Chapter 84 Chapter 8 Dreams come true

The flowers are all gone, and the ladder disappears.I returned to Chung Hsing University in Taichung to fulfill my promise to return to my original school for three years.My family has moved to Taipei, so I take the Guanghua train from Taipei to Taichung every Tuesday at 7:00 am, and I take the Ziqiang train from Taichung back to Taipei at 6:00 on Friday night."Advanced English" class at National Taiwan University Institute of Teaching on Saturday morning.For two days, with the help of a maid, I worked hard as a housewife, living opposite my parents' house, sharing a lane yard, and everything was within the range of response.But my parents are over 70 years old, and my three sons are all in their teens. Every Tuesday morning, I get up at 5 o'clock to prepare the family's breakfast, and then go to catch the train.There are thousands of concerns in my heart. Sometimes the moon is still in the sky. When I leave home, I really turn around every step of the way. At first, I just keep the promise. Gradually, when I return to Taipei, I will also worry about the department affairs in that small building in Taichung.

The establishment of the Department of Foreign Languages ​​at Chung Hsing University is the realization of my long-term dream. During the tenure of the three principals, Lin Zhiping, Tang Huisun, and Liu Daoyuan, I have been promoting it with the strength of a teacher.As the only national university in central China, there should always be a Faculty of Arts. After the Faculty of Liberal Arts was established, it first established the Department of Chinese and History. The most difficult thing for the Department of Foreign Languages ​​is the teachers.At that time, there were not many qualified foreign language professors in Taiwan, and PhDs in English and American literature were still "precious metals." I kept it, and I didn't want to go to "outside counties and cities".Donghai and Jingyi, who are also in Taichung, have their own sources of teachers for the seminary, and the National University has stricter qualification restrictions.This problem is the biggest difference between ideal and reality. I didn't expect it when I talked about the importance of literary education in the past few years.

When I returned to Chung Hsing University before the start of the spring class in 1969, I found that I had been "published" as the head of the newly established Department of Foreign Languages, and that the first class of forty-five students had already attended classes for one semester. The dean is also responsible for the administration. The courses are offered in accordance with the regulations of the Ministry of Education. Almost all of them are common subjects. They are jointly offered elective courses with the Chinese and History departments. Logic and literature courses are not available until the second grade.I didn’t understand until I entered the principal’s office for the first time when I returned to China. The two letters I wrote from the United States said that I hadn’t received my degree yet, and I didn’t know and prepare for departmental affairs. I could only be a dedicated literature teacher, not suitable for being a director. In the eyes of the president and provost (there was no dean of the Faculty of Arts at that time), it was only a humble speech of national virtue.He has been promoted to a full professor and has obtained the red professor certificate from the Ministry of Education. He has worked hard to promote the establishment of the Department of Foreign Languages ​​for many years. Now the Department of Foreign Languages ​​has been "established for you". Wait, half of the six people are over 60 years old), after waiting for you for half a year, who cares if you don’t care about department affairs?

The dean, Mr. Wang Tianmin, was originally my elder, who came out of the principal's office.Seeing my "terrified" and embarrassed expression, he said, "I believe you are capable of doing it, and you can come to discuss business issues with me. There are conservative expectations for the department head here, and you should avoid wearing too flowery skirts in the future." Short skirts were popular at that time, but I didn’t have any long skirts or short skirts. I only wore my spacious cheongsam in class. In this way, I changed from a hard-working nerd to the head of the department, and I was faced with practical problems.Fortunately, the students distributed by JAMS are pretty good.At that time, there was no Sun Yat-sen University and National Chung Cheng University, and only four universities in Taiwan had foreign language departments. However, the foreign language departments had a relatively high number of admissions, and the qualifications of the students were quite good. Later, their performance in society was also above the standard.

During my three-and-a-half years as department chair, the biggest torment was faculty hiring for literature courses.Shi Zhaoxi, Xu Jingtian, and the very young Zhang Hanliang were newly hired as full-timers. All three gentlemen have proved my "wisdom eye" and are very popular among students. The former Ding Zhenwan, Yao Chongkun, Sun Zhixuan, Tang Zhenxun, and Xiao Kunfeng also all cooperated with each other. There is a harmonious centripetal force in the department. Anyone who walks up to the two offices on the second floor of the small building we borrowed from the Agricultural College will often hear laughter. Voice.My office door is always open, and teachers and students come in and out with a happy expression.

Half of the veteran students in the first class were girls.Half boys.When I first took office, those girls held a welcome party for me in the dormitory. They set up a few plates of hard biscuits and soda. They didn't sing or other programs, but just surrounded me in the middle of the two rows of bunk beds. They asked me a lot of questions: I am very happy to be admitted to the Department of Foreign Languages, but after a semester of classes, I don’t know what to study in the Department of Foreign Languages?The class I take now is similar to the class in high school, Chinese, English, modern history..., but the teacher is a bit older....This gathering opened up my style of talking directly with students. From the confusion of college freshmen to the heavy pressure of homework in the next three years, I accompanied the more than forty young people in every step of their growth.I seem to have a moral responsibility as a dream builder for that relationship from scratch, and to those nineteen and twenty-year-old dream seekers (if they look for it), I unconsciously feel like "bringing children" like caring.

My greatest moral duty to this new department is to establish its academic excellence.In the first year, the U.S. News Office in Taichung donated some of our first literature books due to the books I had borrowed for many years and my two-time Fulbright Scholars, together with some paintings borrowed by Ding Zhenwan from her husband, Mr. Chen Qimao. , my empty office suddenly looked a little cultured. They pointed me to the fact that there is an Embassy Scholar in Taichung where the U.S. State Department trains diplomats in Chinese. Many of the students have a master’s degree in English. During the Vietnam War, a large number of U.S. troops were stationed on loan. There were many civilian staff such as medical care and communications.Through these two channels, in the second year, I divided the second grade into four groups, opened the English conversation required by the Ministry of Education, and invited four students who were studying in the embassy school to come to the class for two hours a week. Seven people came to class.They get along very well in and out of class.Our students are simple and innocent.Some extracurricular activities and outings took these teachers with them, and even brought them home to eat and say goodbye, so as to gain a deeper understanding of Taiwanese folk life.A doctor’s wife taught Shakespeare through my earnest application, and a military information officer taught fiction. They were qualified and experienced, and the teaching content met the standard I hoped for. They helped me through the earliest days. difficulties.I taught the history of English literature by myself, and invited Professor Xie Pode from Tunghai University to teach English poetry in the second year.He is British, and he is already the best teacher of English poetry in Donghai, because he has a natural depth and charm, which is different from other teachers, and he inspires my students very well.

At the beginning of the establishment of the Department of Foreign Languages, English, French, and German teachers who were originally common subjects became basic teachers.Tian Lulian (MiSS Tilford) and Sun Baozhen (Mary Sampson), who taught freshman English in the agricultural college, are conservative Baptist missionaries in the American South. He is very friendly with me, but he is very dissatisfied with the teaching content of the young American teacher of the literature course I hired as a part-timer. He thinks it is too radical.The new freshman English textbook I edited replaced the freshman textbook published by Young Lions.It also caused accusations from another group of really "old" professors.However, I have just returned from studying. I have carefully studied the basic textbooks of British and American literature and collected a lot of information. I know that students can no longer use the old standard selection of texts, and must add new articles in various fields of culture after World War II. , fortunately received majority support (including students).In the freshman year, there was only one course, "Introduction to Western Literature", which was taught by Fu Weiren (William Burke) of this department. He was a Presbyterian missionary, and his thinking was quite "progressive", which was very popular among students. That year, I co-edited a book with him. This textbook solves the dilemma that there were no original documents back then.Gu Baogu and Wang Yongqing (principal of the Methodist Middle School) in the French class are both Catholic priests. They are proficient in French and teach very seriously.The freshman Chinese teacher is Mr. Chen Guimiao from the Chinese Department. The first composition topic he gave them was "Give You a String of Sunshine". Students who have just graduated from high school and finished their entrance exams have seen such a realm! Thirty Still talking about it years later.I retained him to teach freshman Chinese in the Department of Foreign Languages ​​until he went to Taipei to take up politics. When he ran for the Legislative Council, many students must have been enthusiastic supporters.Another unforgettable teacher was Mr. Zeng Xiangduo. His open and critical perspective on contemporary history was very inspiring. Later, he was imprisoned for political incorrectness. After he was released from prison, he hosted a political talk show , When I met him on the streets of Taipei, I was so overwhelmed by the past and present, I don’t know where it all started.

After the semester started in the fall of 1970, I planned to hold the "First Symposium on British and American Literature Education", which was planned to be held at Chung Hsing University. In those years, there were very few such conferences, and there were not many conferences on various disciplines, so it was held in Taichung less.I sincerely hope that all schools will have more opportunities for exchanges in teaching, and provide some assistance to schools other than National Taiwan University. There are only four schools in the province with foreign language departments, which have always been the first choice of liberal arts students. Substantially replace the old with the new to adapt to the new era.About 30 colleagues from the whole province who offered literature courses came. Zhu Limin and Yan Yuanshu from National Taiwan University were naturally the stars in the meeting. There were few people, so everyone spoke freely.My little new department has been busy for a long time, and the joyful enthusiasm is something I will not easily see again in the countless meetings I attended in the future.

I was busy inside and out until the summer of 1972, when the first class of students in the Department of Foreign Languages ​​of Chung Hsing University graduated, to the surprise of the whole school, I also resigned.I have taught for three years as agreed.I am extremely reluctant to let go of this department that I promoted, facilitated, founded, and laid the foundation for, and every plant and tree seems to be expressing divorce.I lived in Taichung for 20 years (my family lived for 17 years, and I went back and forth between the two places for three years after returning to China), and I spent the most stable years here.Now I finally saw the first batch of fruits on the wishing tree, but I had to go... At the farewell party, all the students held candles and surrounded me in a circle, crying into a ball.No one knows how helpless and confused I am, who has always been positive and full of vitality, when I face a completely unfamiliar future.

This class of students, around twenty-two years old, is going to start their whole life from this day on. For four years, they have been cared for and supervised by me like an only child. Many of them will become serious and good teachers in the future, and most of the boys have entered trade and other industries quite successfully. So far for more than 30 years, Li Shanlin, Zhao Huiru, Chen Wanmei, Wang Yongming, Ding Yizhen, Li Mingchao, Wu Yihui, Xu Chunzhi, Xu Shuru, Ding Zhenjuan, Xu Songyu and others often meet or write letters. The whole class has developed a brotherly friendship, and they still have the same care for me as if they were dependent on each other. In the last few months, I rode a bicycle to and fro on campus, and I felt nostalgic for everything I saw, and there were footprints of my youth everywhere. Saying goodbye to Chung Hsing University means saying goodbye to the first half of my life.Seventeen years in Taichung, life is simple, but warm.I saw with my own eyes that the sign of National Chung Hsing University was hung on the door, replacing the original sign of Agricultural College.I saw that many buildings had been built on the previously empty campus.The beginning of the establishment of the Department of Foreign Languages.All the classrooms are borrowed from other departments. The "base" for the first grade class is the earliest training classroom for the government's aid to African agricultural programs. There are two tile houses and a beautiful shady tree in the small courtyard.The second grade borrows a classroom from the Department of Animal Husbandry close to the pasture.One day when I was reading "Bellwolf", the earliest epic in the history of English literature, a beautiful calf walked in the door. Both of us were frightened. Fortunately, no one yelled. Go out the original door.Afterwards, the head of the Animal Husbandry Department told me that it was an expensive breeding cow that had just been imported, and it was a treasure for improving agriculture in Taiwan. It was an honor for you to talk about literature to it. In fact, since the days of agricultural colleges, all departments have been very kind to me. The reason why my sophomore English class is always full is that in the 1960s, Taiwan’s agricultural academic research has become quite modern and has become one of the pioneers in Taiwan’s development. , all departments encourage students to study abroad.Professor Li Qingshu, the director of the Institute of Agricultural Economics with the most sensuality, is a member of the Legislative Council. He "sent" all his graduate students to my class, and ordered me to correct more English compositions for them in a fatherly tone.He later sent them all to the United States to study professional degrees, and they all made practical contributions when they came back. In the 1960s, many graduating students started some modern farms in central China and the Chianan Plain, often inviting teachers to give them "guidance".Professor Liu Zuoyan, the wife of the dean of the Agricultural College, Mo Miannan, and I are colleagues in the English department, and often invite us to visit together.At that time, some foreign exchange professors lived in the campus dormitory and often went to the countryside together.In those years, in the remote mountains and remote areas, I really traveled a lot of places, got to know the real Taiwan, and verified the rooted strength and enthusiasm of higher education in Taiwan.The most frequent place for us to entertain international friends is the rose garden in Yuanlin, where Mr. Zhang's wife was elected Queen of Roses.Seeing such a large-scale flower garden and scientific breeding method for the first time, listening to them talk about the beautiful naming of new varieties, the prospect of large-scale promotion and export... At that time, no one would ask you superficially, "Do you love Taiwan?" I also can't forget the early winter of 1966, just after the mid-term exam, suddenly came the news that Mr. Tang Huisun, the principal, went to inspect the experimental forest farm of Ren'ai Township Forestry Department in Nantou County and died while climbing a mountain.He had a heart attack while climbing to the top of the mountain, leaning against Dean Song, and died sitting on the land of the forest farm.For more than 40 years, every time I read the news that Huisun Forest Farm has become a tourist attraction, I would think of him and the gentle and refined early pioneers of Dean Mo, and I would also think of Yu Yuxian, the first chairman of the Agricultural Committee of Taiwan. gentlemen.When I first went to class, he was a lecturer in the Department of Agricultural Economics and married my earliest student Ji Chunyu.When they were fighting for Taiwan's agriculture, they would talk to me about his idea of ​​a 100,000-strong army of farmers, and how they named the improved varieties of fruit "Miss Carambola", "Yang Guifei Lychee", "Grape Fairy"...and me. Share the joy of creation.When I saw the beautiful street trees, I also remembered that before he died of cancer for three years at the age of fifty-eight, his last hope was to see a tree outside the window! On Christmas Day in 1968 when I was studying in the United States, I received a Greyhound long-distance bus ticket.The letter comes from ABLewis and his wife, visiting professors of Zhongxing Agricultural College. Mrs. Lewis' father was a missionary in China in the late Qing Dynasty, and she was born in Tianjin.When she was in Taichung, she regarded me as a fellow from the north, and often shared the joy of reading literature books with me.She invited me to take a Greyhound car for a real trip to the United States, from Indiana to Connecticut, take the Greyhound Bus for two days and one night, and then they took me for a run in New England to see their countryside .Take me on snowshoes to see Poet Frost's woods in the snow.Tracking a gray rabbit in the snow... One morning I drove and said, "I'll take you to see someone." The car drove non-stop for six or seven hours on a narrow country road, half of which was covered with dense jade lacquer Surrounded by poles and bushes, it is full of mystery.After noon, I suddenly saw a sunny hillside in front of me. There was an independent farm on the hillside. A Chinese woman wearing a cheongsam and a high bun walked out of the house and greeted the guests with cheers.Professor Lewis, who has always been taciturn, introduced to me: Thisi sMrs. Buck, who appeared at the gate was Mr. Buck (John Buck), the ex-husband of Pearl Buck who won the Nobel Prize for writing The Good Earth. Pearl Buck lived with her missionary father, Sai Zhaoxiang, near my family’s Nanjing Ninghai Road since she was a child. After she got married in 1921, she went to Fengyang, Anhui to engage in the work of improving the rural areas of the early Chinese Rural Revival Joint Committee. She wrote "The Great Earth" based on the novel materials of the famine, and became famous in one fell swoop. Later, she divorced and married her publisher. Mr. BUck married a Chinese lady as his wife.After she arrived in the United States, she insisted on wearing a cheongsam to meet guests as a nostalgia for her hometown.In front of the fireplace at his farm, we talked excitedly about where he had dedicated his life and where I was born.Suffering China. These people and these things are predestined by fate, and they will never be forgotten. Since my family moved to Taipei in 1967, I have been busy with my studies and work. I was away from home for half of the time. After returning from the United States, I have commuted between Taipei and Taichung for more than three years, rain or shine. Every Tuesday, I take the 7:00 am train to Taichung, and on Fridays, I take the Ziqiang train back to Taipei at 6:00 pm.When I was not in Taichung, Mr. Ding Zhenwan led the teaching assistant Huang Chunzhi to handle all the affairs in the department. She wrote me dozens of "fire fighting love letters".On Saturday morning, I went to National Taiwan University to take a three-hour "Advanced English" class for the Institutes of Chinese and History. In the afternoon, I would go to the Dunhuang Bookstore on Zhongshan North Road to read the new pirated English books and see if they could be used as teaching materials. .On such days, I am exhausted physically and mentally but dare not speak tiredly.My family moved to the opposite side of my parents to take care of me, but my mother was too much burdened, and Yuchang's work entered the peak of the railway electrification project, and my inner anxiety gradually became torture.In those years, the time to calm down and think about things and read new books was the three hours on the train between Taipei and Taiwan, the three hours of solitude that belonged to me.I am forever grateful! Today, this first class has graduated.My insistence on resignation was finally agreed by President Liu Daoyuan.Where would I go after I left Chung Hsing University? There was no time to make arrangements at that time. No one in the foreign language departments in Taipei would believe that I would leave such a vigorous new department, and I didn’t want to cause speculation about finding a job. Maybe it's better to settle down at home for a year before watching. At this time, is the hand of fate stretched out again? Dean Wang Tianmin was invited by the new Minister of Education Luo Yunping to serve as the curator of the National Institute of Compilation and Translation in Taipei.Mr. Wang Tianmin (192-1983), named Jitao, was my father’s revolutionary comrade. He was born in the history department of Beijing Normal University.The Northeast fell into Manchuria, and he went to the "Northeast Zhongshan Middle School" established in Peiping to teach history. From Peiping to Nanjing, Hunan, and Sichuan, he saw me growing up when I was in exile.When Zhongshan Middle School moved back to Shenyang from Sichuan after the victory, he served as the principal. He thought he could serve his hometown and run the school in a stable manner. In 1948, when the Communist army entered the city, his family of ten fled to Taiwan.His students said that his history courses are rich in content, ranging from ancient history to modern history.In the early 1970s, the National Institute of Translation and Translation played an important role in the education of universities, middle schools and primary schools in Taiwan.He knew that I had resigned, and invited me to serve as the director of the Humanities and Social Affairs Group, so that I could display some ideas of scholars serving the country. In particular, he hoped that I would make a plan to compile Chinese books and translate them into English, so that Taiwan could learn from them. speak out abroad.He said to me, "I have been teaching in school all my life, and I have never been a civil servant. You should first settle down in the translation hall and help me. If it doesn't work, I will talk about it." In this way, I embarked on a road that I had never dreamed of.