Shengliver’s Note: The following was posted by an Internet pal called Jack Lin in his Sohu blog toward the end of 2009. I hope that Jack Lin contacts me if or when he comes upon this entry reposted in Shengliver Studio. Thanks, Jack. Though we have never met each other in the flesh, Jack and Shengliver are on the same wavelength.

This afternoon when I told Julia, my sweetie, that I was about to activate my English blog, I was not saying it on an impulse.

At least two hours before that, I had been browsing through Shengliver’s blog, which I have missed for the past several hectic months, enjoying the writing and being touched as well.

Shengliver is a volunteer English speaker I encountered first in an English chatroom on Sina UC. Later I got to know more about him through the posts he published in his English blog, Shengliver’s Garden. There is a heart of gold between those lines of his articles.

A high school English teacher from a small town in Hubei Province, Shengliver has been making solid progress ever since the start of his career. For a long time, he lived a very ordinary existence, or somewhat even a boring one in the eyes of metropolitans. His passion for teaching and his love for the language, though, never failed, with his attitude towards life and his conduct in society unwavering. It’s hard to figure out where his loyalty and perseverance originated from, considering every temptation modern life has to offer. Anyway, through years of endeavour, Shengliver has found an elegant way of making himself what he is today, both academically and personally.

Shengliver maintains a very intimate relationship with his students, even after their graduation. In years they talk in English, exchange ideas over diversified topics, and improve together. Shengliver is a person of help, particularly when his students are in need. He shows concern over their life, their mental orientation, their family, their worries and anxieties about future, etc. In short, he’s a mentor to his pupils. What’s more, he sees beyond what he is seeing in the teenagers. Thus, he’s somewhat turned his blog entries into not just a collection of dialogues between teacher and students, but also first-hand material in a broader sense of societal significance.

Once in my class, I read aloud to my students a blog entry of his, titled A Mobile Phone, in which a dropout country girl chose to end her life after she found all the pressures and sufferings too overwhelming. A story indeed, it saw a hush gradually enveloping the adolescents. Mostly from well-off urban families, these students of mine had never anticipated that in a nation where achievements of reform and opening-up are extolled, day in and day out, in the official media, a tragedy of that nature should have happened. Amazed at Shengliver’s writing skills, not only were my students impressed with the story itself but also provoked into meditating upon what’s behind it. Consciously or unconsciously, they were led to ponder why they learn, who they are learning for, and what they will have to be in the future. Slight enlightenment from Shengliver’s narration inspired my students’ subsequent devotion to what they’re supposed to do in their everyday life.

That’s the power of a great teacher, one I have been dreaming, for years, of being myself. But are you anywhere nearer, Jack?

Over the past few years, I’ve had my pages written and rewritten so many times that I can hardly remember where I started and what my original ambition was. I cautioned my students not to be swayed by external forces, not to shed their aggressiveness in a mundane world, and not to let their dreams evaporate under vituperation from negative guys, while at the same time I allowed myself to degenerate in ease and comfort, making one hollow promise after another.

Jack, it’s a shame, a shame that could never be wiped off your name unless you do it differently this time. 2009 saw a couple of milestones in my life unfolding: birth of my little angel, breaking of my ambitious wings in a so-called teaching contest, and joy of uncovering dark secrets that had been puzzling me for years. None of these will mean a thing if I just sit in numbness, seeing them come and go the way a bunch of others have done before. I don’t believe in samsara; there is no way I could relive all these. I am either to be stuck in the rut or to seek a breakthrough. Only by living initiatively can I rise and confront those who are scheming to crush and crumble me. I do not give a shit about them because I am fearless deep down.

This time, Jack, it’s to be anything but a short-lived impulse, I promise.