Who Is Ting?

Ting is a teenage girl in my class. She is very Chinese. Born of peasant parents, she symbolises a Chinese country lassie. She does not wear the in hairstyle. Her hair is shoulder-length and tied up in a ponytail at the back of her head.

What strikes me most are her shoes. You could never imagine that in today’s China, someone is still wearing home-made footwear, shoes made of cloth and thread by needlework. Ting is just wearing such a pair of shoes. No shame at all, but loads of pride in them. Probably her mom sewed them for her.

Her journal is kept neat and tidy, with each new entry started on a fresh page. The handwriting is clean and uniform throughout. The grammar is quite good. She is able to employ a variety of vocabulary items. In all, she makes a pleasant presentation on paper. My comment goes: “Reading your journal entry is a pleasure.”

Her Dad

The latest entry in her journal features her dad. Her family live in the mountains in Yunxi, a satellite county of Shiyan City. Life is hard, I daresay, but it is a loving family that Ting has grown up in.

When Ting was a pre-schooler, her father taught her Tang-dynasty and Song-dynasty poems this way. Every morning, before the family arose, the father helped her to recite and memorise a poem, with both still in bed, awake. What a snug scene! She said she enjoyed these informal lessons very much all along. The only trouble was that, their recitation loud and merry, the mom was often disturbed.

In her hometown, farmer families favour boys over girls. As a result, girls’ education is placed second to boys’. Either girls are not sent to school at all, or those in school are forced to drop out later on. Boys are always given an education opportunity at any cost to the family. A lot of family friends and neighbours advised her father to pluck Ting out of school. However, her father did not agree. Her father insisted girls are just as important. Thanks to her father’s attitude, Ting was able to attend primary school and middle school, and finally made it to one of the best high schools in the region.

An incident in her schooling experience impressed her. There was a primary school in her village, but her dad thought that teaching there was inferior and that the teachers were not qualified. The father took all the trouble to have Ting transferred to the central primary school in their township a long way away from her village. Expenses at the new school were higher but the father did not mind them.

A lot of farmers ridiculed the father for his stupidity. “Why do you waste money over a girl?” they mocked.

The girl realised the father was right when the primary school in her village was closed down by the local authorities after some years, because of the teaching quality and of the ever-dwindling number of students brought about by the national family planning policy and the new demographic trends.

Ting could not be prouder of her father. Her father’s adoration and wisdom inspire her. That’s partly where the country girl derives motivation for learning.

The journal entry brims with gratitude towards her peasant father. “Father is a peasant. Poorly schooled as he was, I love him. I will pursue academic distinction. I will bring honour to my father by working hard. I will not let you down, Dad.”