Chapter 26 Chapter 2

What I am most grateful for in Nankai education is of course my studies. Those six years laid the foundation for my lifelong study.In addition to the original academic level, Nankai Middle School attracted many excellent teachers who came to Chongqing from Pingjin. They were called by Principal Zhang to live in Jinnan Village on the Shapingba campus. Until the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, few people left in the eight years. Jinnan Village is the earliest dependent village I have ever seen.Those rows of concrete single-story houses lived in many legendary figures that people in Nankai talked about.For example: Mr. Meng Zhisun, the Chinese liberal arts teacher who has been unforgettable to me for decades, and Zhang Yali, the glamorous math teacher who scares students the most.There are also two daughters of Yu Chuanjian, the director of the school, who also teach in Nankai after returning from studying in the United States; "Da Yu" teaches English, and "Xiao Yu" teaches science.

Nankai has always paid attention to internationalization, so the English textbooks are very difficult, which is a tradition.The level of physics and chemistry is also very strong. After students go to university, it is like no one is in the land of physics and chemistry.Mathematics is also taught solidly. We were probably the first middle school to teach calculus at that time.I was doing pretty well in my studies, except for maths, especially geometry.I can't figure out why some are dashed and some are solid?In my opinion, there are only solid lines and no dashed lines. Zheng Laohan from the chemistry department is a strange person.It seems that very few people in the school call him by his real name, Zheng Xinting. He didn't teach the girls' middle school, but every time we heard boys learn him to memorize chemical formulas in Shandong accent, and we said that he drank some wine in the dormitory and taught "Three Kingdoms" to boys. They were all envious to death.In addition, he also said many strong words to encourage "manhood".

Teacher Wu Zhenzhi from the geography department taught junior high school Chinese history. When she mentioned Taiwan, she asked us to remember "chicken cake" (Keelung, Tamsui, Kaohsiung), and we called her "chicken cake" behind our backs.When she was in high school, she taught world geography, and she often brought large and thick foreign books to show us pictures from all over the world to open our eyes.In the early summer of that year, her fiancé capsized on the Jialing River on a small steamship. When the bad news came, we girls stuffed a condolence letter under the door of her single dormitory, which read, "Teacher, we cry with you... Since then, no one has called her nickname.

At the beginning of 1948, I met her on the stairs of the Liberal Arts College of National Taiwan University to see Dean Shen Gangbo. We kept in touch until she retired from the dean of Liberal Arts of Chenggong University. At the end of her life, I also went to the hospital to see her for the last time. . I remember that there was a mathematics teacher surnamed Kang, who was the son of the founder of the school, Kang Nairu.He taught well and was very well known in our girls' department.I forgot his name, but I just remember that everyone called him "the second child of my wife". He was tall and unmarried. His classmates thought he was handsome, but I didn't think much of it.During the Anti-Japanese War, everyone wore padded jackets and straw sandals, but he was unique in that he wore a white suit.

At that time, he had a good impression of a girl in our class. She was Nankai's school belle, and she sat next to me.We often have quizzes, and the teacher walks between our seats, patrolling back and forth, and sometimes looks down to see if the students can write or have any questions.Every time, when he leaned over to look at the female classmate, the whole class would make strange faces, winking and pushing back and forth.We used brushes to write at that time, and we all had inkstones.One classmate was very angry and thought he was too annoying. Why just looking at her, he ground a plate of ink into the inkstone and put it on the corner of the table, making it protrude a little from the edge of the table. Ink dripped onto the white suit, covering about half of his body.He said angrily in Tianjin dialect: "What's this called? What's this called?" meaning: "What's this called? What's this called?" It's sometimes disgusting for girls to tease male teachers like this.

The person who influenced me the most was Mr. Meng Zhisun, a Chinese teacher.Nankai Middle School's Chinese textbooks, from the first grade to the third grade, Twelve volumes in six years is famous, and the editor-in-chief is Mr. Meng.In junior high school, the essays were selected from the shallower to the deeper, with both vernacular and classical Chinese. The excellent works of writers since the "May 4th Movement" inspired our new literary creation.High school textbooks are simply selected texts of the history of Chinese literature, from the Republic of China to the Republic of China, describing the development of literature in various periods, and the selected texts are the essence of literature.

In the year when Mr. Meng taught me Chinese in my second year of high school, I even created elective courses that are rarely seen in middle school courses.In those two years, I had grown up, and in addition to having to deal with other courses and prepare for the National College Examination, I recited poems day and night.Looking back quietly today, I have memorized most of the important masterpieces in the history of Chinese literature in those two years. In addition to class lectures, Mr. Meng is also like a father to me, lent me all the books he thought I could read, and sometimes he would say: "Today our family makes noodles with fried sauce, you come and eat." It is also the delicious food in my memory.

Nankai's teachers, by the standards of any era, are insightful people who pay attention to spiritual inspiration: Like many teachers in Zhongshan Middle School who are missed by students for life, they all fled from the north to Sichuan during the war and followed Principal Zhang. The call for running a school is to share weal and woe. In 2004, in the 50th anniversary collection of our class 43, the most recalled ones were Teacher Meng and Teacher Zheng (boys said that 40% of the graduates took the chemistry exam because of Zheng Laohan) and related departments).There is another article about Guoyong’s classmate "Education Calling People", which tells the story of Wei Rongjue, a famous physics teacher: There is a proud student of Mr. Meng’s Chinese class, Xie Bangmin, the senior of Class 41, who passed the physics exam for graduation. I wrote a Ci Zhi Zhi on it, and thought to myself that I would not be able to graduate.Teacher Wei also wrote four sentences when reviewing the examination paper: "Although the paper is blank, the words are good. Everyone has their own ambitions, and they will be given 60 points." Xie Xuechang was admitted to the law department of Southwest Associated University, and later taught at Peking University.There are many such stories circulating on campus, and it is not difficult to understand why the teachers of Nankai are so memorable.

Nankai's physical education is also well-known throughout the country. Every day at 3:30 in the afternoon, all classrooms are locked.Everyone has to go to the playground to join a certain team. Except for the heavy rain, they practice and compete every day, and there is nowhere to escape. At first, I thought softball (there was very little baseball in those days) was milder and suited my thin body, but running the bases required maximum speed. After much teasing, I discovered that I could actually run very fast.After training, half a year later, he was promoted from a "stand aside" reserve player to the team's first baseman. In the third year of junior high school, he even became a sprinter, high jumper, and long jumper in the track and field team of the girls' middle school.A teacher praised me for the high jump and long jump as if nothing happened, and I passed by "floating".

My parents couldn't believe my athletic performance.On that day, my mother finally worked up the courage to watch my race, which was about a 100-meter race. She was worried and ready to take me home when I fell to the ground.For more than sixty years now, I still remember the howling wind in my short hair before the long jump into the sandpit. A skinny fifteen-year-old girl felt for the first time that life is really good, and she had the confidence to survive. In fact, there is another nightmare in physical education class, which is tap dancing. There is a teacher Gao who has taught me physical education for several years. She is very tall and has a beautiful figure.Tap dancing is compulsory, and the students are very strict with her dancing. I can't keep up with the dance steps, and she often knocks on my ankles with a small baton in her hand.He also said: "Your homework is so good, why are your feet so stupid?" Later when she went to Taiwan, our classmates went to see her, but I didn't go because I was beaten too many times by her.I really can't dance, and I don't know why I'm so stupid? I just can't tap dance, but she really beat with a stick, and sincerely said that I was stupid, and I felt very ashamed.It's not her fault at all.