#3. English & The ‘double life’ of a home-schooled Chinese kid (draft)
My name’s Yue, I’m 23. 22 years spent in a small town in China, 1 year 7000 miles away from it.
This is a story of an ‘experiment’, in the sense that things are done so differently that no one knows what to expect. I’m not the best equipped storyteller to tell it, because A) I’ve lived inside it all my life; and B) My English teacher (shown above) came in the shape of a tape recorder.
Growing up, my answer to questions like ‘What grade are you in?’ or ‘What school do you go to?’ was never entirely honest. Because for the most part, I didn’t actually go to one. Technically I wasn’t a ‘student’, the identity every other kid around belonged to. So there’s no clear identity for me, no laid-out routine, nor a guaranteed destination. My school-years was more like a flow of exploration with no maps instead of moving along the ‘grade-grid’.
It was my parents idea to do this home-school experiment, they thought I should have time to learn broader knowledge than those taught in the schools’ curriculum. This was unheard of where we lived, a little community town in China. None of the parents around would risk ANY time off school for their kid. Far from it, many of them put their SINGLE child into endless extra-curricular classes to raise like 10 points in exams, buy pricey properties in bigger cities so that their children can go to school there.
If you know anyone from China, you’ll know that the child’s school education stays the central enterprise for the family, from kindergarten to final graduation. Because all expectation of a good life is strapped onto it.
In fact, nothing in their educational background suggests that they’ll become parents who’ll undertake this kind of experiment. Like the other working-class Chinese parents of their age, my parents didn’t have access to university education, nor can they speak English. Their high schools years were spent in the countryside, planting wheat and carrying cattle manure on heavy trolleys, doing hard work in the age of shortage, when higher education was a luxury.
Yet as parents, they recognized very early on that English would be important in the future so they decided to give me and my sister as much exposure to it as they can afford. We were perhaps the first in our town to have bought a PC, in the late 90s, years ahead many ‘richer’ families. It wasn’t cheap, costs more than a year’s salary.
That computer, together with a tape recorder, a Wenquxing (electronic dictionary) and books, became the school I had all to myself! I played both the student and the teacher, and yeah it sure felt more like playing than working. My time wasn’t cut into pieces with a bar to meet in each piece . It was a continual flow. And there’s not much distinction between study and play, or between different subjects.
I learned in a way which probably would be described as ‘holistic’ today. Without any reference point to define what I’m doing, I was just learning as my instinctual curiosity carries me. No idea what this practice is CALLED or how would I RANK among peers. The motivation to learn something was internal instead of forced upon me.
What I did was straightforward. Whenever I see things I don’t yet know or understand, I look for a way to approach it until I feel comfortable having understood it. In the process I experiment to find out what works and what not, and then move on to the next new thing with better method.
Like a baby figuring out intuitively how to crawl. A simple desire to get there + trial and error = internalizing the whole set of muscle coordination, or CRAWL. And of course, neither the baby nor myself at the time, know any such word as ‘method’ or ‘muscle coordination’.
It was only later when under some comparison, that I realized seeing ‘learning’ as a natural thing wasn’t the norm. I did go back to school later for short periods, there was a lot of drill practice and repetitive copying writing. Apart from classes and homework, there was little time for much of anything else.
Yet school was and still is the only laid-out path out there, you can’t stay away from it forever.
Up until senior high school (Gāozhōng), I could manage to study at home and go take final exams at school, maintaining at around 90 percentile. But as the epic Gāokǎo (college entrance exam) was starting to be at stake, my ‘free style’ was no longer compatible. Although my parents tried hard to avoid letting me trained to be an automaton by the flood of test papers, they weren’t reckless. Nearly 10 million Chinese students take Gāokǎo each year, it is THE way to go.
The 3 years before Gaokao, are the years of ultimate concentration! Had to give up a lot of things, including my violin, after 8 years of vigorous training and practice. My teacher was a prestigious violinist in his 70s, he advised me to ‘take the path of playing professionally’. I didn’t. At that time, it seemed to be too narrow and steep a path compared to the Main Road. But of course that was when I had no idea how much ‘steeper’ my path would become.
Just as I got myself mentally prepared for this ‘battle’ to come (‘battle’ is THE metaphor for Gaokao, been around for so long that it’s not a metaphor anymore), it turned out I wasn’t prepared physically.
In 2008, my eyes decided to go their own way, to the point that reading was no longer manageable. I left school. For that and some other health issues, we went for a bunch of ‘hospital/dodgy clinics theme tours’, got a spectrum of diagnosis and weird treatment put upon me (some were like ‘Are you kidding me?!’). But with things like this, it’s impossible to stop before you hear some kind of definite explanation. 4 years later, we got one!
‘Accommodative and vergence dysfunction’, if this is the correct English translation.
Finally we have a name for it! But not a treatment.
Now eight years later, I still live with it, even with the help of TTS (text-to-speech), things like setting up this website is still like an ‘eye marathon’, only done for special occasion. By the way, ‘strategic planning’ is crucial when you’re counting seconds when reading! Gotta plan out multiple steps ahead, predict possible results and solutions, don’t have time to read along the way.
So, I’ll just figure out a way to learn without reading then. Five years straight, at home, away from ‘human interaction’ except with family, I had plenty of time and concentration to get better at it.
I started from audio books like Twilight Saga (Yeah I know) and Harry Potter, tuning my ear for English. While the only Chinese audio resources available were fragmented staff like voice-over of TV documentaries etc.
A couple of years later, as I was hunting online for audio resources as usual, I found the coolest treasure trove ever! Open courses!
Me, here in this little Chinese town, didn’t even finish high school, can have lectures from Yale, UC Berkeley and the like playing into my ear! English really became the life changer, key to the trove! My parents were prophets!
Naturally my background was insufficient for many courses, also I needed to minimize reading time. So the subjects most approachable to me were philosophy, psychology and the social sciences. Even without reading, I could work a lot of the ideas inside my head. Most of them were comprehensible using common sense and thought experiment.
Journal for me was a necessity. It was my friend/teacher/therapist.
Of course looking back now I see spotlight effect playing on a teen’s mind, which magnified the fear and helplessness. But at the age of high-school, probably more than any other time in life, there is a yearning to feel belonged, to be ‘in’ some safety ship with others. Floating alone on uncharted water, no route or beacon, not knowing where you’re gonna end up can be really scary.
At times of distress or confusion, I poured the messy load into the journal and proceed to analyze myself rationally in this clear written form. ‘What is it I’m feeling right now? What cause does it trace back to? Is my reaction helping? Is the causal link rational and coherent? If not, why? Where did I get it wrong? How shall I map it down to avoid the same illusion in the future?’ It ALWAYS works, even with emotions of the most toxic kinds.
I left a memo for myself in its 2nd paragraph:
‘If you feel lost, insignificant like an ant, that your existence is blurring into others, close your eyes and feel the contour of your body. Realize that despite your feeling of being pushed and pulled by events in the world, your body is actually separate from even the chair you’re sitting on. Your separate movement is up to you. That’ll give you a sense of being the subject instead of object. What bigger power can you yield than that to navigate yourself? Identify the steady independent core (or non-core, just that SENSE OF BEING) within yourself, then external events will simply brush past you. After the ephemeral wave of emotion passes, you’ll see clearer and simpler. Make your judgement and decision THEN.’
The word ‘meditation’ was mentioned, I remember this was not long after I heard of it. I knew little of its deeper meaning, only that it too involves closing one’s eyes and paying attention. Yet it felt familiar, coinciding with my intuition.
This might be quite an unusual formula to run one’s mind:
The time I spent on writing and analyzing was even longer than the experience itself. Apart from the ridiculously long diaries which are impossible to read again, the effect was deeper. As the balance point shifts to reflection over experience, the taste of your experience ITSELF changes. It’s like seeing with heightened vision, you become very aware of changes in your consciousness.
No thought would pass without notice and examination, it felt like the natural thing to do in my ‘self-contained’ life, I watched my mind like one would watch a movie. Because not much was going on externally, day after day same tight apartment space, same family faces …
I know it sounds like anything but, yet it was FUN! Self-watching was my entertainment, it was never boring because it’s always changing.
Think about a drop of colorless water falling to the ground, boring? But if you put it under high speed HD camera, every fraction of the second during its fall it has a different shape. While each and every one of those shapes can be explained by physical forces tugging on it at THAT moment. Fascinating isn’t it?
It’s exactly the same with ‘inward camera’. Your own perception and thoughts is the water drop in constant motion, pull your attention to it until you see them as individual frames. While the principles of psychology are the forces tugging it to be its shape at each instant.
All I do is zoom in and be slooooow.
Everything that I learnt from lectures are merged together with my own reflection. Abstract philosophical ideas become visceral to me, psychological theories are put into real test upon my own psyche. I had all the time and mind space in the world to inhabit in them. Later on, I felt I could switch to the other end of the writing or theories — the writer’s mind.
I knew a switch has happened because the WORDS, instead of some obscure language to interpret from the outside in, become the natural output of a coherent logic I clearly see, identical to that of the author. Just like when you hear some lyrics exactly in sync with your own feeling, then you’ll feel there’s no other words better to describe that very feeling! (As much as I want to give a specific example, that’ll just be ridiculously long.)
This ‘syncing’ happened every time I listen to psychology lectures and a lot of the time with philosophy. Ever since then, I identified psychology as my home, although I know I’m not able to be a psychology student in university, to know there’s a realm of thinking where everything clicks for me is heartening.
So as it turned out, in a monotonous life you’ll get more clarity which is good ground for understanding psychology and philosophy.
Investigation of where and how irrationality/happiness (or any other mental states) occur and change just happens to be what keeps running at the back of my mind.
It’s literally like living full-time in a psychology lab with controlled experimental condition, variables kept at minimum, me as both the observer and the subject.
Better still for me, the observation doesn’t require using my eyes, it’s inward.
Not only was it FUN to carry out ‘scientific investigation’ of my own psyche, it’s also the NECESSITY under the circumstance.
When you are not interacting with people, you don’t have that kind of outlet for your thoughts and emotion. The natural only option left is self-digesting it. Find solution within yourself. Since no quick phone-call to a friend will make you feel better, nor can you blame another person for making you feeling shitty. Labeling something or somebody as ‘bad’ because they make you feel bad doesn’t work here.
I could not turn my face away from myself, and so I zoomed in unflinchingly.
Apart from monotony, no visual is another feature of my life.
Back to open courses.
When you listen, only listen, you don’t see a lecture hall filled with insanely smart brains, their Ivy League jerseys and the podium which probably has got some Nobel winners’ footprint on it.
If you don’t see them, you don’t think about them. No pre-supposition, no distraction or intimidation. It’s just this plain voice telling you something new. You hear the words, you try to construct a mental image as close to that described as possible, you move around the jigsaw pieces of concepts until they make sense.
You don’t see this.
You only see this.
They’re just playing into my ears a few centimeters away, if I close my eyes it’s almost as if I’m in the same room (only without the peer pressure of hundreds of geniuses). As time passes, the ‘teleportation’ effect got stronger and so familiar that I didn’t even have to close my eyes anymore. As long as I’m engaged in the ideas and concepts described in the audio, I’m THERE. Things in front of my eyes in the immediate surrounding are overshadowed by the internal ‘flow’.
The ‘flow’ of thoughts often extend beyond the lecture. They constitute the other half of my journal.
Another interesting effect of no visual :
If you always have to avoid visual stuff, needless to say you’ll be missing out so much books and art, the accumulation of human knowledge and creativity.
However, the other side of the coin is that you’ll be spared the gigabytes of fragmented information/distraction gushing in from the VERY VISUAL world, cluttering your cognitive workload.
Within any given length of time, the visual information is far more complicated to process than auditory information.
This realization explained what I’ve noticed for a while: when listening with no visual in front of me, there’s much more space in my head to lay out and move around the ideas like Legos. They can zoom across flyovers, connect from different dimensions. Whereas when presented with rich visual information, I distinctly feel the thinking-space is squeezed and flattened, the thinking is much more linear.
Or think about the time when you want to set straight your thoughts, you’ll instinctively CLOSE YOUR EYES. ‘No visual’ is just a more thinking-friendly environment.
When listening to things (e.g. podcasts), normally you feel necessary to browse something, otherwise it’s like a waste. But for me, my eyes as such, the decision’s been made FOR me to NOT fill that vacancy. Turns out that vacancy will NOT be wasted after all. It becomes the playground for ideas to connect and develop, for them to jump around and do gymnastics!
After years of having the knowledge of the world coming in from a little ‘peep hole’ , filled in the input shortage with closer details and ‘mental gymnastics’ …
I went off to see the real world.
Me, a blank slate in every aspect, from practical survival stuff to knowledge of social norms (complicated further by cultural diversity), landed in this foreign land where I knew not a single person.
Even my believing parents were prepared to see me home in a couple of months, ‘It’s OK, you were far from prepared’.
But hey, I survived!
Financially self sufficient and left the country with a healthy surplus. Enjoyed thoroughly. Everything including the bumpy parts were valuable data. Discovered so much about the world, the people, and myself. ‘Oh, so this is how I would feel and act in this situation’ or ‘Hey my improvised solution actually works!’ And when it didn’t, it became an interesting subject matter to investigate. Tool for investigation? My old pal journal!
That Oct 2013 diary above was actually written before heading off to NZ, to prepare myself with the mental tool kit for entering the big wide world.
Those tools worked surprisingly well.
Walked in shop after shop presenting myself and inquire for a job opportunity. Most of which didn’t even post an ad for hiring. Got myself a perfect job on my 3rd day in town. Later they told me they didn’t even read my CV, it was my bubbly personality! Well that was a good start to build my personality from scratch!
I processed the sudden gush of events and people in the same way as what I was doing at home. I don’t think about how big the problem is or how inexperienced I am, I focus on the problem itself as if it’s the only thing in the world.
Went through a long process to sue an employer for his illegal practice, despite his nasty threats to hold me back from suing. I wasn’t the first Asian employee he exploited, but NZ Labor Inspector made me the last.
So yeah there were some tricky parts, but my memory of that 12 months is still dominated by wonder and serendipity.
Turns out my ‘inexperience’ made me constantly curious. I tried things even when they look unlikely because no matter the result, I learn.
Hitchhiking isn’t just a way of transport. It’s REAL PEOPLE’S LIVES you’re gonna cross path with, connection happens where you least expected.
I had this ‘overflowing’ curiosity and empathy which made me always keen to hear what the other person’s gotta say. LISTENING is my thing. Now with real stories of real people ‘playing LIVE’ all around, this was just like carnival for my hungry open ears.
Moreover, there’s a wonderful side product too. Being a curious listener has brought me unexpected friendships, knowledge and opportunities. So much more than I’d ever imagined! I was constantly wowing at my good fortune.
With diversity comes a lot of mentality-switching of course. But as a blank slate this was no problem for me. Plus I’ve had lots of previous practice at home.
Like any muscle strengthening exercise, the ‘soreness’ goes away gradually. By ‘soreness’ I mean the discomfort when coming across a different mindset. Overtime I learnt to vacate myself from any single point of view. I hold multiple frame of reference at the same time, knowing each of them makes its own sense. I don’t have to choose a single one to stand on.
This skill I’d stumbled upon at home came to be very helpful in my working holiday, because I was constantly finding myself landing out of the blue into a group of people with whom I share no common history, living habits and perspective.
Ranking perspectives on a scale of virtue seemed pointless. Because I saw the context which gave rise to them, and the function they serve. Frankly, after seeing an ‘foreigner’ eat, drink and sleep just like myself, it’s hard not to see any previous judgement as merely friend/foe animal instinct wrapped in language.
I found that if I don’t flinch away from the mental effort of getting to know a stranger, the knowledge and understanding I get tastes much better than an instinctual ‘like/dislike’.
Since there’s nothing to ‘dislike’, the next step is to merge in.
Surprisingly, I was ‘trained’ in that as well. Back at home, I shared little common topic and life experience with people around. And so every conversation I had with a neighbor for example, is a role-play practice for me. When they asked me questions like ‘When do you plan to find someone and get married’, I would in a flash retrieve the words and tone from similar conversations I overheard before, and speak as if that’s the kind of question I consider all the time as well, nobody would find out I was thoroughly wrapped in Kahneman’s writing a second ago.
I would pick up the other person’s way of speaking, physical gestures and the things they consider in life. Making the other person unable to recognize me as someone who’s actually NOT ‘one of them’ means success!
Likewise in New Zealand, no matter whether I was among house painters, backpackers, college students, orchestra violinist, or homeless people … I changed color like a chameleon. Not only because it makes things much smoother, I also got to learn much more from the person when I’m within his/her own context.
Below is a brief recap of my cherished encounters in New Zealand.
Lots more
(Note: Pictures marked with * are not my own photos, they’re from the Internet.)
