Yesterday, May 21st, I was wandering alone in the corridor of an office building. My heart was exposed to the 4th floor cotton pad . The quilt got wet due to a sudden rain and I became extremely depressed. I am extremely lazy and extremely homely. I was thinking about washing it again when I was thinking about whether to wash it again. Suddenly I got a call saying that Master Sohei Shigeru passed away. I was shocked and asked how to express my condolences. I also said that I had been away for several months. I called my teacher’s sister, Zong Ailian, and confirmed that she passed away suddenly due to myocardial infarction on January 3rd, at the age of 68. There is no way of knowing how Teacher
came to our town. I only remember that he was my English teacher when I was a freshman in high school. He is 1.65 meters tall and weighs more than 70 kilograms. He is somewhat stooped, with a round face and big eyes. Because he is fat, his head is always lowered, but he is definitely not hunchbacked. Teacher Zong and his wife, Teacher Liu Jinlian, lived on the second floor opposite our dormitory. The room area was only about 24 square meters. There was a steel stove for burning firewood next to the door. Whenever the bell rang for the end of get out of class, you could see smoke rising from the teacher's house when you looked out the dormitory window. Occasionally, the south wind blows, and Teacher Zong's smoke-covered cough and curses can be clearly heard. In
English class, my poor vocabulary was obviously taught by no teacher. The vocabulary and grammar teacher mentioned it in the morning and then forgot it in the afternoon. I was very timid and had low self-esteem at that time. I probably didn’t speak 20 sentences in class during the three years of high school. , so I cried and went to my mother, Teacher You, and asked her to come to the school to see if there was a way to solve the partial subjects and make a breakthrough in English. My mother laughed when she learned that Liu Jinlian was Teacher Zong’s wife. This was easy. . Our family has a very good relationship with Teacher Liu’s family. It’s because our eldest sister Chunfang was very good at dancing in elementary school and was liked by Teacher Liu. At that time, Teacher Liu taught music class and wanted to take Chunfang to be a special student (at that time). My mother was also a special person. The person who came here was at that time when material was extremely scarce, and Yi’s father still had some local specialties. He moved around frequently and became a relative. So one morning Teacher Zong came to see me, and for a long time I heard the sound of Lang Lang reading, "HOW MARX LEARNED FOREIGN LANGUAGES" Karl Marx was born in Germany, and German was his native language almost at around six in the morning. . When he was still a young man, he was forced to leave his homeland for political reasons. This was the voice coming from that dull boy.
The material supply system made me extremely thin despite my long body. I spent three years eating pickles and bean paste every week. At a certain point in time, I fell into the adolescent disease unique to young people. In the extremely hot 8.9 In March, Teacher Zong was wearing a vest, a pair of baggy shorts, holding a cattail fan, sticking up his buttocks, and bending his bulky body, boiling Chinese medicine for me on the steel stove. The cooking time was very long, and the medicine was filtered out. Slag, put the decoction in the rice bowl, and look at Teacher Zong's face again, it looks like that of a charcoal seller, with sweat flowing through it, becoming a landscape. Then Teacher Liu shouted at the top of his lungs: Yi Hengguang has taken medicine. The boys in the dormitory pinched their noses and raised their voices in response to Teacher Liu. For the first time, they felt ashamed. Later, it turned out to be a story about themselves showing off their capital. After drinking the medicine, Teacher Zong will prepare sugar particles and peas to suppress the bitterness of the medicine.
Once on a Friday, Teacher Zong cooked a bowl of soup and called out from the window, Yi Hengguang, come and drink the soup. So I ran over excitedly and saw that it was tofu and egg soup. I looked disgusted and said it was so-called soup. The first choice must be lotus root soup with chicken soup and pig's trotters, and who would drink the egg drop soup? Then Teacher Zong cursed: The food is pretty good, but he still picks and chooses. But after that time, the aroma is always authentic local chicken soup .
The rice that school teachers eat is supplied by the Grain Bureau, mostly aged brown rice . The rice our family eats is new rice made from the fresh grains of that year. On Sundays, I use my green book to pack about 12 kilograms of rice. With Mi Ding on his head, he walked Highway 15 and crossed a river, and then weighed in with the school chef in exchange for a week's meal tickets. One Sunday afternoon I was stopped by Teacher Zong. He said, give me your rice and I will exchange it for you with meal stamps. So he took out a stack of meal stamps and I handed my schoolbag to the teacher, took the meal stamps and rushed Entering the classroom, he stood at the door of his house and shouted, "Please count." I replied, "You have counted, the teacher is still wrong."After evening self-study, I took out a stack of meal tickets, which turned out to be 30 kilograms. I got 18 pounds more. I just realized why the teacher asked me to count them. As for whether to return the extra ones to the teacher, I probably really forgot. The rationing system may have caused the teacher's family to lose more than ten kilograms of food rations.
Later, when I went to school and was assigned to go south to work, Teacher Zong moved to another house, and her children got married, and other happy events, my mother continued to follow up and maintain this rare family relationship with a foreign surname. I remember that when I was in a state-owned enterprise, I also worked as a substitute teacher in vocational high school for a period of time. I also wanted to use Teacher Zong’s teaching and educating method to make friends with students and exchange my sincerity for their enthusiasm for learning, but I couldn’t do it in the end. , except that it is more accurate to hit people with chalk heads, there is really nothing else that can be produced, even if it is a lesson plan, it is doomed to have no chance to be a teacher in this life.
About four years ago, I went to Teacher Zong’s home with my brother and brother-in-law. In the county education bureau, Teacher Zong and Teacher Liu have both retired. Teacher Liu is still as energetic as ever, and his newly dyed hair looks younger than his actual age. Large, with careful maintenance, it still looks young. When Teacher Liu saw me, he shouted: Yi Hengguang, come here and give me a hug. Teacher Zong seemed a little tired but in good spirits. During the chat, Teacher Zong told me: Teacher Liu opened a chess and card room with his friends, and the business was busy every day. Because Teacher Zong had an upright and kind-hearted personality, he did not find a part-time official position. He was completely idle when he retired, so we went to Teacher Liu We had lunch together in the chess and card room, and the teacher drank a few glasses of wine. In the afternoon, we played a few rounds of mahjong with the teacher. Without exception, I lost, which was good!
When I was leaving, I told Teacher Zong that I would go to the south if I had time, and I would visit the Canton Tower and Zhongying Street in Shenzhen. Teacher Liu also encouraged him to go out for a walk. Teacher Zong agreed wholeheartedly. When we left, I hugged Teacher Zong and Teacher Liu. There were tears in everyone’s eyes. Who knew that this hug with Teacher Zong would be a farewell forever.
Later on, I became surprisingly busy, and I didn’t know why I was busy. I moved the factory in 2019, and during the 20-22 epidemic, Teacher Zong’s trip to the south was never completed, because my own “fake busyness” made the teacher’s trip to the south truly an unattainable dream. , this guilt will be like a brand deep in my heart.
It’s time to stop writing here. Suddenly, a gray spotted moth stayed on the draft paper on my desk for a long time. I looked at it and watched her flapping her wings. My eyes gradually blurred, and the teacher’s voice and smile But it became clearer in my mind. So I held it up, walked to the railing, and watched her fly far away!
Yi Hengguang May 22, 2022 Zhongshan Yiyi
