MARSHALL ASTOR

KAO SHI
Stress Time
I just sat through an hour-long dictation from my purple-haired Chinese pedagogue. I sharpened 5 pencils just in case. Hours and hours of memorization and hand-numbing finger cramping were also involved. My Cantonese and Fujanese speaking classmates didn’t seem too excited about the test. They had been writing these characters since they were 5 year-olds after all. Only the three white people, as they call us, seemed tense.

Chun Laoshi was nice today. She wasn’t too insulted by our ignorance or overly shrill. She waited for me if I gave her a panicked look, and repeated what she just said with only a slightly abrasive scolding.

My characters might be a little rushed and sloppy, but I think I got them right otherwise (dui rather than bu dui like usual). I’ll find out tomorrow, when the grapes of wrath will be flung at all of us I’m sure. It made me feel a little better when my Cantonese speaking classmate who sits next to me muttered, “I did terrible on that!” and showed me his half blank paper.

So I know I wasn’t the worst in the class, and that makes this white boy smile a little.