“Don’t worry, only the first ten years of Chinese are difficult. It gets easier after that.”
Prof. Mark Hansell.
Well, Mark, nearly thirty years after first studying Chinese under you, I can say this: You damn right! Hahahaha…. The trouble is I was only 18 years old when you said this to me.
You either did well in Chinese or you didn’t. Fortunately, I did well. But no, you couldn’t just “wing” it in Mark’s Chinese class. I once turned in my green — is it still green? — Chinese workbook with a sheet of paper that I had practiced writing Chinese characters on. It was filled with Chinese from the top left corner to the bottom right hand corner. You returned it, days later, with this terse comment: intense. [Do I hear an Amen?]
So, how good was Mark at teaching Chinese? After taking one year of Chinese with him, I went to Beijing in the summer of 1992 with other students from Duke, MIT, Hamilton, etc. After two months, the Chinese professors placed me into the same class as those who had been studying Chinese a year longer than I had — a few had even started studying Chinese in high school. So, one year of Chinese with Mark was worth two years of Chinese taught at those prestigious schools in the East Coast. You would have been proud then; I hope you are proud today.
In those early days, Youtube did not exist. There were no websites with Chinese news and live television broadcasts available at the strike of a key. What did we have instead? There were cassette tapes, of course! There were those weekly one-on-one sessions with the Chinese tutors. There were the Thursday morning language lab sessions. And of course, there were the hated daily quizzes. You did far more with far less. You should be proud.
You see, by the beginning of the second term of Chinese, more than half the class would give up. The few who remained, the 1Aers, we stuck around and finished, through the six months of winter, one week of autumn, and four months of the mosquito feeding season. You watched us “eat bitterness” (吃苦）to learn to not only “speak Chinese” but to “speak Chinese well.”
Oh Shifu, my Shifu, I salute ni! I bend at my waist and lower my head before you. As the Chinese love to say, may you grow very very old and very very ugly, and very very fat like a Daduzifoer (大肚子佛儿）…. [The smiling Buddha with a pot belly]
JYL ‘1995.
