When I was a little boy, every morning during summer season, the first thing I would do after the whole night’s heat wave suffering is to get up and sit on the doorsill, enjoy the morning breeze, look at the facing Tri-Peak Mountain, dreaming that one day I will hike close to my mysterious crest to touch those floating clouds and look down the world.
As at that time, I believe that the Tri-Peak is the highest.
During the year 1988, I managed to enter Hima Senior High School which is right located at the foot of Tri-Peak Mountain. Unfortunately by then, with the knowledge I had got, I knew that the Tri-Peak can’t fulfill my wish because far west of her standing the world’s ridge --- The Everest.
However at my ambitious age, I trust it sure is my first step to the world.
Hima Senior High School is settled on a small hill with one line of grey-colored-fire-brick houses on top which are shown later as our classrooms; one line of red-colored-fire-brick houses at second stage known as teachers’ houses; then crossed on the left by several steps of boys’ dormitories of clay bricks; other buildings like the kitchen house, stores, bathrooms and girl’s dormitories are scattered around the big empty playground.
Right here the memory starts.
Teachers
The first impression was that old, hunchbacked Headmaster. It was a late autumn rainy and boring day, during our first evening-self-study session, when he showed up everybody thought that he was certain student’s father whom was looking for his lovely child because of his strange dresses, instead of having an umbrella he put only a worn straw hat on his little head (thinking about his age), with his Chinese Zhongshan suit all wet; instead of entering the classroom, he stretched his head around the backdoor with a serious emotion looking all around. He was soon proved not a child-seeking father but a leader because some busybody found that he checked all classrooms one after another and finally went back to the headmaster’s house.
He was a real headmaster though everybody didn’t believe it at the beginning. He was a funny-looking and unique headmaster you would ever have found in this world. However funny-looks did not prevent him at all from good organization of this school because he created a remarkable achievement for our school than any other one could have done.
I was deeply impressed by one of our head teachers of his angry face and his hysterical voice whenever our examination performance was bad or we brought him aggravation. His neck was craned out longer than it should be while he was angry. Every time when he lost his temper, we hid our heads behind our desks, for sure everybody had done that not being ashamed on account of his complaints but hiding their faces and laughing secretly so that he could not catch our facial expressions.
We had one young, pretty English teacher who always wore a pair of brown-colored glasses with a graceful pose in her class. The most lasting impression was that when her chalk worn down to a quarter inch she always threw it elegantly in a Parabolic Curve which implied me during the later mathematic Parabolic classes the imagination of parabolic formation. But the graceful throw was never her only performance in her class as many times she also threw the chalk with all her strength at those absent-minded guys; however she was not expert at shooting because mostly they were not precise shots.
I was sad in grade 2, because she left the school without explaining anything to us. There was a rumor that she went to Shiyan to marry her boyfriend however she never came back since then.
I was grateful to her as she encouraged me a lot in my English studies.
Our teacher for Chinese Language was an emotional guy who I always remember when he read one article describing the Vietnam War about one battle between Chinese soldiers and Vietnam soldiers, his tears dropped on to the book and he almost cried out by that touching story of Mao’er Cave battle. I felt sure that he would be a very successful actor if he got a chance to the film stage.
I am ashamed that I haven’t been back to School since I graduated; if I have to find a reason for this situation, a good excuse to explain is the busy work, but in fact I know the real reason is that neither in the university entry examination nor in my career have I done as well as they expected. What makes me embarrassed most is that I should go and visit all my teachers at least one or twice during these years however I haven’t done that to date, not even this 20 years’ reunion.
Especially those elderly teachers, are they still good?
Fighting a Tough Life
High School life was extremely tough in particular at a rural school like Hima.
First of all, the food was real problem for everybody. As far as I could remember except for that rare chanced steamed bread which was attractive to me, others were all awful to me, the rice in that huge steamer was hard and always half cooked, the never ever changed Chinese cabbage, Chinese carrot, potato or lotus roots boiled in that large iron pan with a little uncooked oil sprayed onto the vegetables as the last process. The most funny and nauseous thing was that somebody found a piece of broken paper in his bowl from cooked Chinese cabbage and unbelievable truth was everybody still had that special food every meal everyday though everyone knew what that paper meant.
Winter bath was the biggest problem to me because the public bathroom was an open place simple dotted with several concrete basins, if the water was not emptied by the previous guy, the stinky smell and slippery basin made me vomit. There were other strong guys who always fetched clean water from the bore well once they got a chance of warm sunshine; but to me it was deadly impossible thinking about the cold water touching my bare body in the frozen winter. Because of this, I normally washed only one or twice a month in severe winters with systemic skin allergy throughout the body all season long.
But what did our girls do during those times for their bath in all chilly and shivery winters? That could be my life long conjecture.
The dormitory when we were in grade I was extremely horrible, one big hall contained more than 50 students’ beds with students with different smells, from different places and different classes. It was crowded with trunks, bicycles, mouldy clothes, plastic basins etc. During plum rain season, everybody walked on slippery, muddy ground and puddles of water splashed out from everybody’s basin during their evening washes. That’s real nightmare on today’s understanding.
The graduating class students, after the teacher’s assignment, normally learned deep at night everyday up to late 2 or 3 am behind their ‘great wall’ --- a special scenery line of our school derived from those upright stood and piled books from one end to the other on everybody’s desk for the easy access and browsing. Others were used to get up early 3 or 4am in the morning studying in the candle light because the school always controlled and cut off the electricity supply at 10:00 PM anyway. Because of this reason we called the classroom of the graduating class ever-bright rooms.
Almost all the students from Hima high School have been a party of an around-the-clock study prior to their graduation in order to pursue their bright future as possible as they can. It seems that the vigor conserved in their body by then can never be exhausted.
Besides all these, most fellows had encountered insomnia problems which tormented them night after night; there was no mean that anybody during his life could be stressed out like it did during the last term of the high school by those endless exercises and examinations.
Thank God, we have all overcome the difficulties and now today we are talking about a reunion.
Grown-up and Friends
It is my recognition that I became a grown-up there at Hima High School. I should say I was lucky that my class always had more beautiful girls than any other one, the first year in grade I was and so it was when we were reallocated to liberal arts section. In this High School I cared more than ever about the beautiful girls as whenever I stayed with a certain girl alone or some girl tiptoed near to me my heart would jump ‘peng peng’ and beat fast, my breath had always been taken away on those kinds of special occasions; I was fascinated by the long straight and fresh shoulder-length hair after they took a shower, and the attractive perfumes. I was so happy that from the beginning of grade I until the end of high school life I got all the chances sitting at third row right behind the girls because all girls had been arranged to first two rows in order to avoid any possible bother by the boys. The only advantage that favored me to be close to girls was that I am short and short guys had always been arranged in the front just like morning exercise queue. Except for that, I have suffered the whole of my life by my short height. Sometimes if I was lucky enough, when the front row girl shook their heads the flying hair could touch my hand unexpectedly and this could intoxicate me to every mature cell of my body for the whole day till my happy dreams at night.
This adolescent memory was my most precious fortune in my life, pure without any impurities.
Apart from the story about girls I had also harvested my most important friends of my life. We ate together, slept together, played together, joked together and studied together. Sometimes of course we also fought with each other but that did not affect our relation at all on the contrary we had come closer and closer. We competed with each other - every time when the examination papers were distributed, we would take a glance at deskmate ‘s marks before look at our own; In fact in my understanding, I would rather to say we cared more about other guys’ marks than our own because we were at our emulative ages. And this became all the way the motivation of our marching steps.
Today when I count my friends I find a strange phenomenon that the top ones are all from the high school.
Perhaps friendship we won at the pure age purifies.
Anecdotes
The funniest custom to us boys was after the whole day’s hard work, tired, lying on the bed, starting to give evaluations to the girls specifically topping them with different marks which in fact brought us a bit of relaxation from heavy studying work. The embarrassment moment of this practice was that very much unfortunately several times all our comments had been overheard by the other quiet and serious head teacher because we normally kept our door open for the whole night during summer season and he always walked quietly. However this was far not the worst, the deadly embarrassment was that he one day heard every words of assessment to his own daughter and I assured the marks were not much high as he expected because he behaved so angrily that he burst out at his full roar and screamed at us. The world was extremely quiet at that moment; everybody there wished the earth could have swallowed them up.
At the back of our classroom there was a public toilet with a partition one side belonged to the boys the other half belonged to the girls. We boys at every interval break instead of going to the stinking toilet after the tiresome and tedious 45 minutes class would always went to the nearby farmer’s crop land and peed there in carefree way in the open air, with jokes and laughter echoing across the vast field. The sad consequence of this action was our urine killed the farmer’s crops and the school had to receive as many complain as they could from the surrounding communities. Having solved our internal emergency, we stood on the high slope and started the games of commenting on the passing by girls again, either they were shying when we had more members or we were shying when they had more members.
Everyday before our meal times, many vendors came with their special food to the school to compensate for our poor food situation. These vendors were all ladies, some were over fifty, and others were in their thirties or forties. One big advantage of these vendors was that their food could be sold on credit which allowed those poor students like me to enjoy their nice food full month and paid them back the following month either by cash or food tickets issued by the school. The food tickets were such hard currency in the school that we could buy anything in school shops and even in some specific shops in town functioning just like Renminbi. Some guys preferred the young vendors as their smiles were so sweet to make them pleasant; other guys favored the relationship with the senior ones which I bet, if I am not mistaken, they cared more about their confusion mind so as to escape part of their loans. Anyway these vendors coexisted with the school year after year until eventually they became one of the special aspects of the school.
Another interesting thing was those starving guys’ arrow-flying speed for the meal upon the class-over bell. Whenever there was no teacher’s supervision, they would shoot out towards the kitchen at full speed once they heard the first ‘dang’ of the bell, as if the soldiers had heard their trumpet order. It was a big pride to them to take the lead of the long queue to enjoy their ‘delicious food’.
I still remember two or three of the names of those food-racing guys as well as their racing scenes.
Study
As for study, I had least to show off though I myself thought I had worked hard enough but to my disappointment, I yielded quite poor crops. Probably I am not that academic.
Happy Recollection
If possible, I wish that I could delete all those useless so-called knowledge from my mind to make more spaces for all vivid memories of Hima Senior High School here at the foot of Tri-Peak Mountain.
