Book Synopsis
Book Tags
Donation Rankings
Comment
0 Comments
You May Also Like
墨書 Inktalez
On September 1, 1976, my mother took me through the threshold of Osmanthus Primary School, marking the beginning of my formal education.
Our school was established in the late Qing Dynasty, housed in the Long ancestral hall. The main entrance was constructed from massive stone blocks, featuring tall stone-carved columns and a lintel. However, the large characters on the lintel that read "Long Ancestral Hall" had long been replaced by the members of the Cultural Revolution with "Osmanthus Primary School." In this hall filled with many symbols, two platoons of about forty to fifty children embarked on their journey of enlightenment.
Our curriculum included textbooks for Chinese language and arithmetic, while subjects like singing, art, and physical education did not have assigned textbooks.
The Chinese language is the most contemporary of all, as it neither teaches the "Three Character Classic" or "Hundred Family Surnames" like during the Republic of China era, nor does it follow the learning methods of my siblings' early education with "upper, middle, lower" and "population hands." Instead, the first lesson of school begins with "Long live Chairman Mao," followed by "Long live the Chinese Communist Party" in the second lesson.
Faced with these ten unfamiliar Chinese characters, my classmates and I endured many difficulties together. For children just beginning their education, these characters were truly hard to understand and even harder to write. I was fortunate to benefit from my mother's early teaching; months before school started, she had already taught me to practice writing these ten characters in the dirt with a twig or a small stick, so I didn’t struggle much.
The teachers were local farmers who had not received specialized training in phonetics. They spoke in the local dialect, and even when they painstakingly pronounced each character, anyone from outside our small area would find it difficult to understand. As a result, my classmates never managed to speak Mandarin well.
Writing and reciting were the two main tools of our Chinese language teacher. Since we were still young and our families were quite poor at that time, the tools we used for writing varied greatly. Some used pencils, while others had sharpened sticks dipped in ink; however, no one used fountain pens. Those who did were considered state cadres. If someone wore a shirt with two pockets and had a fountain pen tucked inside, they were definitely a high-ranking cadre. It was absolutely impossible for a newly enrolled elementary student to use a fountain pen.
As for reciting, there was a vivid saying called "shouting like an eagle." Usually, the teacher would lead the reading, or a classmate would take on the task. Most students wouldn’t bother to look at the textbook; they would just mumble along. Those who paid a bit more attention might be able to discern what was being read, but they hardly cared about how to write it down. The lazier ones wouldn’t even pay attention to what was being read; they would simply open their mouths and pretend to participate.
Arithmetic was relatively standard, starting with the ten Arabic numerals and gradually learning addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Its characteristic of the era was reflected in its name: it was called arithmetic rather than mathematics. For us children, studying was merely a form of government care; we couldn’t regard it as a serious subject. It was enough to understand some basic calculation skills. Most of our parents hoped that sending their children to school would help them recognize their own names, but more importantly, they wanted us to learn numbers and basic calculations. For instance, at the end of each year, when the production team conducted its accounting, it was crucial to know how many tasks had been completed and how many work points had been earned. This knowledge would determine how much grain and ration tickets one could receive. A relative who understood addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division was essential; otherwise, one could only rely on the figures provided by the team’s cadre without any certainty about their accuracy.
Singing, on the teacher's curriculum, it might be called music, but in the eyes of us students, it was simply singing. This class only had one session a week, and the teacher probably had no formal music education; all we learned was one thing: singing. At that time, we couldn't just sing any song; there were no pop songs, folk songs, or rock songs. I remember that throughout our entire First Grade, we only learned one song: "The East is Red, the sun rises, China has produced a Mao Zedong..."
Drawing, there was indeed a subject for it, but until I graduated from elementary school, I only learned to draw one thing—steps—and that was after learning a bit about points, lines, and planes in geometry. None of my classmates could draw anything interesting; only a child from next door, who was three or four years older than us, could bring characters from comic strips to life. Everyone regarded him as an "artist," yet no one asked him how he learned or who taught him.
Physical Education, rather than being a subject, was more like "letting off steam" or "herding sheep." At that time, there were almost no sports equipment; among the hundreds of students across five grades in the school, there seemed to be only two or three basketballs. Next to the osmanthus tree on the playground stood a crooked basketball hoop, but it was mostly occupied by older students. We young children who had just begun our education didn't even dare to dream of using them.
We all looked forward to Physical Education class because it was basically a time for us to engage in free activities, without having to read those incomprehensible textbooks, sing those songs with uncertain pronunciations, or draw those sloppy scribbles that left us covered in ink. What child wouldn't be happy? Once Physical Education class started, we could gather in groups of three or five, either climbing the osmanthus tree by the playground and jumping down from the branches like dangling gourds, or chasing each other around the empty space on campus, even engaging in mock battles. Of course, most of the time we played group or competitive games.
During our formative years, student life was so dull that the curriculum felt uninteresting, and teachers seemed reluctant, leading everyone to harbor a dislike for school and develop various petty thoughts.
The first thing that came to mind was the restroom, usually during self-study periods. Students would form small groups to ask the class monitor or group leader for permission to go to the bathroom, then quickly dash out of the classroom. Once outside, they would slow down their pace to take steps that could crush many ants, trying to delay their time as much as possible on the way to the restroom. By the time they arrived there, they might squeeze out a drop or two of urine or perhaps just turn around at the restroom door. One time, during a class that lasted forty-five minutes, I ended up going to the bathroom five times, and I wasn't even the one who went the most among my classmates.
Another reason was to fetch water, mainly used during the summer. Due to the hot weather, the teacher assigned a small water tank for each class, but there was no well at the school. Two students had to take a bucket and a wooden stick to fetch water from a nearby well, which became a focal point of competition among everyone, and eventually, they had to take turns.
There were mainly two wells near the school. One was located by the yard of Jiujiantang, just about a hundred steps away from the school; the other was at the foot of Old Shrimp Ridge, which measured about three to five hundred steps by our children's feet. To spend more time outdoors, almost all the water fetchers chose the well by the mountain and even concocted reasons claiming that the water there tasted better.
The most intense expression of this was skipping school, typically done by particularly mischievous children whose families didn’t pay much attention to them. In the morning, after having breakfast at home, they would meticulously organize their books and stationery before slinging their backpacks over their shoulders and stepping out of the house. As they walked along the way to school with three or four friends, one or two would suddenly go missing along the way.
Where did they go?
Classmates who disappear on flat ground generally hide in the small hills by the road, climb trees to catch insects, or play together. When all the classmates are done with school, they will join the line to go home. Their friends all know what's going on, and no one will report them, as long as they don't skip school for many consecutive days. The teacher is also too lazy to ask each parent about it.
Comment 0 Comment Count