CHAPTER 3 EARLY SCHOOLING

Education was a family affair. Boys were prepared for the Imperial civil examinations, or for business, in the family school. Girls were tutored separately. Children of poorer families which could not support a teacher were destined to be illiterate.

There was generally one teacher to a dozen pupils, taught individually. There were no blackboards or classes in the school. The teacher was usually serene, sitting the whole day at his desk from early in the morning to sunset. The pupils did likewise. As clocks were very rare then, there was none in the school. In winter, when the day was short, lessons after dark were given by the dim light of a vegetable-oil lamp. Time was measured by a sun dial. On a cloudy or rainy day you had to guess your time. Often you missed the mark by an hour or two, but it did not matter much, for the lessons were given individually.

I was sent to school at the age of six, the traditional school age. But my actual years were only five and a month or so, since with us your age is called "one"—that is, you are in your first year—when you are born. The ordinary desk was a bit too high for me, so that my chair had to be raised by a wooden stand to bring me level with the desk. My tiny feet were thus left dangling from the seat.

I was given a textbook: San-tze-ching , or the "Classics of Three Characters." It is so named because each sentence contains three words, and it was rhymed so as to be easier for children to remember. After fifty-odd years I am still able to recite a great part of it. It starts with the following passage—I give a literal translation:

Man is originally

Endowed with a nature which is all-good.

And therefore by nature people are all alike.

It is practice that makes the divergence.

If they are not properly taught,

Their nature will be thwarted.

The all-good in human nature is the starting point of the Confucian philosophy of life and education, which exercised a strong influence upon the French Encyclopedists of the eighteenth century.

I understand what it means now, but of course I didn't then.

I must tell how I hated the school! After a short time, noticing that the attention of the teacher was not on me, I climbed down quickly from the chair and ran like a dog that has broken from its chain back home to my mother's lap.

"Why do you come home, my child?" asked my mother in surprise.

"The school is no good, the teacher is no good, and the book is no good," I replied.

"Aren't you afraid of your teacher? He may come and get you," said my mother kindly.

"I'll kill the teacher! I'll burn the school!"

My mother didn't send me back to school that day, nor did the teacher come.

Early the next morning my nurse woke me, spoke many kind words to me, and persuaded me to go to school again. From childhood I responded to kind words only; no coercion ever did any good. It was the gentle reasonableness of my nurse that made me go back voluntarily.

I took to school my own rattan chair, which was very light. A servant followed me and put it on the stand to match the height of the desk. The teacher made no remark and acted as if nothing had happened, but I noticed several schoolmates making faces at me. I hated them but pretended not to see them. I climbed up on the chair and sat there without resting place for my poor feet. More lessons were given, in the same book. I read very loud, as was required in the old type of school, repeating the meaningless text again and again till every word was learned by heart. When the sun shone directly above our heads it was midday. The teacher ordered me to go home for lunch. Immediately after lunch I went back to school and kept on learning the same thing till sunset.

Day in and day out, there was no change in the curriculum. When I finished one textbook another meaningless one came in turn. It was memory and patience that we were training.

We were taught the "three P's" in reading: presence of mind, presence of eye, and the presence of lips. The first means concentration, a requisite for doing any work well. The second is important because by it one gets a clear impression of the ideographic letters, with the various arrangements of fine and intricate strokes in each letter. The third is attained by reading a passage aloud several hundred times; the words then fall from the lips fluently, thus relieving the burden of the memory. We were warned not to commit words to memory by artificial means, because then we would not retain them. If we stumbled in reciting a passage we were ordered to read it over again one or two hundred times more—if the teacher was not in a good humor you would probably receive in addition, without warning, a crack on the skull. Often when the day was over some boys left school with lumps on their scalps.

Discipline and obedience were aimed at without regard for the interest of the pupil. Sundays were unknown. We had half holidays in the afternoon on the first and fifteenth day of each lunar month. In addition, we had during the year several full holidays on festival days, such as the Dragon Festival and the Moon Festival. A comparatively long vacation came about New Year's time. It started on the twentieth ^[1] day of the Twelfth Moon and lasted till the same day of the First Moon of the new year, and was called the New Year vacation.

As several years went by, I grew older and learned by heart quite a number of characters. My teacher then began to explain the meaning of the text and studying grew to be less drudgery. From the Confucian classics I began to understand a little of the way to be a righteous man. It began with the culture of the person, then went on to the fulfillment of duties to the family, to the state, and finally the world. I did not appreciate its full significance until much later.

In the earliest years school was indeed a prison to me. The difference was that in a real prison the inmates have little hope, while in school the pupils had hopes for a bright future. Had not all the famous scholars and statesmen gone through years of suffering in schools? It was through suffering that men became great, we were told to believe. The path was difficult but it was the only road to success.

"If you have tasted the bitterest of the bitter you will become the greatest of the great."

"The Son of Heaven ^[2] honors the scholar. While everything else is of a lower order, learning is the highest of all."

"Do not envy others who possess the sword; you have a pen that is mightier."

These common sayings spurred me on the road of learning as the odors of an early spring in the air spur a sluggish horse to green pastures. Otherwise I should have dropped my schooling and taken to business in Shanghai. Ideals, hopes, and will power are the most important factors in shaping one's life. If education fails in these, the emphasis in modern methods upon the interest of the pupil is but a trifling thing. Interest is an important factor in education only when it is subordinated to inculcation of ideals.

It seemed tedious and foolish in the old Chinese schools to commit the classics to memory. But there was the advantage that in later years one could go to memory to find ready references for the conduct of life. In a static society where the world moved very slowly and the rules of conduct would need little modification, it seems to me that the old Chinese method of teaching and learning was quite adequate for the needs it filled. Only, in a country school like mine it ran to the extreme, giving unnecessary hardship to the pupils. I wonder how many promising boys were scared away before they began to realize the importance of learning.

There were no sports or physical exercises in any form in my school. The boys were forbidden to run fast; they must walk slowly and be dignified. Right after lunch we were required to practise calligraphy. Young life seemed to be practically squeezed out of us.

Nevertheless, the boys found their own way to satisfy their play instincts. When the teacher was absent we would take over control of the school. Sometimes desks were taken to form a platform on which a play could be staged. Chairs and stools would be used as stage properties. Sometimes we played blindman's buff. On one occasion, while I was serving as the "blind," the teacher returned and all the others slipped away. As I caught an easy prey I felt something strange—it was the teacher. The shock was so terrifying that as I write it reels in my senses as vividly as if it had happened yesterday.

In the spring, when school was over in the afternoon, we flew kites. We made our own. Some took the form of a monster centipede, others a gigantic butterfly. At night we would send into the sky along the kite string a chain of lanterns, numbering usually five, seven, or nine. The smaller boys played with smaller kites, generally in the shape of a dragonfly, a swallow, or an eagle. The "swallows" were the most ingenious; they usually went by pairs, tied to the two ends of a slip of bamboo balanced on the kite string, and danced up and down in the currents of air like a pair of feathered playmates. Once I saw several swallows darting around such a pair, seeking their company.

In summer we played with other boys in the village during the starry evenings. The fireflies in the air looked like moving stars. Some of us preferred to listen to the stories told by some elder of the village. With a big palm-leaf fan in his hands to chase away annoying mosquitoes, and a teapot by his side, the elder would give his account of historical personages, dynastic changes, and past happenings in the village.

About two hundred and fifty years ago [he would begin], when the Ming Dynasty was overthrown by the Manchus, the whole country was in turmoil, but our forefathers living in this village still enjoyed peace. Later on, the Imperial Edict reached our village ordering all male persons to cut their hair according to the Tartar fashion and to wear a queue. ^[3] Men were terrified and women wept. Barbers came to the village to enforce the order. They had Imperial sanction, if anyone should disobey, to punish the culprit by cutting off his head instead of his hair. No one preferred his hair to his head. Since a man could not retain both his head and his hair, he would stretch his head and let the barber do his job of haircutting and queue braiding. We have got used to it now, but my! it must have looked funny then...

This was a bit of history we learned outside of school.

Again, a bit of local anthropology:

Tens of thousands of years ago our far-distant ancestors had tails like the monkey. The man-monkey's tail gradually turned yellow as he grew older. When nine out of the ten segments of his tail had turned yellow, he knew he was about to die. Then he would crawl into his cave and die there. As years went by, his tail dropped. This is why we have no tails now. But you can find at the end of your backbone where it was broken off.

Here is a story about pugilism:

In front of a rice shop a small boy was stationed to sell rice. He amused himself by picking up pinches of it and throwing them swiftly back into the basket. On one occasion a monk came to beg for rice. Instead of giving him some, the boy threw a few grains of it right in his face. To his surprise he saw that the grains had pierced the man's skin. The monk made a polite bow with his hands pressed together palm to palm, saying "Namo Amita Buddha" [Hail, Great Buddha!], and went his way.

Seven days later a pugilist came to the town. By now the boy was looking rather pale. "What's the matter with you, my boy?" asked the pugilist. When he was told the story of the monk he said, "Ah, that monk is the most famous pugilist of our time. You have insulted him. You have received from his bow the terrible internal wounds which will bring you to death in forty-nine days. I have medicine for your cure, but you must run away and not meet him again. He will come again after forty-nine days. Get a coffin, put some bricks in it, and pretend that you have died."

The monk did come, and asked for the boy. When he was told of his death, he sighed and said, "What a pity!" At his request he was led to see the coffin. Running his fingers over the top of it, he muttered, "Namo Amita Buddha." After he had gone the coffin was opened and it was found that all the bricks in it were cracked.

We boys pricked up our ears and listened attentively to these stories; they were one of the sources of my extracurricular education. I could retell many like them if space would allow.

I had several teachers, one after another, in my school. One of them was a kindly rustic scholar who had failed to pass the Imperial civil examinations for the First Degree, despite many attempts, and had to content himself with teaching in a family school. He had a round, moonlike face, was short and stout, and his bespectacled eyes looked habitually over the heavy brass rims of his glasses. His grey mustache hung bristling from his upper lip and he wore no beard. After he had taken egg soup at dinner, yellow particles would be seen adhering to the tips of his unclipped mustache. He was an encyclopedia of endless stories. But his literary style was rather poor; this is why, I presume, he failed repeatedly in the examinations; though he was an endless fountain of witticism. I think his memory in certain respects must have been bad, for he always forgot to carry with him either his umbrella or towel or fan when going back to the school after paying a visit to his friends. Necessity taught him finally to make an inventory of the articles he brought with him: pipe, umbrella, towel, and fan. When about to leave he would repeat, "Pipe, umbrella, towel, and fan." Even in winter, when no fan was needed, he would continue to mention it in his list, sometimes realizing that he had brought no fan with him, but at other times trying to find it, to the great amusement of both friends and pupils.

My mental scope was thus limited to what I learned from the Confucian classics and what the teachers and elders told me. I memorized quite a few of the classics and also had a rich store of stories. My early education, therefore, consisted chiefly of memory work. Yet I was fortunate to have been born and to live in the country, where nature offered plenty of instruction. Once I noticed that some beetles which lived on a large soap tree—so named because we used its nuts for soap—had on their heads horns like those of a deer. These looked exactly like the thorns that grew at the tips of the twigs of the tree. The beetles, I was told, were born of the tree and therefore looked like their mother. Somehow I felt suspicious. I reasoned that if a tree was capable of giving birth to beetles, they would in turn be capable of laying eggs that would be the seeds for the tree. That not being the case, I felt there must be some other reason for the remarkable likeness. I found it when I saw a bird feeding on insects in the tree without noticing the deer-horned beetles near by. The horns were therefore imitations of the thorns of the tree, for protection from the birds.

On the banks of the canal there grew candle trees, so called because the oil from the nuts is good for making candles. In the winter months the farmer would tie a few straws around the trunk of the tree, which he took off in the spring and burned. It was a common belief that by virtue of this act a magic force would kill the parasites. The fact was that if you tied enough straw around the trunk the parasites laid their eggs in the straw, and by burning it you destroyed the eggs, thus preventing them from propagating. It was no magic.

There were many such instances of naïve nature study in my childhood. The two above mentioned are, I think, enough for illustration.

Thus there were three sources of the education I received in my childhood. The first was the study in school of the Confucian classics, which served as guidance to moral conduct as well as a foundation to the future study of modern social sciences. The second was the storytelling which was to prepare the way for an appreciation of modern literature. The last was the innocent nature study which later served as a stem on which the buds of modern science could be grafted. Had I been born in a crowded city, resembling—on a smaller scale, minus electricity and wide streets—the East Side of New York or London, I would have missed the all-important training of nature. The whole course of my life might have been different. For the natural endowment of sense perception, observation, curiosity, and reasoning that are in every child and indispensable to life in a modern world might have been altogether smothered by the all-memory traditional training of my early youth.

I must confess that I did not apply myself to study as earnestly as some of my schoolmates, for I did not like to memorize but to see, touch, and reason. My teachers took this as a misfortune or curse of my disposition.

I loved to play and listen to storytelling. I liked to inquire into things to a degree disgusting to the elders. I took delight in watching frogs catch locusts in the rice fields and geese and ducks swimming in the canal. I enjoyed seeing the bamboos grow and flowers blooming, and loved to make kites and fly them. All these propensities were regarded by my teachers as a curse and I myself believed it must be so. But it is an irony of fate that the curse happened to turn out a blessing to me in later years, and the blessings my teachers bestowed upon some of my schoolmates have turned out to be curses. For some have died of consumption and others became bookish scholars, incapable of adjusting themselves to a changing environment when the tides of westernization swept over China. YYwENM11J/xaGe7dsgexY1QMEl6hiS8L2QyoJWIRB/XR7cUpKwPj+md47SlHWOcW