were all the same.

What was even more fascinating was the second sentence, “Good morning /afternoon/evening.” In China, depending on the time of the day, we greeted each other by saying: “Did you eat breakfast? Did you eat your lunch? Did you have supper?” My grandpa came to take care of me and my younger siblings after both of my parents were sent to the labor camps. My grandpa had glaucoma, and could hardly see. He also had a hernia so he could not move around very much. He could cook rice, and, on a good day, go to the farmer’s market for vegetables. So for us, meals became an irregular thing, and we never knew for sure when the food would be ready. I quickly found that the English greeting served me well. I could say “Good Morning,” and it didn’t matter if I had breakfast or not. “Good afternoon” and “Good Evening” had nothing to do with if I actually had lunch or supper, or when I had it. How much embarrassment and hesitation was eased with just one greeting. I liked English.

Professor Han always sat at the chair in front of his desk, always ready to give us another lesson. With each new lesson, he would go through the same process -- closing the door, moving the red books away from his bookshelf and reaching deep inside to pull out the precious book.

As days passed, Jing-tian and I learned more and more words and memorized them quickly. Each sentence became a piece in a puzzle. The more we knew, the more fascinating the puzzle became. What that puzzle showed us was a huge picture of a world full of color, life, peace and freedom. We could “Talk about Activities,” which was Section Two of the book, “Talk about the Past” in Lesson Eight of Section Two, and “Ask for Help” and “Plan the Future.” There were fruits, like apples, pears and bananas, restaurants, beautiful gardens, sports, movie theaters, dancing, watching TV, even the music of different kinds, pop, jazz, classical and rock …

Each sentence added a fresh dimension to the new world unfolding before me and lifted me from the reality in which I felt depressed and helpless. The English I learned also seemed to be a secret weapon I possessed, which helped me guard myself against mistreatment by others. I felt empowered with each new sentence of the 900. My self-confidence grew. I began to feel as though I had climbed to the top of a giant wall and caught a glimpse of the forbidden world on the other side. Most importantly, learning English turned my young days of despair into days full of hope and anticipation.

Both Jing-tian and I couldn’t wait to finish the book, and finally we got to the last sentence. The 900th sentence is, “How much do you know about the works of George Eliot?”

We had no clue who George Eliot was. I looked at Jing-tian and she looked at me. I did not want to disappoint Professor Han, so I answered, “He must be an American writer.”

Professor Han shook his head, “No, she was a British writer.”

At that moment, I had a realization that there was still so much to learn. I had wanted to finish English 900 and be armed with the knowledge about western countries like the United States and England. It was then that I understood that I had a long way to go.

Professor Han taught us two more books, Aesop’s Fables and Grimm’s Fairy Tales, using the same ritual: taking the old copies from behind the red-covered books of Chairman Mao and from a corner of his bookshelves. Later, I traded the stamps my Dad collected for years to get permission to the apartment of a 15 year old boy upstairs. Hidden in the corner of the bookshelf and wrapped in red covers, I found The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy and War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.

Jing-tian and I even tried to “bribe” the doorman of the closed library with candies, very similar to Trick or Treat here at Halloween. We snuck into the library and “borrowed” Meeting at Night, a book of poems by Robert Browning and The O. Henry Short Story Collection.

I felt each English book pulled me out from the desert I had gotten stuck in and the desperate situation I had been pushed into. I gained, book by book, the things taken away from me, like the pleasure to be treated as an equal, the smiling faces and kind words from other kids, and adults as well. Most of all, I felt, just as Sherman Alexie described feeling about the power of literacy in his essay “Superman and Me”, “I was smart. I was arrogant. I was lucky…I loved those books, but I also knew that the love had only one purpose. I was trying to save my life” .

The day finally came when, after the years of chaos, the universities re-opened, and thanks to my high score on the English test, I became a college student entering a prestigious university.

To satisfy my curiosity of western society from those childhood days, I longed to travel abroad. I also developed a strong desire to study in an American college, so I took both the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) and the GRE. To my great surprise and pleasure, I was accepted by my dream school and was granted a full scholarship from the Harvard-Yanjing Institute for 5 years.

Every line from English 900 set me on my journey to the West. The English language seems to carry a secret code by itself, which constantly presents the fundamental principles of western society -- liberty, equality, fraternity. These basic principles in life, which I had been searching for and approaching from the other side of the earth, are so crucial to me, who had grown up being deprived of most of them. Most importantly, along the way I discovered that learning is the most powerful way to save people from difficult situations, and give them hope and expectations. As long as there are books - and men and women, old and young, who love books, there will always be hope… and I know firsthand that the hope can become reality...

百年电影院天棚上的手绘画

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