His teacher said, “If your grandmother told you that, you can try and see. You may be a man with wings sometime.”[2] [[105]]
Just then the servant girl, that his mother had sent, came to fetch him home from school.
When they reached the park by his home, Tsing-Ching said, “Lau-Mai, I want that long ladder and a long stick.” The nurse-girl did not know what he would do with them, but she finally had to give him both to keep him from crying. She was afraid his mother would hear him cry and that she would come out and scold her for not taking better care of the child.
As he took the long ladder he said, “Now I am going to be a bird.” His nurse said, “You can not be a bird, Tsing-Ching. Birds fly. You can not fly. Why are you trying to climb up the ladder? That is not the way to be a bird.”
Lau-Mai helped him up two or three steps, when his mother called her to come in and she left him there for a little time.
He climbed up, up, nine steps by himself—and fell down. But he was not hurt, nor did he cry; he had no fear—he thought of but one thing—he was going to be a bird.
Suddenly his mother came and saw him again trying [[106]]to climb up the ladder and asked, “What are you doing, Tsing-Ching?”
He answered, “I want to be a bird; wait, I will try again. I know that birds fly in the air, not on the ground. I can not fly on earth. If I get up high in the air, then I know I can fly.”
His mother thought he wanted to climb up and get a bird; she looked all around and said, “There is no bird up there now.”
“But, Ah-Ma,[3] I want to be a bird.”