Shengliver’s Note: Why did he decide to live off campus? Why did he meander on the street in the wee small hours? What did he come upon in his wanderings?

Sam Song is doing the last year of high school. I have been his teacher since the second term of Grade One.

By reading his English journal every week, I have formed a clear picture of his family background and his personality. His parents scrape a living, by raising produce in the family vegetable plot and selling it at the marketplace in town. The younger of two children. Sam has got a sister studying at a local teacher training academy. A brooding teen, he does not talk very much, probably because he is aware of the gap between his family financial status and that of his peers, and of the parental expectations.

Mother’s Decision

At the beginning of Grade Three, his mother decided to come over and look after him. In the first two years, Sam was a boarder. Dorm life was not bad, but Mrs Song hoped to give her son more care and company in the challenging last school year.

Initially, Sam told his mother not to bother. It would not come cheap to rent a room or a house off campus. Rents in the neighbourhood have been driven up by growing numbers of students opting to live off campus in the last school year. However, the mother was resolute. He had to follow her arrangements.

The House

The house the mother rented is close to a construction site, where new blocks of flats are being erected. Tenants in the neighbourhood are mostly peasants turned construction workers. Lodging there brings Sam closer to the working class. The labourers rise early in the morning. Many a night the teen is woken up by them coming back off night shifts. The rough folk talk loud and laugh heartily, cursing a lot.

In the winter holidays, the Songs did not go back to their family home in Yunxian. Instead, they spent the Spring Festival in the rented house for Sam’s sake. The last winter holidays for Chinese high school students are a curtailed version — around a week at most if they are lucky. Sam thus did not have to waste time travelling to and from their home in Yunxian.

He had a quality time staying with his family at the lodgings during the festival. The only thing he complained about was the weather. “It was freezing in the house, Shengliver,” Sam wrote in the journal. “I had to be dressed like a bear, even with a stove burning by my side.” The house where Sam’s family stay does not have modern comforts — no TV, no Internet, no heating and no air-conditioning.

Despite the spartan dwelling, the boy enjoys more freedom and better fare there. He eats better, not having to rush for his meals. The canteen at the school is overstretched by a staggering student population. At mealtimes, it is a scene of crowds, long queues and bedlam. Because the mother cooks exclusively for him, Sam is able to do without the unpleasant dining experience at the canteen, thus saving time and energy. Also, after evening classes he can stay up a bit longer. The diligent teen feels awesome when he is doing his lessons deep into the night at the house.

In the dorm back at the school, lights are turned out by a master switch around 10.30, so studying after the curfew there would be impossible without a torch. Besides, the code of conduct bans the practice. Once caught using a torch after 10.30, the violator will be named and shamed, and his class will earn a demerit on the monitor board, where the performances and behaviours of all classes are logged and compared on a daily basis. In turn, the culprit will have to face the music when his class director is informed of the deduction.

A Night Walk

 

Everything seemed to have been running well until I read his journal entry last week. In the entry, the teen shared with me about a walk he took in the small hours the other night. It disturbed me.

After classes one evening, Sam went back to his lodgings. He was in a rotten mood. What caused it? He did not reveal it.

So depressed did he feel that he sobbed for about 20 minutes, face buried in bed. His mother and his sister had no clue what had gone wrong, yet they dared not ask. When he stopped crying, he decided to go and walk on the streets for a whole night. The teen left the house, telling mother and sister that he would not come back for the night.

He walked out of the house, leaving his family bewildered and worried. No destination in his mind, the gloomy teen let his legs carry him anywhere. He wandered aimlessly for a long time until he could discern the place where he used to take a bus for home. It was a derelict bus station, no longer in service. He realised that he had covered a long distance. The streets were deserted by this hour.

Turning around, the boy started to backtrack. On the way, he came to a little square. No soul was there and most lamps were off. The square was littered with old newspapers and flyers. Sam picked some up, seated himself on a bench, and started browsing through the print in the dim light.

As he was reading, an old fellow turned up. Sam thought he must be a scavenger picking trash like bottles and plastic bags. And he was. He collected odds and ends from the ground and shoved them into a sack he was trailing along.

The chap came over and sat down next to Sam. After a while, he offered Sam a cigarette.

“Thanks, sir,” the teen responded, “but I do not smoke.”

The two of them struck up a conversation. Thinking Sam was a young tramp, the stranger suggested that the boy go and stay in his home for the night should he have nowhere to go. Over the years, he said modestly, he has accommodated homeless people this way. He hails from Tanshan, Yunxian, but he is now staying in the city, where his son and family work and live. He does not need a lot of money, but every night he comes to the square to gather paper, bags and bottles, and then recycles them to augment the family income.

The old man was chatting on. Sam half listened, eyes still on a paper. For the past decade in the square the old man has run into several hundred youngsters who slept rough. He put some of them up in his home at his own expense. According to him, many adolescents opt to wait out bad weather at Internet bars all night long should the elements break loose.

Sam was incredulous. He had thought that the old man and his noble deeds are found only in news reports or on television shows, but this very night he was with such a character in the flesh in the real world.

Seeing the boy showing no interest in his offer, the old man added that at the very moment some vagrants were sleeping at his home. If Sam did not believe him, he could take him there for a look. Sam declined the old man’s generosity, explaining that his home is nearby and that he had just come out for a stroll. The chat had caused a change of heart in the Chinese teenager.

After the chat, Sam realised that it was time he went back. He was sure that Mother and Sis were still up waiting for him. He got up from the bench, bade the old stranger farewell, and headed for his quarters.

When he arrived home, no souls were in, with the lights on. Shortly after he stepped into his bedroom, Mrs Song and Miss Song came in, Mother’s eyes sore and tearful. It occurred to Sam that he had hurt his family, and remorse crept over the lad.

Without further ado, the Songs retired to bed.