My Teacher, My Friend

    Soon after I entered the Beijing No. 4 High School last September, I heard that an American teacher would come to my school teaching us English and stay until Christmas. I had never got in touch with an American person in daily life before, and I couldn’t imagine what he would look like and what he would act like. There are over one thousand students in the school and only one foreign teacher, so I wondered “How many times shall I see him in these three months? Shall I have chance to talk with him?” I didn’t think of the possibility of making friends with this VIP.

One day before the English class, we were told that the American man was going to talk to us. The bell rang. All the students sat silently, watching the front door. After a while, the back door opened slowly by a foot, then a white man came in, whistling, with his hands in the pants’ pockets. He was tall and blond. His hair was longer than any of Chinese male teacher and a little curly. He wore a checked shirt with a black sweater over his shoulders. As he walked to the teacher’s desk, we clapped. The man stopped whistling and said, “You needn’t clap. I’m invited to be a teacher here. It’s my duty to give classes.” That unexpected announcement made us silent again and in a loss. He saw the overhead projector, and asked, “Do you know how to call this machine in English?” “No”, was the answer. “Do you want to know?” “Yes.” “Why do you want to know?” “Errr…” none of us uttered a word. He asked a student in the front to answer his question. The student stood there for quite a long time and at last said, “Because I want to know more English words.” he thought for a while, and then had the student stand behind the teacher’s desk facing us, and hold a piece of paper. “Some day you may want to give a speech to these people.” He said that like the beginning of a story, “I’m the attendant. Do you need this machine--- the overhead projector?” The student said “yes”, and he really lifted that heavy machine and moved it onto the desk! The student hastily said, “Oh! Now I don’t need this.” He grinned to us, moved the machine back, and said, “Now I know the feeling of being an attendant.” We laughed. He went up to the student and clapped him on the back, “Good! Overhead projector!” and he hopped, making his voice like a little boy. We laughed again. I looked at my watch: only five minutes have passed, but I knew I began to like him, his confidence in the American way.

Then he introduced himself. He wrote his name “Bruce Hall” on the blackboard and drew a map of the Atlantic. He told us his story. He was 35 years old. He was born in Paris. When he grew up, he wanted to make money. The winter of Paris is cold, but he didn’t want to spend money on warm clothes. So he went to a warm place--- Egypt, and led camels for tourists under the pyramids--- with these words, he wrapped his head with the black sweater, and looked exactly like an Arab. After some tome, he went to California. Later, he went to Salt Lake City and became a history teacher in high school.

When he finished his self-introduction, he asked each of us to tell him our name and answer one question: “If possible, what kind of animal would like to be?” perhaps in kindergarten I was asked such questions, and I haven’t thought about this nearly 10 years. My classmates gave their answers one by one. To each answer, Mr. Hall gave a smile and encouraged him to speak as much as possible, for example, to explain whether he’d like to be a wild one or the one in the zoo. My turn came. I said I would like to be a monkey. “Why?” he asked. “Because I want to be turned back into a human being earlier.” He looked a little surprised, “You believe the evolution theory?” “Yes. Charles Darwin said so over 100 years ago.” “Yeah, I really like this idea.” He nodded with a shiny smile. From his azure blue eyes, I could see it was not difficult to make friends with him.

In the following two months, I learned more about Mr. Hall--- an optimistic, happy, energetic American man. He gave a class once a week and no one could keep serious or feel sleepy during his class. Once he asked a boy to sit on the teacher’s desk and hold his cheek with his right hand. No one, including the boy himself, could tell what the gesture meant. Some said the boy looked like the famous statue “thinker”. We watched carefully, and the following word was heard in the quiet classroom, “In America, we don’t say W.C..” Laughter suddenly broke out. The laughter was so loud that it could be heard in every corner of the building. We laughed until tears came to our eyes, but Mr. Hall didn’t want us to stop. He covered his belly, pretending to be very anxious. He pounded the desk and yelled, “Have you finished?”

Mr. Hall often had different ideas and he dared to say it whenever and wherever he wanted. He didn’t like us wearing school uniforms; he didn’t like us doing morning exercises every day with the same music; he didn’t like us practicing formation every day before the sports meet. Mr. Hall hated war, though he was a history teacher and had to talk about wars every day. He even said Abraham Lincoln should have avoided the Civil War. He also acted like this when was in the US. Mr. Hall told us the headmaster of his school didn’t like him to work in short pants and warned him not to wear them any more. What do you think would he do? The next day he went to work in a mini skirt!

It was said that Mr. Hall had been a background actor in a movie, but he was really a TV star in my school. He was often seen on the school’s own TV program. He sang well, danced well, and also swam well. But he wasn’t really like a star. If you met him in the campus, he could call out to you from a long distance away, “Hi! How are you doing?”

As a member of the Students’ Government, I’m in charge of the English Corner, an activity to improve spoken English. That is, I arranged a topic and put up a poster every week, and hosted the meeting on Wednesday noon. Any student who was interested in it could come to talk about it. I invited Mr. Hall to English Corner as a guest, and I had more chances to be with him. I found the other side of him--- Mr. Hall was not a person who can only make jokes; rather, he had a lot of respectable characters.

One day in November, I found a Job Opportunity in Beijing Weekend (a newspaper in English). It was a US bank. The requirements were very mean, and one of them was “Chinese citizen, male preferred, age range 25~35”. As a girl, I thought it unfair, so I decided to see Mr. Hall’s reaction to this. On a Wednesday noon, when English Corner was over, I went up to him and showed him the newspaper. I said I thought the US bank dared not do so in the US. Before I could ask Mr. Hall his opinions, to my surprise, he suddenly rolled the newspaper. He shook his head now and then and said, “My Gosh! I can’t believe it! Absolutely awful!” I was shocked. I had never seen him in fury. “Come on, girl!” he led me into the teacher’s office in others’ curious eye sights. He brought out a map of Beijing. “Show me the place.” “What place?” “The location of the US bank in the Job Opportunity.” I pointed out the place. Mr. Hall said seriously, “Thank you very much. I’ll go to the bank myself.” It’s hard to believe! I couldn’t help asking, “Really?” He gazed at me for a while, then said firmly, “Of course.”

The next Tuesday, Mr. Hall told me had gone to the bank to have it out, and the bank promised to cancel the ad and never do this again. He showed me the visiting card of the bank manager. I thought to myself: had Mr. Hall not been here, I would probably have not been able to stop it. I invited him to talk about it in next day’s English Corner. He accepted at once, and photocopied the Job Opportunity for dozens of pieces and handed them to every participant the next day. In the English Corner, he explained to us what discrimination was, and the related law in America to guarantee the fair treatment of the more challenged group of people. We learnt a lot from his explanation. When I thanked him for that, he shook my hand and said sincerely, “Thank you very much.” I felt the heat of his hand. I knew we had been true friends.

How time flew! Christmas came in a snap. Mr. Hall was going to leave soon after that. I prepared a present for him--- a green dragonfly kite. In the last English Corner that year, our topic was “Christmas and Spring Festival”. Nearly 50 people crowded in a small room. Mr. Hall appeared in front us as usual, happy and warm, with a shiny smile. First, he told us something about how they spent Christmas. He said every Christmas he sat on the Santa Clause’s knees to take a picture. He pretended to be the Santa Clause and said, “When I was young, the Santa Clause smiled like this”--- he made a hearty smile; “now I’m 35, the Santa Clause smile like this”--- he grinned and made a forced smile. Then we told him something about the Spring Festival that he had never heard of. When he heard children would get money from wrapped in red paper from elder members of the family, he asked, “Can I get money from others?” “No. A man at your age must give money.” He made faces.

When the meeting was going to the end, I brought out the present. I said to him, “It’s your first time to spend Christmas in China, so we try to make you feel at home. Please accept our Christmas gift!” “Oh, oh …” his eyes became so big, and didn’t say a word for half a minute. Then he regained to his usual sense of humor. “Do you guys want me to unwrap the gift in the adult’s way or in the kid’s way?” “Show us both ways.” I ordered. So Mr. Hall first unwrapped the gift slowly, gently and gracefully, and suddenly he tore the outer paper off in a lightening speed. “Yo-ho!” Mr. Hall jumped like a little boy. “A kite! How do you know I love flying kite?” “I guess!” Then he opened the Christmas card and read aloud, “You will fly to the other end of the earth. We will miss you. If you miss us, fly this kite. We can see it.”

Since then, whenever I see a green dragonfly kite flying in the sky, I think of Mr. Hall, the humorous, energetic, and happy American man, and also the history teacher with sense of responsibility. I say to myself, “I miss you, my teacher, my friend.”

Written in February, 1996

Slightly revised when inputting on August 25, 2001