Near the end of third grade, my twin daughters, Ariel and Natasha, officially joined the Young Pioneers of China. This organisation is under the auspices of the Chinese Communist party, and members are between the ages of six and 14. In order to become a Young Pioneer at Chengdu Experimental primary school, the public institution my daughters attended in the south-western Chinese city, there was no application, no interview and no ceremony. Parents were not consulted or informed. The twins simply came home one afternoon wearing Young Pioneer pins on their right breasts. The pins featured a gold star, a red torch and the name of the organisation – Zhongguo Shaoxiandui – in gold Chinese characters. Ariel and Natasha told me and my wife, Leslie, that from now on they would be required to wear the pins on Mondays, when Chengdu Experimental held its weekly flag-raising ceremony, as well as on other special occasions.
三年级结束时，我的双胞胎女儿艾丽尔和娜塔莎正式加入了中国少先队。这个组织是中国共产党主办的，成员年龄在六岁到十四岁之间。为了成为我女儿在中国西南部城市的公立机构成都实验小学的少先队，没有申请，没有面试，也没有仪式。没有咨询或通知家长。一天下午，双胞胎回到家，右胸上别着少先队徽章。徽章上有一颗金色的星星、一支红色的火炬和金色汉字的组织名称——中国少先队。 Ariel 和 Natasha 告诉我和我的妻子 Leslie，从现在开始，他们将被要求在每周一成都实验学校举行每周升旗仪式以及其他特殊场合佩戴徽章。
Young Pioneers also wore red scarves that were knotted at the neck. According to the organisation’s constitution, the scarves are red because they represent the blood that was sacrificed by the martyrs of the 1949 Communist Revolution. When I first lived in China, in the mid-1990s, schoolchildren had to be selected to become Young Pioneers, and red scarves were a mark of kids who were politically favoured. But by the time I moved back to the country, in 2019, membership had become compulsory at most schools, including Chengdu Experimental. Unlike the pins, red scarves were not provided to Young Pioneers, and we bought them from small-time vendors who arranged their goods on the sidewalk near the school’s entrance. Every Monday morning, there was a proliferation of these vendors, because some Young Pioneers had a tendency to forget their scarves, despite the organisation’s official motto: “To struggle for the cause of communism, be prepared!”
少先队还戴着红领巾，并在脖子上打结。根据该组织的章程，围巾是红色的，因为它们代表了1949年共产主义革命烈士牺牲的鲜血。当我第一次来到中国时，也就是20世纪90年代中期，小学生必须被选拔成为少先队，红领巾是孩子们受到政治青睐的标志。但当我2019年搬回中国时，大多数学校都强制要求会员资格，其中包括成都实验学校。与别针不同的是，红领巾不是发给少先队的，而是我们从小商贩那里买来的，他们把货物摆在学校门口附近的人行道上。每个星期一早上，这些摊贩都会激增，因为一些少先队总是忘记带围巾，尽管该组织的官方座右铭是：“为共产主义事业而奋斗，做好准备！”
Of the 2,000 or so students at Chengdu Experimental, Ariel and Natasha were undoubtedly the least prepared. They were the only Americans, and they were also the only children who had entered the school without being able to speak Mandarin. Leslie is Chinese American, and she had grown up speaking Mandarin at home, and I had learned the language while working in China from 1996 to 2007. But we never tried to teach Chinese to our daughters. When they were toddlers, Leslie and I had moved to Egypt to work as journalists, and we decided that it would be too much trouble to try to teach the twins Chinese while studying Arabic. We always had the notion that some day we would return to live in China, where the girls could learn the language through immersion.
成都实验的两千多名学生中，艾丽尔和娜塔莎无疑是最没有准备的。他们是唯一的美国人，也是唯一进入学校但不会说普通话的孩子。 Leslie是美籍华人，她是在家里说普通话长大的，而我是在1996年至2007年在中国工作时学会了这门语言。但我们从未尝试过教我们的女儿们说中文。当莱斯利和我蹒跚学步时，我和莱斯利搬到了埃及做记者，我们认为在学习阿拉伯语的同时教这对双胞胎中文太麻烦了。我们一直有一个想法，有一天我们会回到中国生活，在那里女孩们可以通过沉浸式学习语言。
In theory, this seemed relatively simple. Ariel and Natasha were nine, an age at which language acquisition is still relatively easy. But China has no tradition of immigration, and few schools have had the experience of mainstreaming foreign students. One reason we ended up at Chengdu Experimental was that the institution had a reputation for being relatively open-minded. Even during a time of terrible relations between China and the United States, the school administrators were willing to accept our daughters. They placed the girls in a class of 55 students who were taught by a middle-aged woman, Teacher Zhang.
从理论上讲，这似乎相对简单。艾瑞尔和娜塔莎九岁了，在这个年龄，学习语言仍然相对容易。但中国没有移民传统，很少有学校有将外国学生纳入主流的经验。我们最终来到成都实验的原因之一是该机构以相对开放的态度而闻名。即使在中美关系糟糕的时期，学校管理人员也愿意接受我们的女儿。他们将这些女孩分在一个有 55 名学生的班级，由一位中年妇女张老师授课。
We quickly realised that Teacher Zhang was a remarkable teacher. I couldn’t imagine managing 53 third-graders in a relatively small room, much less adding two more who didn’t even speak the language. But Teacher Zhang took it all in stride. She selected two classmates who spoke some English to shadow the twins in the early days to make sure that they understood the essentials.
我们很快意识到张老师是一位了不起的老师。我无法想象在一个相对较小的房间里管理 53 名三年级学生，更不用说再增加两个甚至不会说该语言的学生。但张老师却泰然处之。她选了两名会说英语的同学在早期跟随这对双胞胎，以确保他们理解要点。
Every afternoon, when the twins returned from school, Leslie and I gave them flashcards with new characters to learn. In China, the national curriculum is standardised to such a degree that even the acquisition of words follows a set order. All first-graders begin the march to literacy with the same character: 天, “sky; heaven”. From there they learn 699 more characters, and then add another 900 in second grade, with the final lesson ending on 坟, “tomb”. In order to become proper Chinese third-graders – to go all the way from heaven to tomb – Natasha and Ariel needed to memorise a total of 1,600 characters.
每天下午，当双胞胎放学回来时，莱斯利和我都会给他们一些抽认卡，上面写着要学习的新字符。在中国，国家课程的标准化程度很高，就连单词的习得也遵循一定的顺序。所有一年级学生都以同一个字开始识字之旅：“天”。天堂”。从那里他们又学习了 699 个汉字，然后在二年级又学习了 900 个汉字，最后一课以“坟墓”结束。为了成为真正的中国三年级学生——从天堂到坟墓——娜塔莎和爱丽儿总共需要记住1600个汉字。
They started with 10 a day, a rate that we eventually increased to 20. In terms of spoken language, the process was much faster, because they were surrounded by so many Chinese speakers for so many hours every day. On 2 September, the first day of class, Ariel and Natasha were both in tears when I picked them up from school, because they had understood so little. On 20 September, when the pupils reviewed a lesson in language class, Natasha stood up and for the first time, in a halting voice, read a section of the text aloud; afterwards the class applauded. On 8 October, the twins wrote their first essays in Chinese. The grammar was simple, and many characters were poorly written, but they were legible. Another momentous date was 7 November. That afternoon, I couldn’t help but feel a surge of pride when Ariel came home with a three-character phrase she had learned from a boy in class: wangbadan, “turtle’s egg”, a colloquial insult that means, essentially, son of a bitch.
他们一开始是每天10个，后来我们增加到20个。在口语方面，这个过程要快得多，因为他们每天都被这么多说中文的人包围了好几个小时。 9 月 2 日，开学第一天，当我接 Ariel 和 Natasha 放学时，他们都哭了，因为他们听不懂的东西太少了。 9月20日，当学生们复习语言课上的一节课时，娜塔莎站起来，第一次用结结巴巴的声音大声朗读了课文的一部分；随后全班鼓掌。 10月8日，双胞胎写下了第一篇中文论文。语法很简单，很多字写得很潦草，但还是看得清楚。另一个重要的日子是 11 月 7 日。那天下午，当艾丽尔带着她在班上从一个男孩那里学到的三个字短语回家时，我不禁感到一阵自豪：“王巴蛋” ，“乌龟蛋”，这是一个口语侮辱，本质上意味着“乌龟的儿子”。一个婊子。
By the time the twins became Young Pioneers, six months later, their language was more or less at the level of their classmates. Up to that point, we had spent relatively little time thinking about the bigger picture, because it took so much energy just to catch up. But now we were there: the red scarves, the gold pins, the flag-raising ceremonies. The school rules, which were displayed prominently in a central courtyard, began with the following:
六个月后，当双胞胎加入少先队时，他们的语言或多或少已经达到了同学的水平。到那时为止，我们花相对较少的时间思考更大的前景，因为仅仅为了赶上就需要花费太多的精力。但现在我们就在那里：红领巾、金别针、升旗仪式。校规张贴在中央庭院的显着位置，其开头如下：
1. Love the Party, love the Country, love the People.
1、爱党、爱国家、爱人民。
When Leslie and I decided to enrol our daughters in the public school, a number of friends warned us about the political environment. Ever since Xi Jinping had become the nation’s leader, in 2012, he had overseen a crackdown on political freedoms and other aspects of civil society. Education was among Xi’s many targets. Once, in a speech at Peking University, he described the process of educating young people in core socialist values as similar to “fastening buttons on clothes”. The key, in Xi’s opinion, was to do it correctly from the start. “If the first button is fastened wrong,” he said, “the remaining buttons will be fastened wrong.”
当莱斯利和我决定让我们的女儿入公立学校时，一些朋友警告我们有关政治环境的警告。自从2012年习近平成为国家领导人以来，他就监督了对政治自由和公民社会其他方面的打压。教育是习近平的众多目标之一。有一次，他在北京大学演讲时，把对年轻人进行社会主义核心价值观教育的过程形容为“扣衣服扣子”。习近平认为，关键是从一开始就做对。 “如果第一个扣子扣错了，”他说，“剩下的扣子也会扣错。”
At Chengdu Experimental, I expected that the twins and their classmates would be drilled in nationalistic stories about the Opium wars or the Japanese invasion. But there was surprisingly little history in the curriculum. I learned that such material tends to be covered more heavily in subsequent years, when older children are taught the party’s view of the past. In the various texts used for third and fourth grades, it was actually difficult to find much content that was explicitly political. During third grade, in language class, the twins studied one lesson about the Spratly Islands, the disputed archipelago in the South China Sea. That section of the book was titled The Fertile and Abundant Spratly Islands, and the lesson staked out China’s claim: “The prosperous and fertile Spratly Islands have been our home for generations. Following our Motherland’s development of constructive causes, the charming Spratly Islands will inevitably become even more beautiful and even more fertile.”
在成都实验，我预计这对双胞胎和他们的同学会接受有关鸦片战争或日本侵略的民族主义故事的训练。但令人惊讶的是，课程中几乎没有历史。我了解到，在随后的几年里，当年龄较大的孩子被教导共产党对过去的看法时，此类材料往往会被更多地覆盖。在三四年级使用的各种课文中，实际上很难找到多少明确的政治内容。三年级时，双胞胎在语言课上学习了一堂有关南海争议群岛南沙群岛的课程。这本书的这一部分的标题是“肥沃富饶的南沙群岛”，该教训强调了中国的主张：“繁荣富饶的南沙群岛是我们世世代代的家园。随着祖国建设事业的发展，迷人的南沙群岛必将变得更加美丽、更加富饶。”
The lesson explained that one of the prime resources on the fertile and abundant Spratly Islands was bird poop. Ariel and Natasha found this hilarious – they came home from school quoting the text and laughing about it. People sometimes asked Leslie and me if we felt the need to counteract the propaganda, but the political lessons tended to be so wooden and heavy-handed that it wasn’t necessary. Ariel and Natasha’s buttons were wrong from the start: they seemed to have an instinctive distrust of the Chinese approach to nationalism and politics. Leslie and I found that it was more important to remind the girls to be respectful. We often told them that they were guests at the school, and while they had no obligation to believe everything they were taught, they should keep contrary opinions to themselves.
课程解释说，肥沃、资源丰富的南沙群岛的主要资源之一是鸟粪。艾瑞尔和娜塔莎觉得这很搞笑——他们从学校回到家，引用了这段文字并大笑起来。人们有时会问莱斯利和我是否觉得有必要抵制宣传，但政治课程往往如此木讷和严厉，以至于没有必要。艾瑞尔和娜塔莎的按钮从一开始就错了：他们似乎对中国的民族主义和政治态度本能地不信任。莱斯利和我发现提醒女孩们要尊重更重要。我们经常告诉他们，他们是学校的客人，虽然他们没有义务相信所教的一切，但他们应该保留相反的意见。
左边是阿里尔，右边是娜塔莎，这是他们第一学期的情况。照片：彼得·赫斯勒提供
All levels of Chinese education have mandatory party-controlled political classes. For elementary schoolchildren, the political course is called morality and rules, although in fact there are few lessons that can be considered overtly political. The course is much more focused on how to behave in society; if anything, my daughters’ morality and rules textbook was more Confucian than communist. One lesson was titled Teacher, You Are Working Hard, and the activity involved children hand-copying their instructors’ weekly schedules in order to better appreciate their commitment.
中国各级教育都有强制性的党控制的政治课程。对于小学生来说，政治课程被称为道德和规则，尽管实际上很少有课程可以被认为是公开的政治。该课程更关注如何在社会中表现。如果说有什么不同的话，那就是我女儿们的道德和规则教科书更多的是儒家思想，而不是共产主义思想。其中一节课的标题是“老师，您工作很努力”，该活动要求孩子们手抄老师的每周时间表，以便更好地理解他们的承诺。
Another chapter in morality and rules featured cartoon children delivering self-criticisms. “I am a picky eater,” one boy said. “This is not good for my body, so in the future I will correct it.” Another cartoon child remarked: “I don’t play on windowsills or slide down banisters, that way I don’t fall and get hurt.”
道德与规则的另一章以卡通儿童的自我批评为特色。 “我是个挑食的人，”一个男孩说。 “这对我的身体不好，以后我会改正的。”另一位卡通小孩说道：“我不会在窗台上玩耍，也不会从栏杆上滑下来，这样我就不会摔倒受伤。”
The text was full of cautionary tales – children who suffered injuries, illness or worse. Such things were especially likely to happen during summer vacation, with the implicit message being that unstructured time was dangerous. The twins’ morality and rules text described a recent summer vacation when seven middle-school students drowned in a river in Shandong. According to the book, five more elementary school kids drowned during the same vacation in a pond somewhere in Henan. Meanwhile, in Heilongjiang, seven students played on the banks of a river, where four of them drowned. Why were my daughters reading about this litany of drownings? And what did any of it have to do with morality and rules?
文字中充满了警示故事——遭受伤害、疾病或更严重的儿童。此类事情在暑假期间尤其容易发生，隐含的信息是无组织的时间是危险的。双胞胎的道德和规则文本描述了最近的一个暑假，七名中学生在山东的一条河中溺水身亡。书中称，同一个假期，河南省某地的一个池塘里又有五名小学生溺水身亡。与此同时，在黑龙江，七名学生在河边玩耍，其中四人溺水身亡。为什么我的女儿们会读到这一连串的溺水事件？这与道德和规则有什么关系？
In the 90s, when I first taught in China, I had noticed that my students and colleagues had attitudes toward health that impressed me as somewhat fearful. It wasn’t surprising, given China’s long history of poverty, epidemics, large-scale accidents and natural disasters. Even at that time, I witnessed how hard life could be. One of our department’s students died after receiving poor medical care, and a colleague had a young daughter who succumbed to a mysterious illness. Since then, the nation had made an unprecedented rise to prosperity, with safety and health care improving dramatically. Chinese life expectancy had risen to more than 78 years. But many old fears endured, especially in the wake of the one-child policy, which wasn’t loosened until 2018. Almost all of Ariel and Natasha’s classmates were only children, and their parents and teachers seemed afraid of spontaneous play or vigorous physical activity. The school’s playground had a small, run-of-the-mill jungle gym, but administrators strictly forbade any child younger than sixth grade from playing on the equipment for fear of injury.
90年代，当我第一次在中国教书时，我注意到我的学生和同事对健康的态度给我的印象是有些恐惧。考虑到中国长期以来遭受贫困、流行病、大规模事故和自然灾害的困扰，这并不奇怪。即使在那个时候，我也亲眼目睹了生活是多么艰难。我们系的一名学生因医疗条件不佳而死亡，一名同事的年幼女儿因神秘疾病去世。从那时起，国家实现了前所未有的繁荣，安全和医疗保健水平显着改善。中国人的预期寿命已升至78岁以上。但许多旧有的恐惧依然存在，尤其是在独生子女政策之后，该政策直到 2018 年才放松。Ariel 和 Natasha 的同学几乎都是独生子女，他们的父母和老师似乎害怕自发玩耍或剧烈的体力活动。学校的操场上有一个小型、普通的攀爬架，但管理人员严格禁止任何六年级以下的孩子在这些设备上玩耍，以免受伤。
Even the English textbook was full of horror stories. In that class, the teacher often asked Natasha and Ariel to model pronunciation by reading lessons aloud from the text. The twins loved doing this, especially if the subject matter involved injury, pain and momentary lapses in judgement that resulted in lifelong consequences. One lesson in their English text had been divided into two sections labelled Fun Time and Story Time. It was hard to tell the difference – both fun and story seemed equally dreadful. When the twins read aloud, they always used a hectoring tone:
就连英语课本上也充满了恐怖故事。在那堂课上，老师经常要求娜塔莎和爱丽儿通过朗读课文来模仿发音。双胞胎喜欢这样做，尤其是当主题涉及伤害、疼痛和瞬间判断失误而导致终生后果时。他们的英语课文中的一课被分为两个部分，分别标记为“欢乐时间”和“故事时间”。很难区分——乐趣和故事似乎同样可怕。双胞胎朗读时，总是用威吓的语气：
FUN TIME
Don’t throw things out the window. It’s dangerous. You might hurt someone.
不要把东西扔出窗外。这很危险。你可能会伤害某人。
Don’t cook here. It’s dangerous. A small fire can become a big one.
不要在这里做饭。这很危险。一场小火可能会变成一场大火。
Be careful! Look out for cars. Don’t go against the traffic.
当心！留意汽车。不要逆行。
Don’t open the door for a stranger. It’s dangerous.
不要给陌生人开门。这很危险。
STORY TIME
What are you doing, Little Bear?
小熊你在做什么呢？
I’m lighting firecrackers.
我在放鞭炮。
Be careful!
Ow! That hurts.
Don’t run down the stairs.
不要跑下楼梯。
Ouch! My arm hurts. I am having a bad day.
哎哟!我的手臂很痛。我今天过得很糟糕。
Look out! A bike is coming.
当心！一辆自行车来了。
My leg hurts. I can’t walk.
我的腿疼。我不能走路。
We are taking you to the hospital.
我们正在送你去医院。
Oh, dear! I am having a bad day!
哦亲爱的！我今天过得很糟糕！
The morality and rules text also featured a long parade of children who paid dearly for stupidity and carelessness. One chapter told the tale of Mo Mo, a nine-year-old who plays with his father’s cigarette lighter in a vacant field. Fortunately, the fire was contained, but the chapter lingered on Mo Mo’s fate:
道德和规则文本还描绘了一群为愚蠢和粗心付出惨重代价的孩子。其中有一章讲述了九岁的莫莫在空地上玩父亲的打火机的故事。幸运的是，火势被控制住了，但这一章却萦绕在莫莫的命运上：
He suffered extensive burns all over his body, resulting in permanent disability. Blind curiosity and careless experimentation have brought great misfortune to Mo Mo, his family and society.
他全身大面积烧伤，造成永久性残疾。盲目的好奇心和粗心的实验给莫默、他的家人和社会带来了巨大的不幸。
None of these horror stories seemed to have any effect on Ariel and Natasha. By the time they entered fourth grade, they had learned the most important lesson that morality and rules has to offer, which is that morality and rules is the least important academic class in a Chinese school. After the twins noticed classmates using the period to surreptitiously catch up on other homework, they did the same. Ariel told me that she kept the morality and rules text open with her maths book inside. She also used the period to zoushen, a term that translates directly as “the spirit walks away” – to daydream. When I talked to undergraduates at Sichuan University, where I taught English and writing, they described similar activities in their own mandatory political courses. Nobody I taught seemed to take these classes seriously.
这些恐怖故事似乎对爱丽儿和娜塔莎没有任何影响。当他们进入四年级时，他们已经学到了道德和规则必须提供的最重要的一课，那就是道德和规则是中国学校中最不重要的学术课程。当双胞胎注意到同学们利用这段时间偷偷地补完其他作业后，他们也做了同样的事情。艾丽尔告诉我，她把道德和规则文本打开，里面还有她的数学书。她还用这个词来表达“走神”，这个词直译为“精神走开”——做白日梦。当我与我教授英语和写作的四川大学的本科生交谈时，他们在自己的必修政治课程中描述了类似的活动。我教过的人似乎都没有认真对待这些课程。
It was one of many mixed lessons in a Chinese school. When politics is omnipresent, it becomes a kind of background noise, and students learn to tune it out. Even at the age of nine, my daughters and their classmates were figuring out the real priorities in Chinese education. President Xi had instructed the party to create a patriotic younger generation and there seemed to have been some success with youths who came to be known as “Little Pinks” for their tendency to attack non-communist viewpoints online. But national surveys indicated that highly educated young Chinese were becoming less patriotic and less inclined to join the party. Among my own best students, I noticed a pronounced tendency to disengage from politics. From the party’s perspective, this probably wasn’t the worst outcome of the mandatory courses. As long as young people were apolitical, they were unlikely to cause problems.
这是中国学校众多混合课程之一。当政治无处不在时，它就成为一种背景噪音，学生们学会将其排除在外。即使在我九岁的时候，我的女儿们和她们的同学们就已经在弄清楚中国教育的真正优先事项。习主席指示党要培养爱国的年轻一代，那些因倾向于在网上攻击非共产主义观点而被称为“小粉红”的年轻人似乎取得了一些成功。但全国调查显示，受过高等教育的中国年轻人的爱国心越来越低，入党意愿也越来越低。在我自己最好的学生中，我注意到有一种明显的脱离政治的倾向。从党的角度来看，这或许还不是必修课最糟糕的结果。只要年轻人不关心政治，他们就不太可能造成问题。
The art of dissociation has a long history in China. The twins’ fourth-grade language text included the story of Liu Yuxi, a poet and government official in the early ninth century, during the Tang dynasty. In the text, Liu takes a principled stance against corruption and is relegated to a remote place called Hezhou, where a petty supervisor repeatedly demotes Liu. With each demotion, the poet’s lodgings become humbler. At every step, Liu finds a way to zoushen – he gazes out the window and writes a verse about the view and the disconnect with what’s inside his mind:
解离的艺术在中国有着悠久的历史。这对双胞胎的四年级语文课本包括九世纪初唐代诗人兼政府官员刘禹锡的故事。文中，刘先生坚决反对腐败，并被贬到一个叫贺州的偏僻地方，那里的一个小主管多次对刘先生进行贬职。随着每一次降职，诗人的住处都变得更加简陋。每走一步，刘都找到一种走神的方式——他凝视着窗外，写下一首诗来描述这种景色以及与内心的脱节：
Facing the mighty river, and watching the white sails float past,
面对浩浩荡荡的江水，看白帆飘过，
My body has been demoted to Hezhou, but my heart still defends my beliefs …
我的身体已被贬到河州，但我的心仍然捍卫着我的信仰……
Poetry was among the many positives that outweighed the drawbacks of a Chinese school. In language class, students engaged with verse that had been the heart of Chinese culture for centuries. By fourth grade, Natasha and Ariel had memorised dozens of classic works by Li Bai, Du Fu and others. Virtually all educated Chinese learn certain poems by heart, like A Gift to Wang Lun, which Li Bai wrote in the eighth century after saying farewell to a friend:
中文学校有许多优点，但优点多于缺点，其中之一就是教学。在语言课上，学生们学习了几个世纪以来一直是中国文化核心的诗歌。到四年级时，娜塔莎和爱丽儿已经背下了李白、杜甫等人的数十部经典作品。事实上，所有受过教育的中国人都会背诵某些诗歌，比如李白在八世纪告别朋友后写下的《赠王伦》：
李白乘舟将欲行 Li Bai chengzhou jiang yu xing,
忽闻岸上踏歌声. Huwen anshang ta gesheng.
桃花潭水深千尺 Taohua tan shuishen qian chi,
不及汪伦送我情.。 Buji Wang Lun song wo qing.
Such a poem is relatively easy to memorise: four lines of seven characters each, a total of 28 syllables. A Shakespearean sonnet is five times longer – 140 syllables. But even a short string of characters in classical Chinese can convey a great deal:
这样一首诗比较好记，四行七字，共二十八个音节。莎士比亚十四行诗的长度是莎士比亚十四行诗的五倍——140 个音节。但即使是一小串文言文也能传达很多信息：
I, Li Bai, embark on a boat, ready to set sail,
我李白踏上小船，准备起航，
When suddenly from the shore comes a melodic farewell.
突然，岸边传来一阵悠扬的告别声。
The depths of Peace Blossom Lake, a thousand feet below
千尺以下的和平花湖深处
It’s still incomparable, O Wang Lun! To the love that you bestow.
还是无与伦比啊王伦啊！为了你所给予的爱。
As a boy, Li Bai lived near Chengdu, which was also home to Du Fu, the other most famous poet of the Tang. The same dynasty produced Xue Tao, yet another Chengdu resident, who was one of the great female poets of ancient China. Ariel and Natasha’s class memorised one of Xue Tao’s poems, and there was a monument to the woman less than a mile from our home, on the banks of the Jin River. It was hard to imagine a better environment for children to connect with literature. Where else in the world can a schoolgirl read a 1,200-year-old poem knowing that the author was another woman, in her same city, writing in the same language?
李白小时候住在成都附近，这里也是唐朝另一位最著名的诗人杜甫的故乡。同朝还诞生了另一位成都人薛涛，她是中国古代伟大的女诗人之一。艾丽尔和娜塔莎的班级背了薛涛的一首诗，在离我们家不到一英里的津河畔，有一座这位女士的纪念碑。很难想象还有比这更好的环境让孩子们接触文学了。世界上还有什么地方能让一个女学生读到一首有 1200 年历史的诗，而且知道作者是在同一个城市、用同一种语言写的另一位女性？
The class memorised about a dozen poems per semester. Periodically, Teacher Zhang used a random-number generator to pick a student who then had to stand and recite a poem. If the student made mistakes, he or she lost points on a board that tracked behaviour and academic performance. Girls and boys in the top 10 were eligible to serve terms as xiao zuzhang, “small-group leaders”, who were responsible for managing classmates.
全班每学期背了大约十几首诗。张老师定期使用随机数生成器挑选一名学生，然后让他站起来背诵一首诗。如果学生犯了错误，他或她就会在跟踪行为和学习成绩的板上失去分数。排名前10名的女生和男生都有资格担任“小组长”，负责管理同学。
带着他们的少先队徽章。左边是娜塔莎，右边是爱丽儿。照片：彼得·赫斯勒提供
Natasha and Ariel were driven to become xiao zuzhang. Repeatedly, Leslie and I told them not to worry about grades; the main goal was simply to learn Chinese. But no matter what we said, the twins cared, and as time passed, it became clear that they had some advantages despite the late start. Chinese characters are so difficult that they tend to slip away: even while children learn new words, they constantly forget others. For Ariel and Natasha, everything was still fresh, whereas the other fourth-graders were having to relearn their first significant wave of forgotten characters. When children made errors, teachers sometimes pointed out that Ariel and Natasha were writing correctly.
娜塔莎和爱丽儿被逼成了小祖宗。我和莱斯利一再告诉他们不要担心成绩；他们会担心成绩。主要目标只是学习中文。但无论我们说什么，双胞胎都很关心，随着时间的推移，很明显，尽管起步较晚，但他们还是有一些优势。汉字太难了，以至于很容易消失：即使孩子们学习新单词，他们也会不断忘记其他单词。对于爱丽儿和娜塔莎来说，一切都还新鲜，而其他四年级学生则不得不重新学习他们第一波被遗忘的重要角色。当孩子们写错时，老师有时会指出阿里尔和娜塔莎写得正确。
For other parents, this opportunity was too good to pass by. When I picked up the girls after school, it wasn’t unusual for a mother or father to approach me with their child in tow. “Look at Cai Cai and Rou Rou,” the mother would say, using the twins’ Chinese names, and then she would exaggerate their abilities. “They just started learning Chinese, and they’re already better than you!” Next to her, the poor kid stood tired from the long day, his Young Pioneer scarf askew like a Friday-night drunk’s necktie. “You need to study Cai Cai and Rou Rou’s example!” the mother said. “Work harder!”
对于其他家长来说，这个机会实在是不容错过。当我放学后去接女孩们时，母亲或父亲带着他们的孩子来找我并不罕见。 “看看菜菜和柔柔，”母亲会说，用双胞胎的中文名字，然后她会夸大他们的能力。 “他们才刚开始学中文，就已经比你强了！”在她旁边，这个可怜的孩子因漫长的一天而疲惫不堪，他的少先队围巾歪斜着，就像周五晚上醉汉的领带一样。 “你要学习菜菜和柔柔的榜样！”母亲说。 “再努力一点！”
This happened so often that I wondered whether it was the reason we had been admitted to Chengdu Experimental in the first place. I often thought about how in the US this would have been a recipe for disaster: take two children from a country that has essentially become a national enemy and then relentlessly browbeat the native kids about how they can’t measure up. But Ariel and Natasha’s nationality seemed irrelevant in this context. The parents didn’t care where the twins came from or what the Trump administration was currently doing. If the twins could be used to motivate their classmates, that was all that mattered.
这种情况经常发生，我想知道这是否是我们被成都实验录取的首要原因。我经常想，如果在美国，这将是一场灾难：从一个本质上已成为国家敌人的国家带走两个孩子，然后无情地威吓当地孩子，说他们无法达到标准。但阿里尔和娜塔莎的国籍在这种情况下似乎无关紧要。父母并不关心这对双胞胎来自哪里，也不关心特朗普政府目前在做什么。如果这对双胞胎可以用来激励他们的同学，那才是最重要的。
Remarkably, other kids didn’t seem to resent the foreigners. In China, childhood criticism is essentially environmental, an element of the natural world. And from an early age, children develop the traditional reverence for education. The best students in a Chinese class also tend to be the most popular, which was part of what motivated Ariel and Natasha. The things that might be important for popularity in the US – athletics, social dominance, being cool – mean very little in a Chinese classroom.
During the autumn, Natasha became the first of the twins to serve as xiao zuzhang, a small-group leader. Soon Ariel was also granted the honour. It made them proud, but I could see that small-group leadership was basically unpleasant. Xiao zuzhang had the responsibility of deducting points for bad behaviour, and they also corralled homework and in-class assignments. Periodically, teachers organised head-to-head competitions between small groups, which then recited Tang poetry or solved rapid-fire maths equations. It was stressful to be in charge of a group, and Leslie and I told the twins that they could simply decline the position. But the honour meant too much. The party failed miserably every time it attempted to indoctrinate Natasha and Ariel with clumsy political propaganda, but the system was far more successful with competition and titles.
When the class studied Li Bai’s eternal poem about departure, friendship and sadness, the other students taught Ariel and Natasha an alternative version. The twins came home with this second verse diligently memorised:
李白乘舟要拉屎 Li Bai chengzhou yao lashi,
忽然发现没带纸 Huran faxian mei dai zhi,
勇敢伸出大拇指 Yonggan shenchu da muzhi,
抠抠屁股全是屎. Kou kou pigu, quan shi shi.
The metre and rhyme were perfect, with everything conveyed eloquently in those 28 syllables:
I, Li Bai, sit aboard a ship and have to take a shit,
When suddenly I discover that I have no paper,
Bravely I stretch out my thumb
And dig and dig into my butt – O, all of it is shit!
When I mentioned this poem to Chinese friends, they recalled different parodies from their own childhoods. In some versions, Li Bai plumbs the depths of memory, emotion and shit, because his true friend Wang Lun has provided a generous gift of toilet paper. Other verses feature the Lake of Peach Blossoms being used as a Li Bai bidet. One friend named Willy, now in his late 40s, could still recite the poem that had been popular in the rural school he attended more than three decades ago:
李白乘舟去拉屎 Li Bai chengzhou qu lashi,
坐在船上忘带纸 Zuo zai chuanshang wang dai zhi,
桃花潭水深千尺 Taohua tan shui shen qian chi,
水洗屁股当草纸 Shui xi pigu dang caozhi.
I, Li Bai, journey by boat to take a shit,
But sitting on the boat I realise that I forgot paper,
However deep the Lake of Peach Blossoms may be,
It rinses my ass as well as any straw paper.
These shit-show shadow classics impressed me almost as much as the Tang verse in the fourth-grade textbooks. Imagine if American schoolchildren knew poetry well enough to appreciate scatological versions of Andrew Marvell or John Donne! For me, there was also relief in the irreverence. Despite the strict discipline of the classroom, and the wooden lessons in morality and rules, these students engaged in play that mocked the material they were taught.
On the whole, the kids seemed remarkably well adjusted. We organised occasional get-togethers of a dozen or so girl classmates at our apartment, and the group dynamics were different from what I had observed among American girls of similar age. The Chengdu students didn’t form cliques or deliberately exclude others, and there was never any mean-girl drama. In part, this seemed to reflect the fact that Chinese girls of 10 or 11 typically don’t engage in the kind of preteen behaviour that is common in the US. And the cultural emphasis on the group means that Chinese children learn to compromise and accommodate. Despite the fact that most kids had no siblings, they didn’t behave like spoiled brats.
The problem was never whether the girls could get along – it was whether they could get together. Scheduling a playdate required weeks of WeChat messaging with parents because of endless buxi, or supplemental courses, and other activities. These routines had become so entrenched that parents seemed befuddled by the possibility of unstructured play. Once, Leslie invited a classmate over on a weekend afternoon and the girl’s mother sent a somewhat panicked message asking if they could go to the science museum instead. She wanted a destination with a clearly defined educational purpose, otherwise what would the girls possibly do, and what would they learn?
艾丽尔（左）和娜塔莎在学校门口。照片：彼得·赫斯勒提供
At every small party, the kids played in the courtyard of our residential compound, organising their own games. Parents often commented on how nice it was to see the girls so happy. But over the course of two years, nobody else in the twins’ friend group organised a similar gathering. It simply wasn’t done; children were too overscheduled and parents were too narrowly focused on education. Many mothers had quit their jobs in order to manage the single child, a pattern that was unheard of a generation earlier. Of the women I taught during the 90s – about 100 in total – there wasn’t a single one who didn’t work full-time after having children. But now it was becoming more common in China, in part because of new prosperity, but also because of educational pressure.
每次小型聚会，孩子们都会在我们小区的院子里玩耍，组织自己的游戏。家长们经常评论说看到女孩们如此开心真是太好了。但两年来，这对双胞胎的朋友圈中没有其他人组织过类似的聚会。它根本就没有完成；孩子们的日程安排过多，而家长对教育的关注又过于狭隘。许多母亲为了照顾独生子女而辞去了工作，这种模式在上一代人中是闻所未闻的。在我在 90 年代教过的女性中——总共大约 100 名——没有一个在生完孩子后不全职工作。但现在这种情况在中国变得越来越普遍，部分原因是新的繁荣，但也因为教育压力。
Eventually we stopped hosting parties, because scheduling was too difficult. Some parents seemed to recognise how unhealthy it was to keep their children so busy. Once, Leslie and I had dinner with the parents of a classmate of the twins. When the conversation turned to education, the father said that he hated enrolling his daughter in buxi courses, but he felt helpless. “That’s the way all parents feel,” he said. “It’s too competitive. But if you want your child to have a chance, you have to do all this stuff.”
最终我们停止举办聚会，因为安排太困难了。一些父母似乎认识到让孩子如此忙碌是多么不健康。有一次，我和莱斯利与双胞胎同学的父母共进晚餐。当话题转到教育上时，父亲说他很讨厌让女儿报补习班，但又很无奈。 “这就是所有父母的感受，”他说。 “竞争太激烈了。但如果你想让你的孩子有机会，你就必须做所有这些事情。”
For Chinese parents, the most terrifying spectre – even worse than free time, or summer vacation, or children playing around random bodies of water in Henan and Heilongjiang – was the gaokao, the college-entrance exam. Chinese high school seniors sit the gaokao at the end of the academic year and admission to college depends entirely on the score. This was one reason why Leslie and I had moved to Chengdu while our daughters were still in elementary school – we figured this would be early enough to avoid the malign influence of the gaokao. But the system had become so competitive that small children were starting to feel the pressure. At Chengdu Experimental, as in all Chinese schools, each semester ended with a week of final exams. Even in third grade, these exams were gruelling: 100 minutes for language, and 90 minutes each for maths, science and English. The children were trained like endurance athletes, and Ariel and Natasha became much better at focusing. But they also talked about the pressure, and they picked up random gaokao details. At the beginning of fourth grade, the maths teacher announced to the class that if they hoped to enter Tsinghua University in eight years, they would need to score at least 649 on the gaokao.
对于中国父母来说，最可怕的幽灵——甚至比空闲时间、暑假、或者河南和黑龙江的孩子们在水边玩耍的孩子更可怕——是高考。中国高中生在学年结束时参加高考，大学录取完全取决于成绩。这就是我和莱斯利在女儿还在上小学时搬到成都的原因之一——我们认为这足够早，可以避免高考的不良影响。但这个系统的竞争已经变得如此激烈，以至于小孩子们开始感受到压力。在成都实验，和所有中国学校一样，每个学期都以一周的期末考试结束。即使在三年级，这些考试也很艰苦：语言考试 100 分钟，数学、科学和英语各 90 分钟。孩子们像耐力运动员一样接受训练，爱丽儿和娜塔莎的注意力变得更加集中。但他们也谈到了压力，并随机提到了高考的细节。四年级伊始，数学老师向全班同学宣布，如果他们希望八年后进入清华大学，高考成绩至少要达到649分。
At the end of two years, we moved back to our home in Colorado. On the twins’ last day at Chengdu Experimental, Leslie and I picked them up early. Teacher Zhang and the other children had prepared a farewell video, and after they played it, classmates came to the front of the room one by one, giving small gifts and saying goodbye. Teacher Zhang spoke last. “These two years have been very long,” she said. “There was one period when we were at home because of the pandemic. But you always kept learning, and all of our students can learn from your example. The most important thing, though, is our friendship.”
两年后，我们搬回科罗拉多州的家。双胞胎在成都实验的最后一天，我和莱斯利很早就去接他们了。张老师和其他孩子们准备了告别视频，播放完毕后，同学们一一来到教室前面，赠送小礼物并告别。张老师最后发言。她说：“这两年真是太漫长了。” “有一段时间，因为疫情，我们都待在家里。但您始终坚持学习，我们所有的学生都可以从您的榜样中学习。不过，最重要的是我们的友谊。”
In some respects, having Ariel and Natasha in public school had been the most challenging part of our time in Chengdu, because it required so much work. But in other ways the experience had been completely straightforward. After Natasha and Ariel were enrolled, nobody at the school asked us for favours or gifts, and we were never charged a single yuan in tuition. The toxic political spats between China and the US never had any influence on school administrators. As long as Ariel and Natasha did their work, and as long as they came to class prepared, they were treated the same as every other child. In this regard, the school was one of the few parts of my Chengdu life that had never been complicated by politics.
从某些方面来说，让爱丽儿和娜塔莎在公立学校上学是我们在成都期间最具挑战性的部分，因为这需要做很多工作。但在其他方面，这种经历是完全简单的。娜塔莎和爱丽儿入学后，学校里没有人向我们要什么恩惠或礼物，也没有向我们收取一分钱的学费。中美之间的有毒政治争端从未对学校管理者产生任何影响。只要爱丽儿和娜塔莎做好了自己的工作，只要他们做好准备来上课，他们就会受到与其他孩子一样的待遇。从这一点来说，学校是我成都生活中为数不多的从未被政治复杂化的部分之一。
On Ariel and Natasha’s first day, they cried when I picked them up. At the time, it had seemed impossible that they could ever fit into the system, and certain aspects of Chinese schooling never felt comfortable – the workload, the pressure, the lack of physical activity. But there were many other features that we came to appreciate. Respect for education is fundamental to Chinese culture, and these values had survived all the nation’s changes and even the narrow-minded competitiveness of the gaokao. Leslie and I also admired the teachers’ competence and the dignity with which they carried themselves. It was vastly different from many parts of the United States, where parents and students often disrespect their instructors.
爱丽儿和娜塔莎第一天，当我抱起他们时，他们哭了。当时，他们似乎不可能融入这个体系，中国学校教育的某些方面也让人感觉不舒服——作业量、压力、缺乏体力活动。但我们也开始欣赏许多其他功能。尊重教育是中国文化的基础，这些价值观经历了国家的变迁，甚至是高考狭隘的竞争。莱斯利和我也钦佩老师们的能力和他们的尊严。这与美国许多地方有很大不同，那里的家长和学生经常不尊重他们的老师。
Teacher Zhang’s comment on the last day was accurate – it had been a long two years. I knew that the Chengdu experience would stay with Ariel and Natasha for the rest of their lives. At the end of the classroom presentation, the other children applauded, and Teacher Zhang escorted us down the hallway and out of the school. Leslie and I told her how grateful we were for all her help. “Cai Cai and Rou Rou never could have done this without you,” Leslie said. Teacher Zhang waved off the compliments, and she knelt and hugged each of the girls. They cried, like they had on the first day, and this time Teacher Zhang cried too.
张老师对最后一天的评价是准确的——漫长的两年了。我知道成都的经历将伴随Ariel和Natasha一生。课堂演示结束，其他孩子鼓掌，张老师护送我们穿过走廊，出了学校。莱斯利和我告诉她我们非常感谢她的帮助。 “没有你，菜菜和柔柔不可能做到这一点。”莱斯利说。张老师挥手拒绝了这些赞美，她跪下来拥抱了每个女孩。他们哭了，就像第一天一样，这次张老师也哭了。
Adapted from Other Rivers: A Chinese Education, published by Atlantic Books on 29 August
改编自《他河：中国教育》 ，大西洋图书8月29日出版