Min tibetanska barndom i Zorgay - Life and Culture on the Tibetan ...

Wo qu shang xue xiao,
Tian tian bu chi dao,
Ai xue xi ai lao dong,
Zhang da yao wei ren min li gong lao.
I am going to school,
I won’t be late every day,
I love to study <strong>and</strong> work hard,
When I grow up I want to contribute to the people.
.
We learned to sing this song, just as we learned how to chant
mani from our gr<strong>and</strong>mothers: we understood none of it. Every
morning, we sang this song in unison, sometimes for the entire
forty-five minute class, like young monks reciting religious
scriptures. It must have bothered other classes. We sang this
song countless times. It was boring to sing a song without
knowing the meaning, but we dared not complain to the teacher.
When I went to bed at night, this song's melody still resounded
in my mind. My head seem entirely occupied by this song. A
song can be a lesson for students if they know its meaning, but
this song gave us nothing.
We had no real classroom. There was only one desk on
which teachers put their coats <strong>and</strong> bags. There were fewer
chairs than students so we took turns using the chairs as desks.
Those without a chair for a desk, lay <strong>and</strong> sat on the filthy floor
to write whatever the teachers told us to. From this
uncomfortable situation, we realized how important our parents
were, <strong>and</strong> how warm <strong>and</strong> comfortable our homes were.
The teachers taught us little <strong>and</strong> beat us a lot, as though
we were wild piglets. Our behavior was roguish, but they did
not need to beat our palms so often or spank our bottoms with a
bamboo stick until it split. All of us were our parents' beloved
children; they seldom beat us as hard as our teachers, even
though they did punish us. Deep in my heart, I thought teachers
were not people who taught us, but people who tried to tame us.
We endured this for two semesters.
All I learned from the xueqianban was how to write
Arabic numbers <strong>and</strong> the pinyin alphabet. Maybe this was the
only purpose of our local xueqianban.
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