Shengliver’s Note: Let’s learn from kids. When this entry was written and posted about 6 years ago, the three kids were still in primary school. The other day an email message came from Lucy No. 3, telling me that she will attend Zhejiang University this autumn. How time flies.

I have three interesting epals. All are called Lucy. The Internet has brought us together for the English language. Let me introduce them to you, my dear readers. All have something in common yet each is different in her own way.

Lucy No. 1

I met this Lucy in May last year. She was a fourth grader then. Her location is Shashi City, Hubei Province.

Bold and curious, Lucy speaks with a distinctive American accent. I have no idea where she got it. I am told that she had some Internet chat pals from the USA.

Lucy’s mom is a physician. When Lucy is speaking English on the Web, her mum is seated by her side, listening. I bet Lucy’s English is better than her mum’s. Her father is a businessman. She cannot see her dad often because the father travels a lot around the country.

After we got familiar with each other, Lucy sent me English messages by email, in which she told me about her school, family and friends. In one message, Lucy said she had a quarrel with one of her best friends, Yang Siqi, the other week, because Siqi would not invite one of their classmates to her birthday party. The reason, Yang Siqi said, was that the girl, who was from a disadvantaged family, was wearing “shabby” clothes. Lucy and Siqi almost broke up because of it. Oh, Lucy has a heart of gold.

I answered her email messages in English. Some of my replies add up to two entries in the blog archives. When we were chatting online, our cams were on. I saw the girl clearly on the app. Lucy even enclosed some of her snapshots with her email messages to me.

After the summer vacation last year, Lucy became a fifth grader. She explained that she could no longer talk on the Web because she had to do a lot of homework daily. Since then, I have seen none of her. Hopefully, our touch could be resumed anytime for we still have each other’s email links.

Lucy No. 2

This Lucy was a fifth grader, and in the new semester, she will start middle school. She is located in Harbin City, Heilongjiang Province.

I met Lucy earlier on this year, probably in the spring. She was a fifth grader then. Her mum introduced her to Shengliver.

Lucy has a big family, with five members—parents, grandparents and her. It is rare these days in Chinese towns to have three generations live under the same roof.

The family member she likes best is her grandad. The elderly man calls her by a pet name, hehe, the Chinese name of the water plant lotus. Her grandad does a lot of housework—cooking three meals for the family, cleaning and tidying, and probably shopping as well. However, Lucy shared a secret. She confided to me that she did not like her grandma very much. She said the old lady, lazy and bad-tempered, slept a lot.

Lucy’s mom is an accountant and her father a lorry driver. So both her parents have to work during the day and the family get together in the evening. Her dad works harder. Some evenings, while I was talking with Lucy online, her father was still on the road.

Lucy is an excellent pupil in her school as well as in her class. Shining at maths, she took part in a maths contest and won an award. Her Chinese is very good, too. And her English is fabulous. I reckon she is one of the best students at English in her class.

Bold and daring, Lucy was able to respond to all kinds of questions I put to her. When she could not follow me, she used expressions like “Pardon” to avoid getting stuck. The girl learns very fast. Some everyday English words like air-conditioner were picked up easily by Lucy.

A typical urban Chinese kid, Lucy works hard at school and does her homework in the evening. On the weekend and in the summer holidays, she has to attend cram school to gain herself an edge. As far as I know, she goes to dancing practice besides Chinese, maths, and English lessons after regular school hours. Hard work, but it seems that she enjoys it. She does not feel pressured to attend such lessons by her parents the way many kids do. She is a good dancer, for she performed in a group dance with some of her classmates at the graduation ceremony in July.

Lucy was a student leader at her school. One evening she proudly told me that she had been on duty the past week, checking all the classes of her school for their classroom order and cleanliness.

This autumn, Lucy will enter the local Cambridge Foreign Language School. I wish her good luck in secondary school. And we remain definitely good friends.

Lucy No. 3

I encountered this Lucy this spring. Located geographically in Wenzhou City, Zhejiang Province, the girl comes over and talks with me online, probably because her mum hears me speaking English and then introduces Shengliver to her.

A smart girl, Lucy speaks naturally and confidently. With a limited vocabulary, she is still able to keep the communication going by talking around some difficult words. For example, she mentioned “a bird’s home” before I said it was “a nest”. She responded to my queries and fired questions back at me. Communication between us is real and genuine. We use the language to learn about each other.

A full-time engineer at a telecommunications firm, Lucy’s mother has to work all day and comes back in the evening. Lucy’s father, employed by the government, seems to be a leader or something. He is so busy that he is not home a lot of evenings. What is he doing then? According to Lucy, he is either drinking with his colleagues or friends at a restaurant or on duty in the office. Poor father! He has no time for his family.

She has completed primary school too, just like Lucy No. 2. Lucy No. 2 stayed five years for primary school in Heilongjiang Province while Lucy No. 3 did six years for the same level of schooling in Zhejiang Province. Educational policies vary slightly from province to province. Lucy passed her graduation tests with flying colours.

After she left primary school, she went to sit an entrance exam organised by a local elite secondary school—Wenzhou Foreign Language School. How did she do? One evening she announced she had some good news to break. “I have passed the test, Shengliver. I will be a student there this autumn!” She is the only one of the pupils in her class who is admitted to the renowned academy.

Lucy’s summer holiday is like most urban kids’. Her parents at work during the day, she is left alone at home. She does reading, watches TV and plays some computer games. A bit boring, I bet. Neither her mum nor her dad can come home for lunch. She goes to buy a meal at a community takeaway. Her lunch is a sandwich or a hamburger, plus a yogurt. Why doesn’t she have some Chinese meals? Well, the restaurant does not offer traditional Chinese fare, and she has to go there because she gets the takeaways cheaper with a coupon her mum has got for her.

Lucy is kind. There is an opening in a wall of her home, which was left there after an air-conditioner was relocated. A bird family has nested there for some time. One day a birdie fell off the nest and landed in Lucy’s home, with one of its legs broken. Lucy babied it for a few days, but to her sadness the feathered friend died in the end.

I wish Lucy No. 3 all the best in Wenzhou. May she excel in high school.

Postscript

This blog entry was first posted in July, 2008. Today the Lucy from Zhejiang is still in contact with me. After undergraduate courses in Zhejiang, an exchange program in America and postgraduate studies in the Chinese capital, Lucy now serves Chinese diplomacy. Should any epal know about Lucy No. 1 and Lucy No. 2, welcome to message Shengliver. I am very curious about what Lucy No. 1 is doing now. We are in the same province. And I visited a school in her city on a business trip some years ago, yet there was no chance whatsoever we could meet.