Earlier this year, I stopped by Ruyqiuan Tutoring Centre. It was the place I frequented as a kid, though for not the lessons but hanging out with classmates. We had chat perpetually, pretending to live in a fictional world (which is our co-creation), even on our way there.
One teacher taught math but also handled odd jobs. WeChat official account, for example (the teacher had at least some writing talent, publishing poems and stories back then, though the enthusiasm had waned). The teacher also organised public lectures on the Four Great Novels to attract would-be customers, while we only wanted to play Rubik’s Cubes. In the office the teacher usually led us in, a note reads ‘We must become elite professionals who strike fear into the hearts of others’. The character for wind was replaced with a simple sketch resembling an ‘@’ symbol. We showed no respect by calling him by name, since another teacher shares his surname.
When I have grown to study in another block, I assumed Ruyqiuan had shut down. It had not — I just visited at the wrong hours. If it seemed empty, I felt uneasy entering. It remained exactly as I remembered, though posters were faded, an epidemiological tracing QR code lingered by the door, and the furnishings were untidy. The winter floor cannot be perceived muddy, but dust swirled with each step. The transport partition by the door, labeled ‹Reception Room› (in English — only Media Department was marked in Chinese), reeked.
At 8 PM this day, the entire three-story building was filled with parents waiting for their children. Disheveled, clad in dumb coats stiffened by the cold, some played TikTok videos loudly. Two women chattered freely about a neighbor’s wedding and ages of children.
I had not noticed before that classrooms were partitioned by steel panels. This enabled easy reconfiguration — The office for ‘professional elites’, along with the large conference room for the Four Great Novels talks, were divided into normal classrooms. I had to locate for a while. The wall posters no longer featured corny brain teasers but instead displayed SMART principles (how SMART principles can guide curriculum planning?). The furnishings were neither new nor old. In unused classrooms blackboard remained un-erased, strewn with discarded printouts.
Classes ended by unspoken norm (there used to be a hyperbolic bell). Two boys dashed out first, bickering over who managed to leave first. In another classroom, the teacher stood in the doorway, making students recite ‘I, you, she, he…’ one by one, letting each pass after their turn. Two trash bins were quickly filled with gaudy snack wrappers, the most conspicuous (plum candies?) being one labeled ‘Serves You Right!’. It felt like the name alone won kids over. A girl begged her father for an ink sac; her father replied, ‘Didn’t we just buy one?’
Broken tiles in the stairwall protruding from the wall formed a horizontal line spreading from foot level. As people descended the stairs, the line rose overhead. Every time I thought exactly that as a child — a memory that has now surfaced.
The past is not as beautiful as memory makes it, and the place never belonged to me. The Centre bustles with people coming and going, with no circumstances remained. Of course, the teacher is nowhere to be found. At least I understand now: even if he did not become an elite, he could not have stuck with the menial jobs for ten years anyway.