Two People Who Influenced My Career Choice

Three people influenced my career choice.
Two people influenced my career choice.

The first one was Mr Zhao Huiqing, my English teacher in high school. He became my English teacher when all the schools just started to teach English after Deng Xiao Ping was put back to the nation's leading position as result of Premiere Zhou Enlai's strong recommendation to Mao Zedong. In a still tense political environment in which learning a foreign language spoken by the the nation's number one enemy still ran the risk of being accused of treason, there was virtually not much a school English teacher could do except leading the students to chant the translated version of the then popular political slogans such as "never forget class struggle" "Forever remember to settle the accounts of blood and tears with class enemies" and so on. I wasn't interested in learning English before Mr Zhao became my English teacher. Although I didn't learn much in the class, I soon became interested in the subject through the time I spent with Mr Zhao out of class. One of my best friends was a teacher's son and lived on the schooll campus next door to Mr Zhao's home. Therefore I had many opportunities to visit Mr Zhao's home and talked to him. Mr Zhao had just graduated from a teachers' college and had a passion for teaching. He told me many stories I had never heard. From him I also learned many things about the world outside China. The stories he told me was exotic and fascinating. By the time I graduated I regretted that I had not met him earlier. Upon our graduation, he gave me a few English story books which were then a little too hard for me to read. But I carefully kept them all the time. It was through the contact with Mr Zhao that I got to know that there were so manh wonderful things out there apart from all the boring stuff we were learning in the class, and that one of the important accesses to this entirely different world was English. I must learn English! I told myself. But is it too hard for me? Is it too late for me to learn it now that I have alreaday "graduated" from school? "Sure you can! You are smart, and your pronounciation is one of the bast in the class!" he patted me on the head and said while smiling to me. I remembered what he said then and made up my mind despite my ignorance about all the hardship and obstacles ahead of me. One year later the chance came for me to get a start. Radio Jiangsu, my home province, started to teach English over the radio. I was wild with joy of course when I heard the news. I took a bus to a city 50 miles away from my hometown tring to get the textbook the radio program would use but was not in luck. Then I asked my dad for help. He called an old friend of his who lived in Nanjing, capital of my province, and asked that uncle for help. Two weekd later, I finally got the book mailed to me via post office. You can imagine my excitement when I opened the mail. For the first time in my life, I carefuly wrapped the book with a piece of calendar papar, holding my breath, and wrote "English" on the front cover of the book.

The second person who influenced my career decision was Mr Chen, a country elementary school teacher. That was the second year since I started to learn English. I had by then already been assigned to work in the contryside and had worked in the fields for 6 months. Then I was transferred to work in the Village Management Office. I was the only person who lived on the premises of the office which was next to the elementary school of the village. Most of the school teachers were locals and went back to their own homes every night. One family, however, lived on the school campus. Mr Chen, the husband, was a Chinese teacher of the school. Mrs Chen was a math teacher. They had a lovely dauther.

The first time I saw Mr Chen I was very impressed by his physical appearance. He was tall and handsome. In my eyes, he looked more like a college prefessor, an orchestra conductor, or an artist rather than a country school teacher. The way he talked to people, walked around, everything. Who is he? I asked myself. What is he doing here? I somehow had a feeling that he didn't belong there. It must have been a mistake.

My intuition was right. Later on I heard that Mr Chen used to be a Russian translator serving in the army near the sino-Russian border. He was an honor student majoring Russian in one of the best teachers' universities in China: East China Normal University. Actually I heard that he entered that university with a full mark (Russian) in the college entrance examination.

While he was on the peak of his career, however, misfortune fell on him. He took a vacation and came back to his hometown, a small town in my county to visit his parents. His parent arranged him to meet a pretty girl from that town. He was not interested at the beginning. But his parents were so anxious to find him a wife that they did a stupid thing which, without their knowledge, ruined their son's future. They locked their son and the girl in a room for 3 days. The result you can guess. The poor man couldn't resist the temptation and they did what a man and a woman would do. Then the man was shocked to find out that the prettey girl he took to bed was the daughter of a former landlord, the very target of the political persecution at that time.

News soon spread out and the army found out about it. Mr Chen was kicked out of the army and was sent back to where he came from before he entered college. The local government was too scared to give him a decent job. No schools in the city dared to accept a person expelled by the army. He waited six months before a village school finally accepted him on the condition that he had to teach Chinese and music. That was how he ended up teaching Chinese in that small village school.

Mr Chen got very emotional each time when we mentioned his past. "Forget about it," he would wave his hands while his eyes got red," but then he would continue his story. Once when I visited his home aftr dinner, he was listening to the radio. The broadcast was in a foreign language which I didn't understand. It was a male's voice, I remember.

"What language is this?" I asked in curiosity. " Silence. I reepeated my question. "What?" he seemed to have just waken up from a dream. "Oh, I'm sorry, " he apologized. "It is Russian." "But you can't," I said in a voice as low as I could since USSR was listed as the second enemy of the nation as the "New Tsar" and listening to this kind of broadcast could get us into jail. "Don't worry," he smiled and patted on me on the head. "This is Radio Beijing's international broadcast." Sure enough, soon I heard Chinese songs and music. "Do you know this voice?" he tuned down the volummn of the broadcast a little. I shook my head. "Do you?" I asked him. "Of course. Only too well," he murmered to himself. "Really?" I got more curious."But how come?" "This is my best friend," he looked into the speaker of the radio, "We shared a room for two years when we worked together." His eyes turned red again. I dared not ask him what happened to him so that he ended up teaching Chinese in this village school while his friend was still working with the radio. It was not until several months later that learned about his sad story.

But one night he told me his story even before I asked him. I was reviewing my lesson after I finished listening to my English lesson on the radio. He walked into my room and looked through the pages of my textbook. "Good work," he said while checking the notes I took in the class. "Keep going, young man," he patted me on the shoulder. "Don't stop. One day you will make it, I am sure." "But how? I am not even sure," I answered. "The whole country is now in a mess. Who needs to learn English?" I continued. "Don't say that," he grabbed a chair and sat down next to me. "Some day," he looked out of the woindow, "things will change. " Then he told me his story. "I am a gone case now," he sighed in a deep breath," but you still have future. Go for it, young man." From then on, I visited him more often and talked to him more often. Each time I talked to him, I felt more encouraged and became more confident in him. Although he majored Russian in college, his English was good as well in my memory, at least good enough to give me advice.

When the cultural Revolution was over in 1977, his case was re-opened for investigation. Two years later, his case was officially readdressed and was offered a job to teach Russia in a city. But the good news came a little too late. He was already in his 50's and was sick. His children were soon grduating from high school and would soon have to fight their final battle - taking the tough college entrance exam. They couldn't afford further interruption in their study. So he decided to stay in my hometown. The only diffence was that he was transferred to teach Englihsh in a high school at township level.