Due to the extraordinary period of epidemic prevention in COVID-19 from years ago to now, I was told on the phone that I couldn't go to the memorial service for a farewell trip. In addition, as an old colleague and neighbor of that year, my mother heard the bad news at lunch, and then looked at the mourning messages from time to time from her classmates, I felt that there was a kind of helplessness and regret that I could do nothing but secretly grieve.
Fortunately, memory is a key to open the years, and it is also the most comforting medicine at this moment. It makes those forgotten pictures swirl in my mind like movies, and at the same time, it makes the warmth I felt in my youth flow into my heart like a stream.
For our special generation of educated youth children who returned to Shanghai, their feelings for teachers in their youth are not only pure and natural, but also sincere and enthusiastic, and of course very special.
Due to historical reasons, that year, a large number of Xinjiang educated youth returned to Shanghai with their families and came to Haifeng Farm, which belongs to Shanghai Farm Bureau. This farm, located in Dafeng County, Jiangsu Province, is more than 400 kilometers away from Shanghai, but it is much closer than the long journey back to Shanghai from Xinjiang, and of course it is much closer to carrying parents' dreams of their children's future growth.
Following the turbulent life experience of parents, many of our children have a special sense of identity and closeness to this strange new environment. At that time, the families of different agricultural reclamation corps in Xinjiang were rearranged to different districts and brigades. The little friends who played together in Xinjiang or the new partners they just met, because they went to school together, immediately began a carefree and beautiful time in this new world.
I clearly remember that the first time I reported to school was 1982 in late October. The heavy rain that day made me never forget the scene of walking on the muddy gravel road against the strong wind.
After arriving at the farm for two days, on the third day, like other newly installed households, my father sent my sister and me to the primary school in the district as required. When I stood in a row with my new classmates assigned to Class 5 and Class 2 in front of the podium of a dilapidated classroom, I held my breath for the first time, listened to the welcome speech of the teacher next to me and stole a look at our new head teacher.
This is the first time I have seen Mr. Huang's scene, because I have had the experience of going back and forth between Xinjiang and Shanghai before. During this period, none of the three primary schools that transferred to school met a male teacher as the head teacher. Although my father is also a middle school teacher in Xinjiang, I still can't help but have the impression that male teachers are strict and rigid.
Just as I was thinking, a sudden burst of applause brought me back to a sober state, and the original short welcoming ceremony was over. After the monitor Wang led us to our seats, we began our first class. I don't remember the specific content of the Chinese class that day, but I remember Mr. Huang's serious expression and good Mandarin intonation when reading the text. In this way, I began to be lucky enough to be taught by Mr. Huang for four years.
Soon, it seems to be the second day of the final exam. The Chinese class that day was a paper composition review. I remember that the title of the composition was "A Little Thing". I wrote a little thing when I lived in my grandfather's house in Shanghai in the third grade. It's roughly like learning from Lei Feng and returning the wallet to its original owner. When my composition was rated as a model essay by Mr. Huang, I felt a little embarrassed and flattered. Maybe it's because I was praised as a new classmate, and also because I always like reading books and taking Chinese classes. Since then, with the gradual integration into the new learning environment, I got rid of the initial embarrassment and began to particularly like Mr. Huang's Chinese class. Later, when Mr. Huang discovered my painting specialty and asked me to take part in the finishing of the blackboard newspaper after class, I couldn't help but feel confident because of this encouragement, and I was more motivated to learn.
After the winter vacation the following year, the farm became vivid and beautiful after the spring blossoms, and the scenery was beautiful. Rape flowers and blue sky set each other off in the vertically and horizontally separated farmland plots, and the flowers and plants on both sides of the ridge are dotted with pastoral poetry. At that time, we just looked at our parents' hard work in confusion, but we were carefree and refused to let go of our happy childhood. At that time, as a graduating class of primary school, we didn't have any pre-test anxiety in this era. Instead, we climb trees to pick fruits and fish and play hide-and-seek in the river. Even if we help our parents feed their own chickens and ducks or tie grass knots (a kind of firewood in the earthen stove where every household in the local countryside boils water and cooks), we still play like a house.
What impressed me most was that with every family buying bicycles as a necessary means of transportation, many parents began to allow our children to learn to ride bicycles. Although adult bicycle seats often make our height far behind, riding on pedals or even on tripods still makes some students who first learned to ride bicycles proud.
The graduation exam is coming soon. I remember it seems that Children's Day is coming. It was the last Children's Day in primary school, so the school bulletin board and the class blackboard newspaper had to be decorated.
I remember that it was Sunday's rest day, and I was busy with several classmates who were called to school by teachers and counselors for nearly an afternoon. After the dissolution, somehow, I rode a bicycle stolen from home by a child and was in a corner of the school with several children in the management department. Anyway, it is because everyone is eager after learning to drive, so riding a few laps in turn is also an addiction. But I didn't go far after I got on the bus last. Because of my poor skills and guilty hands, I accidentally tripped at a corner. Luckily, the car was fine, but I grazed my knee. My little friend was still a little nervous when he saw the bleeding, so he accompanied me to the teacher to see if anyone was on duty in the infirmary. When we looked out of the window at the teacher's office, suddenly Miss Huang's voice came from behind our ears-"What are you children doing? Why not go home and study hard? " After hearing our explanation with trepidation, we looked at each other. Teacher Huang asked the other students to go back first, and then took me to the frontier health center to put on some mercurochrome for simple dressing. I wanted to take me home by bike, but fortunately I met my dad who came to pick me up when I went out. I sat on my dad's bike rack and watched them push the bike side by side for a while, as if they were still chatting happily. Not only are they a little confused, this is the first time. Maybe it's all about being a teacher. I'm thinking to myself, I'm probably talking about study and school performance.
Anyway, there is no pressure for the primary school graduation exam, and everyone will naturally enter Yuan Wah Middle School in our district. Although my grades were average in my father's eyes, he didn't criticize me much. After I was promoted to Grade One, I was assigned to Class One. The class teacher is still Mr. Huang, and the students are mainly four classes at the same level in primary school. According to the graduation exam results, I rearranged the class and added a small number of students who moved to the farm with their parents during the summer vacation. The day before school starts, my father told me that Mr. Huang is still your head teacher. Study hard for three years in junior high school, and don't be lazy again. After graduation, I will be admitted to a key high school in Shanghai, and I will live up to my parents' expectations. I have drawn up the requirements for exam ranking and reward and punishment measures.
However, for me who didn't like going back to my parents noisily because of my grandparents, at that time I just naively thought that going back to my parents meant that I would never be separated from my parents again but live together for a lifetime. Other children don't have this desire and yearning to live away from their parents and return to the city. There are many worries about returning to Shanghai that I don't like after three years, especially living at my grandparents' home, except subconscious rejection and resistance.
If the performance of the first semester of Grade One is fairly satisfactory, then the performance of the second semester of Grade One begins to have some ups and downs or even retrogression.
I remember that after the mid-term exam, my math test score seemed to be only 83, far below my dad's standard of 95. At that time, for fear of being criticized, I did a stupid thing that many children thought was very smart at that age. I tried to muddle through by pretending to be an adult's handwriting signature to correct the paper, and the result was, of course, scolded by my father who was about to transfer to a middle school to restore his teacher status. My father has never lost such a big temper. He told me to get out of the house and even gave me a chestnut when I talked back, hitting me hard on the head. When I was stubborn and stupid, I was kicked by my father when I was holding my schoolbag and preparing to go out. Although I was not kicked because of my mother's justifying a fault, I still slammed the door in tears.
It was not until about an hour later that my mother and my next-door neighbor, Mr. Wang, found me staring at the moon from the small bridge near the village entrance with a flashlight, then took me home to apologize to my father, and then wrote a letter of guarantee to have dinner before the storm stopped. This was the only experience of being beaten in my life.
The next day, according to my father's request, I went to school to hand in the revised paper, and took advantage of the break to punish me for copying the exercise paper and another self-criticism book ten times (as if I wrote a postscript from my father below to the effect that Mr. Huang should be more disciplined and take pains to urge). I shyly took it to the office and gave it to Mr. Huang. At that moment, other teachers glanced at me intentionally or unintentionally, which made me feel ashamed and just wanted to escape from the office. Fortunately, Mr. Huang didn't have the criticism and serious expression I expected. Instead, he smiled and said, "Nothing. Your father taught me, so I won't say much. I hope you can know more about it and understand that this is a father's painstaking efforts. I hope you remember not to be like me in the future. " He smiled again and again and pretended to pull my ear, and then said "go", which suddenly made my heart shine.
Most of Miss Huang's teachers are high flyers, and she attended many middle schools in Shanghai before going to Xinjiang. If it weren't for historical reasons, many of them were the pillars of that era. Even in Xinjiang, talents are not in adversity and waste a lot of time in those idle years, but when they pick up the pointer and stand on the podium, their solid knowledge and hard work are enough to cope with all teaching affairs. Coupled with the fate of * * *, many teachers, like Mr. Huang, treat students as their own children. It is they who have the literacy of China intellectuals to inherit traditional culture, and their painstaking efforts in education have accumulated into a personality charm full of human brilliance belonging to that era. Until today, the mainstream has not overestimated this generation of old teachers.
However, the evaluation of an excellent class teacher is not only a word-of-mouth proof of class performance ranking, but also a class style shaped by his personal charm. More importantly, many years later, a group of children he taught grew up, and they were sincerely grateful for the teacher's words and deeds.
In addition to strict grades and discipline, our classmates in Class One have heard from time to time about Mr. Huang's appalling stunt of pulling his ears and hitting people with a chalk head. Another feature is that we have a class teacher who loves singing. When Mr Huang was young, he probably belonged to high flyers who was admitted to the Conservatory of Music. According to his joke, he once raised sheep in Xinjiang for thirteen years. Perhaps it was on that vast grassland that he developed a good voice. After listening to "Where Peach Blossoms Bloom" sung by him at the school art performance, you will feel that he seems to sing better than the original singer David Jiang. He rehearses the chorus "Defending the Yellow River" with his hands, just like conducting a symphony with a baton.
What is even more memorable is that when we were explaining ancient poems, he not only gave us a preliminary understanding of the phonological difference between the light singing of ancient poems and the modern reading, but also taught us to sing a sad Yu Meiren. For ignorant teenagers who are used to listening to popular songs such as Shaolin Temple, Huo Yuanjia and Volleyball Girl. At that time, we could not understand the pain of death in the late Tang Dynasty and the inner emotional world when the teacher explained. Even after the Chinese class, Zhu Ziqing's prose is behind, and we only have a little hard work for our parents when the teacher is in tears and those low and slow tones are not easy to detect.
At this moment, nearly half a century has passed, and we only understand the "silent drizzle" that only recites without knowing the profound meaning, and also understand the far-reaching influence of "peaches and plums do what they say" on our way forward.
The second semester of grade two should be summer vacation. Out of the nature of caring for teachers, many teachers moved their families from different village teams and concentrated in Liuyuan New Village near the school. Coincidentally, the three head teachers of our four classes are not only in the same building, but also neighbors whose house numbers are connected (in the mid-1980s, there was this small two-story building with one staircase and two households on the farm, which was a reflection of better treatment). My father is the head teacher of Class 4, and my home is the head teacher of Class 3, Mr. Qin Wang. Next door to his house is the home of Mr. Huang, our class teacher.
Since then, distant relatives are not as good as close neighbors, which has been maintained since the educated youth era in Xinjiang, and once again returned to the daily life between neighbors, everything is so familiar and warm. For example, today, whoever has delicious food, or whose parents are on a business trip or visiting relatives in Shanghai, neighbors will share one or two from time to time. Even if some parents, including adults, are temporarily away from home, the children are left unattended. In this case, enthusiastic neighbors often help each other. In my impression, Mr. Huang's jiaozi is delicious. His family has an unusual and conspicuous tape recorder, which often plays good songs and occasionally plays classical music that I didn't understand at that age, such as symphonies.
In addition to the peace of life, children who are teachers' families begin to have a comparison mentality and worry about the burden of being praised or criticized by teachers and parents in this new environment. Not only should we strive for the best in our grades, but we should also be careful in our daily behavior and after-school performance. Therefore, the children of teachers like me are more or less sensitive when they are about to enter the graduating class. They often hear the neighborhood teachers' comments on the results of the last class, or arguments about which school to enter.
However, even if he immediately entered the state of coping with intense study, at the class meeting, Mr. Huang still advocated that he should grasp the principle of "being civil and military, relaxing one by one" when studying. Occasionally, in order to help us relax, he will teach us to sing or organize everyone to jump rope and kick shuttlecock in his spare time.
During this period, the unforgettable summer vacation gave me extra surprises in my after-school life. It may be because of Mr. Huang's concern and the recommendation of Mr. Liang Baitang, an art teacher. Of course, it is also because I have always been a little girl who loves painting in the eyes of teachers. Therefore, the special training class of painting summer camp held by the General Administration of China gave me the privilege of getting in touch with Chinese painting for the first time. Although writing with a brush at my father's urging is a compulsory course for me on Sunday and summer vacation, painting with a brush still makes me curious and fresh as a person who has never been exposed to Chinese painting. I finished the homework of the final training in general, at least compared with other students from other foreign schools, so I was ashamed to disappoint the school and teachers for a week or two. That is a meticulous painting of flowers, birds, insects and fish. I remember the bees dotted in the upper left corner at the end. My hook pen and coloring failed because the delivery time was tight and I was anxious. Fortunately, the instructor of the cultural center helped me repair it and polished the pen, so I barely managed. But even so, after school, in addition to the explanation and guidance of Teacher Liang, Teacher Huang encouraged and comforted me as always.
Later, due to the specialty of Shanghai Arts and Crafts School before junior high school graduation, my classmate Xiao Hai and I were admitted together. For me, who originally aimed at key middle schools, the trajectory of fate suddenly came to a big bend.
Perhaps it is the inadaptability to the dormitory life that has just been admitted to an American school, and the inferiority from a suburban farm. When I was punished for violating the rules of military training before the summer vacation of grade one, my mood completely collapsed. As a top student in the eyes of teachers, it is not difficult to imagine the psychological gap at that time. When I angrily complained about my father's choice of school, and even radically considered dropping out of school to prepare for re-study, it was also the tolerance of my parents and the letter from Mr. Huang, which gradually calmed my mood by encouraging comfort and analyzing the pros and cons. I still remember that once Mr. Huang came to see us at school, not only brought something to our parents, but also specifically told us to help each other and learn from each other's strengths ... as if it was yesterday, but now I seem to be back on the playground of the old school in Waigang, a suburb of Shanghai, the teacher who discussed literature and life with us, the three figures who walked in the sunset.
Many years after graduation, many teachers and classmates parted ways. That year, Xiaohai came to see me at a low tide because his father died young. I still remember sitting on the lawn of Shanghai Botanical Garden. Xiaohai told me about Mr. Huang's regret and hoped I could cheer up. I still remember that when I learned that Mr. Huang was transferred to Fengxian Farm Middle School to teach in the next few years, I went to his office twice to visit my classmates living in the local American school, but unfortunately I always missed it because I had to go to class or go out for a meeting.
The last time I saw him was in a hurry at Xiaohai's wedding more than ten years ago. After a brief talk about my family, I was asked to convey my regards to my old neighbor, my mother. When taking a group photo, I looked at the teacher's red face and felt that he was full of energy. At the same time, I feel happy for him and a little ashamed of my ignorance when I was near middle age.
Time flies, time flies. 20 16, 30 years after graduating from junior high school, it is a great regret for many teachers and students that Mr. Huang can't get together, because listening to his solo has always been a reserved program. Of course, to some extent, many students in our class one are confused or even lost, and many students have never met again after graduation.
It is easier to say goodbye than to say goodbye. Who would have thought that during the special epidemic prevention since the beginning of the year, Teacher Huang suddenly said goodbye to us? In recent years, several of our classmates have privately made many promises to visit him, making Blowing in the Wind a lifelong regret.
There is a popular song called "It's better to miss each other when we meet". I wonder if Mr. Huang has heard of it? I guess he probably doesn't know classical music, but I was moved by a line from watching the costume drama Lee and Hua Ting with my wife these days-"It's good for two people to care about each other, but it's a blessing to forget about the Jianghu". I think this famous saying in Zhuangzi, as a Chinese teacher, should be the clearest. Although you can't explain the meaning and philosophy of this sentence to us in class like in the past, I think this may be the fate of this world. Perhaps your silent departure coincides with your long-cherished wish of seclusion for many years!
It is very sad that the people of Sri Lanka have passed away. Writing this long commemorative article is not only a deep nostalgia for the past, but also a heartfelt mourning for a student, and it is also a heartfelt gratitude to those students who have the same feelings as me!
Thank you! Have a nice trip, Miss Huang!
WU GANG
? 2020.2.26
Ps: I have always liked literature and history, and I became an amateur poet under the influence of Young Beauty taught by Mr. Huang. This word is also my regular model essay for practicing calligraphy at ordinary times. Therefore, when I saw my old friend Chen Chaohui's poem "Young Beauty", I couldn't help writing a poem.
Yu Meiren sacrificed her teacher and tried to make up the original rhyme. Although useful words don't work, I still want to express my grief.
When is sadness and how much you know about the past. Suddenly I heard the voice of the teacher driving a crane, and I couldn't bear to sigh in my old dream.
The doctrine should still be there, but it is as deep as the sea. I hope you can leave your song in Qingming, just waiting for a thin glass of wine to drift.