Love Affair
In our school, it was Guo Changli, i.e., Charles
Guo, a student in the class of massage, who had the largest collection of recorded tape. I
heard he had many beautiful songs recorded. His family was poor, but he saved the money
for his meals to buy tape. And he had his tape well kept. When I was suffering from a
headache, induced by vertebrate disease on my neck, time after time he had given me
massage. So we became well acquainted with each other. He was five years older than I was
and was like an elder brother to me. He had a good voice for singing. He was a good
student and was elected to the chairman of the Students' Association in our school. Yet he
was not handsome and his family lived in the rural countryside. He had had a girl friend
before. But the girl's family was in objection to their friendship. Nevertheless our
schoolmates all heard of that fact. He was generous in rendering helps to other people
whenever he could. One Saturday, he was helping some younger schoolmates to buy
instant noodles. For that purpose, he had to go to the small shop thirteen times and
nearly had the food all sold out of the shop. In the long run I got accustomed in
talking all my troubles to him. I also like to talk to him when I was caught in unhappy
moods. He tended me like his own sister. Once I was in search for the tape with Qi Qin's
singing, and tried to ask him to lend me one. I had heard that he kept his tape carefully
and was reluctant to lend them to others. So I was afraid to ask him at first. But beyond
my expectation, he lent me the tape together with his player.
As time elapsed, my feeling towards him seemed to be
changing. I started to feel uncomfortable any day without seeing him. I liked to hear his
voice and went to see him for comforting my neck. I knew he liked to eat noodles. So I
often sent noodles to him. One day, when I was in my physical training period, he sat on
the windowsill of their dormitory watching us. I asked him why he did not attend the
class. He said his ankle had been sprained. I felt sorry for him and soothed him. I
thought that the next hour would be the class period of his girl friend Song Xiaomei. So
he might be waiting for Song. I felt uncomfortable to that and asked Li Fei to send the
instant noodles to him together with my spiramycin tablets for his throat sores. Later Guo
always liked to laugh at me for sending him spiramycin tablets for curing his sprained
ankle. Although I had explained to him that he had mistaken my intention. The reason for
sending him the tablets was due to the fact that I did not get to know exactly what he was
in need of. Our teacher had frequently told us that loves in the school days usually would
not last long. I had received love letters much earlier. But I paid no attention to them.
This time I felt really moved. Could this be true love for me?
Guo Changli Went for Practice
He started his practice at the Massage Hospital of
Beijing. Then after, we had much lesser chance in seeing each other. I had started to
learn piano tuning. Our tuning class was organized in a mixed of students from our own
school and from other schools. At first all students in the class had no acquaintance with
each other. So we could not listen to each other and quarreling was frequent. Once I
quarreled with Yang Wen and I thought of how I had hit people with stone pieces.
Subsequently I used my asthma pills to hit him. I had been able to hit people with
considerable accuracy and soon got him trying to evade my hits with all his efforts. He
escaped my hits only after teacher's arrival.
However, we all became good friends six months
later. Zhang Qian was my best friend. She was accustomed to yelling and screaming when she
fell into her nervous mood. But I played the piano to make her quiet down. On one
occasion, Zhou Lang joined in with us. While I was playing inharmonious notes and they
made their rhythmic but queer yelling. This kind of strange accompaniment made our room
filled with roaring wild shrieks and howls. A large insect flew in to join the tumult with
her buzzing noise. Since I was most afraid of insects and thus was frightened by such
noise to run out from the room. Zhou Lang called out "Chen Yan! Stay and keep
on playing your piano accompany. I wanted to stay but that large insect was too
frightening. So Zhou Lang promised to kill it and ran after it in the classroom with
a broom. But he could not hit it and all of the other people in the room, except me,
joined in the chase that made dust flying all around. Just then our teacher, Mr. Li in
charge of the dormitory came in with surprise and exclaimed, "Are you crazy?"
Mind of music learners was indeed more active. We were excited indoors as well as
outdoors. One day Mr. Li Renwei, our teacher left tuning exercises for us to be done
indoors. But we went outdoors to the playground to fly kites as soon as she left. It was
windy with the intensity of Class 6 that broke the strings of the kite. No one knew where
the escaped kite was. The head master saw us wandering outside the classroom and went to
ask Mr. Li the reason, "Could the first period in the morning be a class of physical
training? Then the teacher in charge of physical training came to the mess. He was to
render my blame with the words, "I had them to do running on the class
yesterday. Because of Chen Yan's health condition I did not ask her to do her best but
just try to finish a run as long as possible. I wonder why she made Zhou Lang to climb a
wall. I had just wanted Zhou to descend and she made Yang Wen to climb a tree just a
little while later. You had better get her tamed." She left us after speaking. Mr.
Li, our teacher got angrier and asked what was the matter. I said, "The other mates
went running yesterday and I felt dull with nothing to do for the period. So I went
running with them. When we came across the eastside of the playground, I saw the poplars
were sprouting. It reminded me of the tall poplar in front of my home when I was a kid. In
spring, bunches of red things appeared on the branches before leafing. Some called them
poplar hangings while we I called caterpillars. I had been using them in playing games.
Since I was told those caterpillars could be used in cooking delicious steamed stuffed
buns, I told Zhou Lang about that. Zhou Lang said, "I've never tasted that food
before." I told him, "Go and get some of the caterpillars so that we could cook
some of the buns to let you have a taste." Hou Jian said, "All of us had never
tasted them before. How are they cooked?" Zhang Qian said, "I can cook them and
add much fatless pork. I would bring them to you next Monday." Yang Wen said,
"You would not do any stealing, would you?" "That's impossible."
Zhou Lang said, "The tree is too tall. How can I get on it?" Then I advised him
to climb on the parallel bars and the wall at first, and to walk slowly on the wall to the
tree thereafter. Everybody thought that was a good idea. Then Zhou Lang climbed up the
wall and finally got the caterpillars. But he was too eager to have a taste and tasted the
caterpillars first. Then he exclaimed, "Why! It is bitter?" Zhang Qian could not
believe it and said, "Throw down for me to have a taste." Zhou Lang gave us a
bunch of it. We all made our taste and found them really bitter. So Yang Wen said,
"Chen Yan has deceived us." I explained, "I have not deceived you. The
caterpillars are dark red in color with round balls in my memory. They did not taste like
these." Then Zhang Qian said, "It's no use in arguing about this. After
all the trees have a variety of species." The teacher in physical training run over
and asked, "What are you doing?" With fear we went on running exercises at once.
A few minutes later I wondered whether or not the Chinese scholartrees should be
blossoming at that time too. Their flowers smelled very sweet and had a somewhat sweet
taste. Zhang Qian said, "I've also eaten them before." Yang Wen wondered,
"Can we get any of them." "I don't know. You can get on the tree and have a
look." "It out of the question." With that, he took off the coat and wound
up his sleeves to climb up a tree with much difficulty. He said, "There's no flower
but thorns and leaves." Yang Wen was found by our teacher before getting down
the tree. The teacher made clear all our activities and inquired, "How the two boys
went up the wall and the trees under the command of a girl?" I thought that the
teacher was stirring trouble among us. The teacher continued, "You have to run two
thousand meters and Chen Yan will stand still in the center of the playground for the
punishment. At the moment when Mr. Li, the teacher was turning around I whispered that did
not matter since those punishments were usual for me. But I did not realize my words could
be heard by the piano tuning sensitivity ears of the teacher. Those words made him very
angry and he ordered, "All of you will be punished to stand in the classroom
and watch Chen Yan checking everyone of the two hundred and twenty one string axles with
the tuning key within five minutes with no one to miss."
Well! I was really unlucky. The tuning job was not
as easy as I thought it to be. Over 8,000 components were to become familiar with,
plus know-how to repair. That would be too difficult! What I couldn't afford at most
was the class for repair craft. On that class, I had to learn the skills of nail
hammering; screw driving; wood sawing as well as surface planing. My hands got full of
injuries, large and small in sizes, since we started the class of repair craft. I felt
like imprisoned on a pirate ship. One day Mr. Li taught us the art of maintenance of
pianos. He told me to place camphor in the piano for the sake of protecting the wool from
spoiling by worms. He gave me the exercise to be finished and told me to do them in the
piano room. The room was only of six square meters or so, where a piano, a table and a
chair were placed. It seemed simply monotonous. Trying on piano tuning, I was thinking of
the words by Mr. Li that camphor should put inside the piano. I was chewing a piece of gum
and got struck by an idea. I took out the gum and made it into a large lump, simulating a
white worm, and placed it on the piano keys. Then I went to get the teacher and told him
the worm on the keys. He came over in haste and told me to kill it. I said, "I am
afraid of worms. Please kill it for me." It was inconvincible that he was afraid of
worms too and told me to get another student to kill it. I thought we might as well get a
timid one, otherwise only a nip would reveal the chewing gum. I called in Han Shuo. But he
did not dare to do it either. The teacher then told me to call in Zhou Lang. But I knew
Zhou was daring and he might discover the chewing gum. So I took the chance when Han went
to get Zhou and stealthily took the gum away. I hid my hands to avoid the teacher from
seeing them. Zhou arrived and did not find the worm. So he thought the worm had escaped.
But Mr. Li got worried and exclaimed, "Why all of you could not do something to help.
It would be dangerous if the worm gets into the piano." I became afraid when I saw
the teacher had become serious. So I had to admit the lump was chewing gum and not a worm.
I thought I had committed a serious mistake. Mr. Li surely would not pardon me. However,
he just let the other ones to go back and practice in their own piano rooms. Zhou Lang
gave me a stare with funny face when he left the room. He must think that Chen Yan would
be blamed. After all the other students had left the room, the teacher said to me, "I
can appreciate how your tuning class seemed dry and dull to practice. But the practice was
still far short of being sufficient. Some years ago, when I was sent by China Disabled
Persons' Federation to learn Euro-American technique abroad with Professor Anthony Gray, I
had to practice fourteen hours a day. One day, when I was running a high fever of over
thirty-nine degrees centigrade, and had to undergo infusion of fluid in the hospital. I
was feeling very uncomfortable afterwards. Nevertheless I still returned to our piano room
to continue tuning practice. I asked my teacher, "Why did you work so hard?" Mr.
Li answered earnestly, "Blind people must face difficulties in all kinds of learning.
It was not due to their inability to learn. Instead, it was due to the attitude of
other people to the blind. A blind man is usually considered invisible and impossible to
do anything. You are just no good for anything. When we want to learn something useful,
the obstacles do not come from our handicapped sight, but from the discrimination against
handicapped by normal people. I've been self-taught on piano tuning for ten odd
years and tried to approach many experienced masters in that art in the hope of learning
from them. But most of them thought it utterly impossible to do the job when you can't
see. China Disabled Persons' Federation invested 500,000 yuan RMB for the introduction of
the up-to-date technology from Europe and America, in considering the fact if the art
learned by the blind were barely comparable to those of normal persons, none would like to
invite the visually handicapped to tune a piano. Since I was fortunate to be given the
opportunity to learn abroad, I should, of course, take it seriously. You had no
hardship of no chance to learn technique, so you do not study hard. Having heard the
teacher's word, I seemed to have understood much better and came to remember the words
told by Grandma in my early years,
"