Teacher Zhang Yonghong is my English enlightenment teacher. If I remember correctly, today should be the 30th Teacher's Day when Teacher Zhang teaches at Xinbao Middle School. The student who became Teacher Zhang was in the fall of 1996. In the summer of that year, a flood in the

Figure 1: The author’s graduation photo at Xinbao Middle School Figure 1 Note: (The second row is the 4th right is Teacher Zhang Yonghong, and the fourth row is the 11th left is the author)

Teacher Zhang Yonghong is my English enlightenment teacher. If I remember correctly, today should be the 30th Teacher’s Day when Teacher Zhang teaches in Xinbao Middle School. The student who became Teacher Zhang was in the fall of 1996. In the summer of that year, a flood of Yellow River caused no harvest of nearly 100 acres of fertile land in their homes. This sudden change made parents realize the importance of rural children studying and studying. So in times of difficulty, my parents transferred my second brother and I from a remote rural middle school to Xinbao Middle School taught by Teacher Zhang next to the county town. After entering school in the fall that year, I was in the second grade of junior high school.

Although I have known Teacher Zhang Yonghong for 25 years, I cannot be called a teacher Zhang and I are very familiar with each other. Because during the two years of studying at Xinbao Middle School, Teacher Zhang never looked for me alone, and I never asked Teacher Zhang any questions outside the classroom. After graduating from Xinbao Middle School, I contacted Teacher Zhang no more than 5 times and only met and visited him twice. The first time was after getting admitted to university in the summer of 2001, and the second time was when I went back to Zhongning with my wife Wu Dan on 2018. My contact with Mr. Liu Jinbao, the head teacher of Xinbao Middle School, is roughly the same. However, after a recent meeting and chat with the two mentors in 2018, I found that such a low contact frequency did not affect the relationship between our teachers and students.

Although I had very little contact with Teacher Zhang Yonghong and other teachers and students of Xinbao Middle School later, I have always remembered many people and things that I have studied in Xinbao Middle School for two years, and I am very clear about Teacher Zhang. Before transferring to Xinbao Middle School, although I had been studying English for a year, I never paid special attention to the standard writing of 26 lowercase English letters "four lines and three grids". Perhaps Teacher Zhang discovered these problems between me and other newly transferred students. For this reason, Teacher Zhang emphasized the importance of "four lines and three grids" to us in class and required strict implementation.

For this reason, during the afternoon of my weekend working in this class, I spent some time repeatedly thinking about the position of each letter in the "four lines and three grids". Why is it written like this, not that? At that time, my personal experience was: the lowercase English letters always occupy the middle grid in the heaviest place, and the words and sentences written in this way have a visual "beauty". Teacher Zhang's strict requirements and inspiration for "four lines and three grids" had a profound impact on my later research on a problem. For example, when I was studying the course of "electromagnetic field" again after I started working, I spent a lot of time investigating why a certain physical quantity was represented by this symbol instead of using another one. For example, the "magnetic flux" symbol 'Φ' and the magnetic flux symbol 'Ψ' in magnetism are all the results of repeated thinking by physics pioneers. Only by understanding the origin and details of physical quantitative symbols can we have a deeper understanding of the meaning behind them. I may not be the student who mastered English best among Teacher Zhang's students, but it may be the student who understands Teacher Zhang's strict requirements for "four lines and three grids".

Teacher Zhang usually arranges the rhythm of class very tightly, so I have hardly heard Teacher Zhang tell us anything other than English learning, nor have he ever told us any great truth. When you encounter poor classroom discipline, you will mostly just pause for a short period of time, look around every corner of the classroom with a strict look, waiting for everyone to be quiet. However, the last English class on the eve of graduation from the third year of junior high school completely subverted my understanding of Teacher Zhang before this, and found that Teacher Zhang had a very humanistic side. In the last lesson, Teacher Zhang changed his usual seriousness one by one, and happily told us how to better prepare for the subsequent high school entrance examination from the perspective of life, such as what should you pay attention to in your diet during this period, how to adjust your daily schedule, etc. Because it was the last lesson, I was very sad at the time and carefully recorded most of what Teacher Zhang said, which has a profound influence to this day.

After graduating from junior high school, I almost never saw Teacher Zhang again until after the college entrance examination where both physically and mentally exhausted.After learning about the college entrance examination results, he made an appointment with two junior high school classmates Zhou Liang and Wu Haitao to tell Teacher Zhang this good news and visit Teacher Zhang. However, before we planned to visit Teacher Zhang, we didn’t know where Teacher Zhang’s house was, but we just knew that we lived in the family compound where I was in high school. So, we went to the Post and Telecommunications Bureau to check the landline phone number of Teacher Zhang’s house before contacting Teacher Zhang. Because Teacher Zhang lives in the family resident in my high school, and Zhou Liang’s high school teachers and I live in this community. We were very afraid of meeting a high school teacher when we arrived in the community. I thought of a very embarrassing scene in advance: If we meet a high school teacher in the community, we will definitely be asked which teacher you are going to visit when you are asked? Let me tell you which building this teacher lives in.

If we answered according to the truth, we would go to visit our junior high school English teacher, then the high school teacher thought to myself, you are going to college in our high school entrance exam. It would be fine if you didn’t come to thank the high school teachers, but you actually had to visit the junior high school teachers in groups in the family courtyard where high school teachers gathered. Fortunately, it was a nap time, and the embarrassing scene we expected did not appear.

After meeting Teacher Zhang, Teacher Zhang asked us earnestly: Are there any of you who have been admitted to key universities? Although I was so weak that I could no longer eat during the college entrance examination, I still insisted on taking all the subjects and slightly exceeded the key score line of that year. This result did not disappoint Teacher Zhang, because in her opinion, our admission to college was just her basic requirement. After chatting at Teacher Zhang's house for a while, a sleepy little girl walked out of the bedroom and went to find Teacher Zhang. After introducing it, we learned that this was Teacher Zhang's daughter Yang Yang. In 2018, when I visited Teacher Zhang again, I learned that this sleepy little girl had graduated from college and had been working in Shanghai for more than a year.

Whenever my life is lost after entering society, I often think of my study career at Xinbao Middle School, my teachers’ humanities education for me during Xinbao Middle School, the landlords and couples who strictly restrict us, and also think of Teacher Zhang’s sincere expectations for us after the college entrance examination: Are there any of you who have been admitted to key universities?

version record: first draft (V1.0 version), written on September 10, 2020 Beijing

V2.0 version revised in October 22, 2022 (the eve of the invitation of Teacher Yang Senlin)

Cao Jianchun Born in Baima Village, Baima Township, Zhongning, Ningxia in 1982, he studied at Baima Middle School and Qukou Middle School. He graduated from Xinbao Middle School in 1998 and from Zhongning Middle School in 2001. Before graduating from university, he spent a long time working in the countryside with his parents in the countryside, proficient in various farming work, especially at tractor driving. In addition to working in the responsible fields of Baima Village, he has planted gardens on Qukou farms, planted beaches on Qingtongxia Bird Island, and planted samurai on Erdaogou Mountain. is currently living in Beijing and is engaged in power system analysis and simulation related work. He has published a paper with a slightly influential influence in the industry. After work, I like reading, taking care of my children and outdoor activities.