A Humble Programmer

几天之前是云大附中的八十周年校庆。去年冬天的时候，碧老师曾让我为她们正在为庆祝校庆编辑的一本英文文集写一篇文章。以前从没写过这类文章，于是我就只是写了一篇以回忆中学时光和各位老师。文章寄回去了，在这里贴一份，算是在远方对母校的祝福吧。

Where Dreams Take Wings

Hong Jiang
Yunnan University Secondary School, Class of 98
December 31, 2006

At the end of year 2006, now I am going to get my Ph.D. degree soon from the department of computer science at Yale University. This will probably be the last time that I graduate as a full-time student from any school. Looking back, I have received formal education in four different schools: a primary school, a middle school, a college, and a graduate school. While I have stayed in each of these schools for a long time, and each of them impacted my life in some fundamental way, I would say my middle school and Yale had the most positive impact in my personality and life and were the most enjoyable experience I have had as a student.

In 1992, I applied for admission to the Yunnan University Secondary School (YUSS). It was the first time the school publicly enrolled students from the whole city of Kunming. Because the secondary school had been the best junior middle school in the Yunnan province for many years, the competition was fierce. I was fortunate enough to get admitted. My family being in the suburb area, I had to live alone in a rented room for more than one year before we finally moved into the city. After the first school year began, I found there were seven large classes in the first grade alone! It would be considered a normal enrollment today, but being at that time and from a rather small primary school I was shocked by the scale.

At that time I was shy and diffident, and I was not good at sports, so in much of my spare time I was on my own, reading fictions or doing other things I no longer remember now. I hardly knew anyone who was not in the same class with me. Later I had a few very good friends who were interested in the same kinds of things. Most of us had to stay in the school during the noon, so we played ping-pong together. While playing video games in commercial game houses was strictly forbidden by the school, like other boy students we ventured to play from time to time. I was not a very good student, above the average but definitely not among the top dogs. The teacher in charge of my class, Ms. Zhu Changmei was a young lady with long hair who just graduated from college. We were the first class she led. Quite a few dissenting students had some complaints to say about her even after graduation because sometimes she was tough, but I held a different view. She was a young woman when she became a teacher. She spent three years of her twenties, usually the best time in one’s life, with us, and taught us well. Last time when I met her, she cut her hair and just became a mother and was extremely thrilled by her new-born baby. I felt very happy for her too. In a junior middle school where most students are immature, teachers who are critical and strict are usually hated by some students, but they are the ones who have a strong sense of responsibility with their classes, and in the end the students benefit most from these teachers.

Because of relatively less involvement in school activities, my memory about the junior middle school is somewhat vague. Time flew quickly, and three years was just like a flash, especially for a student like me who spent much time on fictions and other juvenile interests. After finishing junior middle school, most of the best students left and went to the best local high schools. With one or two exceptions, most of those who stayed at the same school for the next 3 years are students like me whose grades were reasonably good but not best. YUSS’s high school did not enjoy a status like its junior middle school. Back then it was not one of the best ones. With less popularity, the number of students was quite small. We only had two classes with about one hundred students in total, and many of us were from the junior middle school of YUSS, so a lot of students knew or had heard of each other. At the beginning, many of those who had greater ambition but had to stay expressed disappointment and frustration. However, the next three years turned out to be the best experience one could expect in a high school.

Mr. Liu Weihua, a math teacher, was in charge of our class. He looked solemn, but three years was long enough for one to appreciate his charming and witty sense of humor. There were two other high schools commonly viewed as the best high school in Kunming. Almost all of the best students from YUSS and many from other middle schools went there. To make us work harder, in a first-year class meeting Mr. Liu infused a pessimistic attitude into our mind: “Theoretically, if you progress at the same speed, and if one of the students at these two schools fails to get admitted into college, none of you will be admitted.” Fortunately, the last part of that theory eventually didn’t become reality, largely due to his and other teachers’ effort. He was a very smart man and a competent teacher. One of the things I think I should have done in high school, but did not, is to spend more time on mathematics and learn it well, but going back in time and working harder is just a lazy student’s wishful thinking. Nonetheless, because of Mr. Liu’s teaching, I was still quite interested in math and did reasonably well. Because he was in charge of the class, he was involved in almost all class activities. There were a lot of fond moments. It was quite a scene when he fought cake wars with the students just before we graduated.

I had several different English teachers during high school, but for the most part Ms. Cheng Huiyun was the teacher for both classes in the grade. Although she was probably in her thirties, she was always cheerful and outgoing. It felt like she was just one of us. On the other hand she was extremely responsible with students. When she just started teaching us, there was one time when almost the whole class did not prepare for the lecture beforehand, she was very disappointed and left the classroom. As the commissary of studies, I went to her office to apologize for our laziness, she became extremely sad and started to weep. I was somewhat embarrassed and didn’t know what to do, but I was deeply moved. To this day, I have never seen anyone else so emotionally attached to teaching and students. While many (supposedly) good teachers in other schools open extracurricular training courses to make money, Ms. Cheng has spent much of her spare time tutoring her students without any compensation. In the second year, a few students, including me, made it to the final of the national high school contest of the English language. In the month before the final contest, she spent extra hours every evening working with us and explaining problems to us. All of us ranked high in the final. After the result came out, we had lunch together in the dinning hall of Yunnan University. I thanked her, and she said that to see her students making achievements was the best reward to her and was what best embodied the value of a teacher. An unexpected result of the contest was that my obsession with exotic grammar phenomena in English backfired in the national college entrance exams. She warned me before the exam that I should not be too proud, otherwise I might not even get past one hundred and twenty. Coincidentally, I received one hundred and nineteen. She must have been quite disappointed about my grade, but it has since been an entertaining topic during get-together dinners with high school folks and her.

Another teacher for whose teaching I am thankful is Mr.~Yang Shizai, my physics teacher. He was elder than the other teachers. Like Liu and Cheng, he was very dedicated to teaching. The difference was that he seldom did anything that made the students feel excited, however even right now I still remember almost everything he taught me. He was very careful and paid a lot of attention to details, almost like a rigorous scientist. He had a calm and gentle personality, which was reflected in the way he interacted with students. I have never seen a teacher who treats students with such respect as he did. He would sincerely apologize before punishing a student who chat with others during a lecture (usually by asking him/her to sit in front of the class). His teaching boosted my interests on Physics very much. Had it not for my obsession with computers, I would have pursued Physics as a life-time career.

The overall atmosphere in my high school class was much more relaxed compared with my college classmates’ high-school experience, and I believe it was so even when compared with many other schools in Kunming. We had many extracurricular activities, even in the last year just before the big exams. In a Chinese high school, it is uncommon for students to have a lot of free time, but YUSS was quite different. The school never forced us to take extra courses during the summer and winter breaks, and we had full two-day weekends. The homework was light most of the time. Many students went to after-school training courses opened by teachers from other schools targeting at the college entrance exams, but I never did. These courses were typically very expensive compared to normal compensation level at that time. The distraction of a second job would inevitably affect the teachers’ teaching in their own schools. Although I have played with computers for a while, it was during the high school time that I had my first computer and spent a lot of time with it. Although I played much of the time, I also learnt computer programming which fascinated me so much that I decided to pursue a degree on computer science in college and later in graduate school.

Friends of a life time are the best reward one could hope for from three years of high school. The relationship between classmates were very good. Due to a relaxed atmosphere, we had a lot of fun together. There was certainly competition, even between good friends, but we managed to keep it healthy. At that age, we were mature enough to understand friendship, integrity and respect but were not bothered by the complication of the society outside the campus, so friends were candid and sincere to each other. Some of us have kept in touch through the many years after graduation. From time to time, we get chances to get together, and it is like the good old time all over again.

At graduation, most classmates were quite happy, because the college entrance exams turned out well for us. With few exceptions, almost all students were admitted into college, a ratio even the top high schools couldn’t hope to achieve. It was a result of the teachers’ commitment and the students’ effort. We had much fun, but we also worked hard when we should. Most graduates from YUSS did great in college and later in their respective fields. Many of my classmates have already been contributing to the society, and some others are still pursuing advanced education and will become valuable assets for their disciplines. I learnt that the school is much larger now, and the senior school is now as large as what the junior school used to be, so the students probably no longer enjoy some of the benefits we had, but I am sure there are new things that the school has to offer. I wish and believe that YUSS will continue to educate generations of talented citizens and that in the many years to come the school will still be the place from which students can start to fly with their dreams.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Ms. Bi Jingmei for inviting me to write this essay. She was our English teacher for a brief period in high school and was well respected by students. This essay was written at the same time when I was preparing my Ph.D. dissertation, both the time constraint and my writing skill do not allow me to write down all things I have in mind. My sincere apology goes to those individuals whom I should have written about but didn’t. There were far more people than those I talked about who made YUSS a great school and offered me a rich, rewarding, and unforgettable experience.