I'm feeling tea

I've been feeling particularly sad this week. A family friend died at the weekend. Someone too young to have gone so soon. I feel sad, I miss my family, I miss my friends and being able to use my own language to explain how I feel. It can be very hard to say what's on your mind or in your heart in another language. Especially when (if said incorrectly) the word for 'bad' can mean 'tea', and, like me, you regularly confuse the words for 'it's a shame' with 'it's laughable'! However, it's reassuring to me that my linguistic blunders are available in times of sadness to provide mild entertainment.

 

Today, one of my teachers spent a lesson talking very openly about her experience during the long march, her re-education period and the cultural revolution. This lively vibrant woman, who I see as a cross between a Beijing opera singer and Mrs Miggins, was made to walk around the university in a dunce's cap for teaching foreigners, with a placard to criticise her own bourgeois behaviour. Teacher Qin is a kind of cuddly grandmotherly figure - all round and splodgy. I've never actually given her a cuddle - which I know will surprise many of you given my fondness for cuddles with people I know, people I don't know, small animals etc. She spent a summer working in sweltering temperatures in a  smelting works, and then went to the countryside for several years - and required to do the lowest jobs in a small village.  She also had to take part in a 'short' long march, walking around 50miles a day for 45 days. What a shocking way to spent your 'prime'!

 

I have read so many books about this period of time, and even though the history around it is familiar to me - having a much loved teacher describe all of this was a bit much. A bit like finding out that your grandmother had some horrible experience that should never have happened.

 

Another student (quite bravely, I thought) asked what she thought of her experience.

 

She threw back her head and laughed her tinkling sing-songy laugh and said "What do I think? I think Teacher Qin is no longer afraid of anything".

 

So, tonight I am going to raise a cup of tea (or a 'cup of bad') to not being afraid of anything, and to Lola, who it seems was also not afraid of anything.