When I was a boy in China

by Yan Phou Lee

Schools usually open about three weeks after the New Year’s Day, and continue till the middle of the twelfth month with but a few holidays sprinkled in. However, if the teacher be a candidate for a literary degree, usually a vacation of about six weeks is enjoyed by the pupils in summer. During the New Year festival, a month is given over to fun and relaxation. Unlike the boys and girls of America, Chinese pupils have no Saturdays as holidays, no Sundays as rest-days. School is in session daily from six to ten A. M., at which time all go home to breakfast. At eleven A. M., all assemble again. At one P. M. a recess of about an hour is granted to the pupils to get lunch. From two P. M. to four is held the afternoon session. This of course is only approximate, as no teacher is bound to a fixed regularity. He is at liberty to regulate his hours as he chooses. At four P. M. the school closes for the day.

Schools are held either in a private house or in the hall of a temple. The ancestral temples which contain the tablets of deceased ancestors are usually selected for schools, because they are of no other use and because they are more or less secluded, and are generally spacious. In a large hall, open on one side towards a court, and having high ceilings supported by lofty pillars, besides the brick walls, you may see in the upper right-hand corner a square wooden table, behind which is the wooden chair; this is the throne of his majesty—the schoolmaster. On this table are placed the writing materials, consisting of brushes, India ink, and ink-wells made of slate. After pouring a little water in one of these wells, the cake of ink is rubbed in it until it reaches a certain thickness when the ink is ready to be used. The brushes are held as a painter’s brushes are.

In conspicuous view are the articles for inflicting punishment; a wooden ruler to be applied to the head of the offender and sometimes to the hands, also a rattan stick for the body. Flogging with this stick is the heaviest punishment allowed; for slight offences the ruler is used upon the palms, and for reciting poorly—upon the head.

The room at large is occupied by the tables and stools of the pupils, chairs being reserved for superiors. The pupils sit either facing the teacher, or at right angles to him. Their tables are oblong in form and if much used will show the carving habits and talents of their occupants. The pupils are all of one sex usually, for girls seldom attend other schools than those kept in the family, and then only up to eleven or twelve years of age. They are taught the same lessons as their brothers.

The boys range all the way from six or seven, up to sixteen or seventeen years of age, in an ordinary school; for there is no such thing as organizing them into classes and divisions; each one is studying for himself. Still there are schools in which all the pupils are advanced; and there are others which have none but beginners. But they are rare.

I began to go to school at six. I studied first the three primers: the Trimetrical Classic, the Thousand-words Classic, and the Incentive to Study. They were in rhyme and metre, and you might think they were easy on that account. But no! they were hard. There being no alphabet in the Chinese language, each word had to be learned by itself. At first all that was required of me was to learn the name of the character, and to recognize it again. Writing was learned by copying from a form written by the teacher; the form being laid under the thin paper on which the copying was to be done. The thing I had to do was to make all the strokes exactly as the teacher had made them. It is a very tedious operation.

I finished the three primers in about a year, not knowing what I really was studying. The spoken language of China has outgrown the written; that is, we no longer speak as we write. The difference is like that between the English of to-day and that of Chaucer’s time.

I then took up the Great Learning, written by a disciple of Confucius; and then the Doctrine of the Mean, by the grandson of Confucius. These text-books are rather hard to understand sometimes, even in the hands of older folks; for they are treatises on learning and philosophy. I then passed on to the Life and Sayings of Confucius, known as the Confucian Analects to the American scholars. These books were to be followed by the Life and Sayings of Mencius, and the Five Kings—five classics, consisting of books of history, divination, universal etiquette, odes and the Spring and Autumn, “a brief and abstract chronicle of the times” by Confucius.

I had to learn all my lessons by rote; commit them to memory for recitation the day following. We read from the top right-hand corner downwards, and then begin at the top with the next line, and so on. Moreover, we begin to read from what seems to you the end of the book. All studying must be done aloud. The louder you speak, or shriek, the more credit you get as a student. It is the only way by which Chinese teachers make sure that their pupils are not thinking of something else, or are not playing under the desks.

Now, let me take you into the school where I struggled with the Chinese written language for three years. Oh! those hard characters which refused to yield their meaning to me. But I gradually learned to make and to recognize their forms as well as their names. This school was in the ancestral hall of my clan and was like the one I have described. There were about a dozen of us youngsters placed for the time being under the absolute sway of an old gentleman of threescore-and-six. He had all the outward marks of a scholar; and in addition, he was cross-eyed, which fact threw an element of uncertainty into our schemes of fun. For we used to like to “get ahead” of the old gentleman, and there were a few of us always ready for any lark.