The Last Days of Old Beijing by Michael Meyer

Author:Michael Meyer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2010-02-21T16:00:00+00:00

The one correct classroom chalkboard said that 790 days remained until the Olympics. Class Two still held that 996 days remained, but time continued to flow around it. Beijing’s late-June weather changes abruptly from tepid to saunalike as the spell named Minor Heat begins. The classrooms did not have air conditioners, only two wall-mounted electric fans. The jade-colored creeper vines crowded around the windows, and the kids loved to lean out and watch bees buzzing the leaves.

The rumor that the school would be destroyed over summer break never died. Teachers, then the principal, asked again whether I knew if it was true. The principal did have one announcement, however. Next year, the students would have the same teachers for Grade Five as they did for Grade Four. “It’s not my idea, it’s their decision. The Education Bureau sent a memo.”

I agreed to return to teach the same students, if the school was still standing. The year had been unexpectedly rewarding, given past experiences. No one had asked me to sing a song. No one asked me to pose for a photograph. No one asked me to wear a school pin, sign an oath, or punch a clock. There were no mandatory meetings. Never having met a foreigner, let alone worked with or been taught by one, the school absorbed me by ignoring me. The kids loved to pull on my beard and arm hair, or to ask how I could possibly be left-handed, but after a few minutes, their yo-yos and bao ball proved more entertaining.

I arrived for the last day of school expecting a joyous morning watching kids clean out their desks, then saying good-bye as they skipped home unburdened by heavy backpacks. Instead, after their exams were finished and classrooms scrubbed, Miss Zhu said, “We all have to come to school next week, too.”

“But the year is finished.”

“The students have classes in the morning. We don’t have to prepare lessons. They just listen to the loudspeaker.”

For an hour each day, the announcement warned the kids not to sleep late, become lazy, litter, or touch garbage. The children turned their attention to the blackboard and copied their summer homework—pages of math, Chinese, science, and history exercises. Miss Zhu and I agreed that they should read a book for fun and find twenty new words for their personal dictionaries. For the next six weeks, neither of us wanted to correct anything.

Miss Zhu had homework, too. The Education Bureau required all of the district’s English teachers to take a proficiency test at summer’s end. “I have to memorize all of this,” she said, lifting a phone-book-size text.

As the children stood in silent lines in the hallway, I congratulated them on graduating from Grade Four. I was proud, and looked forward to seeing them as fifth-graders. The other teachers stared. The children filed out with plump book bags knocking against the backs of their knees.

“It’s summer!” I yelled to Miss Zhu in our office. “Let’s go get beers at the lake.”

She lifted her head off the desk.

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