Oolong Tea

My secondary one Chinese teacher used to liken marking our essay scripts to drinking Chinese tea. Some essays were soothing like herbal tea, agreeable and leaving a lingering pleasant aftertaste. Others were like oolong, bitter and frown-inducing. When marking our scripts, he would alternate between oolong and herbal tea to neutralize the unpalatable effects of the former. I thought it was a very clever analogy even though I knew quite obviously which category my essays belonged to. Suffice to say even I wouldn’t have said no to a double dose of jasmine flavor when reading my own work back then.

Until I was in secondary school I never read a Chinese storybook from cover to cover. I don't think I even got through one chapter of a single book. There are vague recollections of storybooks about legendary soldiers lying around, but they remained incomprehensible and neglected till they were banished to the big-collection-of-useless-stuff department in a large forbidding cupboard.

All the years of neglect meant that I had a huge gap to bridge when I took up Chinese as a first language, which incidentally I was eligible for on the strength of my other subjects, in secondary school. Suddenly I had to write a critique of one newspaper clipping weekly. Suddenly I was expected to read Chinese newspapers.

Since the only Chinese newspapers lying around at home were my grandfather's copies of the evening edition tabloids bought chiefly for the 4D results printed on them, and I didn't know any better at the time, the first few clippings I selected were mostly of the rather sensationalist variety: taxi driver's throat slashed by robber; bar hostess disfigured in acid attack, and so on.

I think it was into the second month of school when my esteemed teacher finally saw fit to pass a few general comments about our work turned in so far. In short, the quality of our writing corresponded to the newsworthiness of the newspaper clipping. If the clipping was on a worthy topic such as a national policy or social commentary, then the critique was likely to be a well thought-out and fluent piece. On the other hand, garbage news rather tends to induce garbage comments.

I don't know if that was aimed specifically at me, but I took his comments on board and made an effort to buy the Chinese broadsheet for at least one day per week from that day onwards. My first attempt at reading a Chinese broadsheet was extremely trying to say the least. Most of the words in the bold headline screaming out for recognition were met with a blank look and the first paragraph alone took a few minutes to digest, word by word.

Gradually the newspaper reports I chose to write on became more up-market: lawyer embezzles millions; corrupt civil servant stashes bribes into secret account. Just kidding. My writing was still deplorable I suppose, but at least I had a better variety of news reports to choose from now.

At the same time we also had to do book reviews of storybooks --- which were thankfully mostly compilations of short stories or novellas, which I found more manageable. Some of the stories were rather meaningful as well, which added to my enjoyment of getting to grips with the language. There are people who detest doing things they’re not adept in, but I was never like that. Any sign of weakness is an opportunity to improve oneself, a challenge to be overcome. Or so I think anyway.

Looking back it's been a long journey, but at that time I only treated each assignment as individual class work to be completed on time. I never begrudged my Chinese teacher for his unflattering opinion of my work; on the contrary I respected him for his forthrightness and strove even harder to produce a standard of work acceptable to him. Personally he was always encouraging to me as well, recognizing the effort I was putting in. Unlike my overzealous Chinese Literature teacher who made us memorize and recite Tang poems every lesson, he was nurturing and never overbearing, so I had no reason to dislike him.

Interestingly my Chinese teacher was also appointed my form teacher in Secondary Two. While many teachers write mostly clichéd comments in report books like "Student X needs to put in more effort in maths and history" and "So-and-so is a well-liked girl in class who always hands in her work on time", Zhao laoshi [teacher] was his usual candid self. He quoted only a ten-word Chinese phrase in my report book yet the comments though brief rang true. They translate into "If one has the endeavor, even a metal rod can be polished into a needle." Or as he might have said, with expert preparation even unappetizing oolong tea can be brewed into an exquisite delicacy.