Gong Youjun is a native of Chongming, Shanghai, and a senior middle school teacher. He has successively served as the deputy director of the Chongming County Education Bureau, the deputy director of the Chongming County Education, Science and Culture Committee, the deputy director of the Shanghai Youth Science and Technology Education Center, and the deputy director of the Shanghai Art Education Center. He has published more than 100 educational and teaching papers, literary criticisms and essays in newspapers and magazines such as "People's Education", "Shanghai Education", "Shanghai Education and Scientific Research", "Children's Literature Research", "Middle School Chinese" and "Jiefang Daily". © This article is published with authorization, please contact the editor of this official account for authorization (WeChat: anxinlu) for reprinting.
My U.S. "Landlord"
- Go to the United States to participate in the finals of the Mind Olympiad
In 2000, the second year of my transfer to the Shanghai Youth Science and Technology Education Center, I was assigned to lead a team with Chen Weixin, editor-in-chief of the Youth Daily and executive director of the Shanghai Mind Olympiad Association in China, to participate in the 21st International Mind Olympiad finals held at Tennessee State University in the United States.
The Odyssey of the mind was initiated in 1976 by Professor Micklus of Grasborough State College, New Jersey, USA. Since 1978, the World Finals have been held annually in the United States.
In 1988, the Children's Daily, the Municipal Youth Science and Technology Station (later renamed the Municipal Youth Science and Technology Education Center) and Shanghai TV 2 jointly organized the first China Shanghai Mind Olympiad, and selected the champion team to participate in the competition. As a result, Shanghai's youth science and technology activities have added a novel integration of science and technology and art, hands-on and brain, natural science and social science in one of the activities that reflect the cultivation of creativity and team spirit. The event is held annually and continues to this day, and it is constantly evolving, with the number of participating districts and schools increasing year by year, and the influence is growing.
In May 2000, the 13th China Mind Olympiad was held in Shanghai, and after fierce competition, the Shanghai Olympic Association judged the champion teams of all events, and selected the teams from Shanghai New Middle and Senior High School and Shanghai Peijia Bilingual School to participate in the finals in the United States. The team consisted of students, coaches and school leaders from the two project teams, led by Chen Weixin, Ding Weifen, director of the Party Office of the Youth Daily, and me.
In late May, our group had a connecting flight through Chicago to Tennessee State University. We arrived at the school in the early hours of the morning, and the organizers arranged for us to live in a dormitory that had been vacated during the summer vacation.
The June 1 race was held in the auditorium of Tennessee State University.
The competition activities are colorful, and on the field, teams from various countries fully show their creativity; Outside the stadium, they presented each other with badges and uniforms designed and made by each team, and also held exchange activities, and I assisted Lao Ding to set up a display table full of Chinese flavor, and many people came to watch it with great interest.
The entrance ceremony and award ceremony of the Mind Olympiad are very grand and ceremonial. When the winning teams were announced at the award ceremony, the audience would stand up again and again to cheer for the success of any team, and the whole award ceremony was full of excitement and collective carnival. As a result of the competition, the project team of the new middle and senior high school named "Nasty Ghost" won the third place, and the paulownia structure project "Flexible Structure" of Peijia Bilingual School won the Fuska Special Creativity Award.
After the competition, we had an exchange with the local Mind Olympiad. Several volunteers from the local association were responsible for arranging our accommodation. We started with a simple welcome ceremony and networking at a community school, and then a couple of volunteers drove us to pick us up, or "homestay" in English.
Xiao Lu, a classmate from the New Middle and Senior High School, and I was assigned a "landlord" named Evelyn, a middle-aged lady in her thirties and forties, with a ruddy face and a kind face. She brought her chubby son, Jonathon, to pick us both up. The four of us took a group photo at the school, and then Evelyn put us in a blue car, put our luggage, and Evelyn drove to her house. At that time, there were very few private cars in our country, and I was surprised and admired to see a middle-aged woman driving herself to pick us up.
Evelyn's house is a white three-story villa with a large green space in front of the building, a basketball hoop outside the parking garage and tool room, and a small basketball court.
As soon as we arrived at the living room of her house, the host called her parents, who lived nearby, to greet our two Chinese guests, two old men with a strong and simple appearance, and a kind and kind appearance. Although I studied English for six years in middle school in the sixties, and my English grades were excellent, and I could understand the "Beijing Weekly" (English version), I never learned English again, and there were only some simple words and sentences left in my mind, and the English we learned at that time was very unrealistic, mostly political articles and vocabulary, and at that time, grammar knowledge was emphasized, and listening and speaking ability was neglected. Fortunately, Xiao Lu, a student from the new middle and senior high school, has excellent English, his mother works as a translator in the translation publishing house, he has the same language talent as his mother, so he doubled as my translator, thanks to him we were able to have a pleasant exchange, in the exchange we know that the hostess is a primary school teacher, as if she has lived separately from her husband, and her son is in elementary school, and he is also a member of the Mind Olympiad held in the state. Her parents are warm and talkative, and they are always talking to us cordially.
The next day the host drove us to town with a couple of other "hosts" for pizza. The town is small and has only a few shops, such as a supermarket and pizzeria, a church, etc. Ironically, I had just been transferred from Chongming to work in the city, and I didn't know what pizza was or how to eat it. When the pizza was served, I didn't know how to "start", and I waited for the host to demonstrate before I started eating. After the meal, the host took us to the scenic area on the mountain, where there are almost primitive trees, clear water and mirror-like lakes, and beautiful scenery. Compared to the mountain lakes on the mainland, it is more natural, with almost no man-made things and a little bit of commerce.
In the evening, the host took us to her sister's house, and the car kept moving in the dark woods, until the depths of the dense forest, and I vaguely saw a white villa and a dummy sitting on a swing under the porch, and the car stopped, and my sister came out and welcomed us into the house, only to see that the walls were covered with all kinds of photos, and Americans seemed to like this, and often the whole wall was covered with photos. She enthusiastically told us that she was a high school history teacher, living alone, and the dummy on the swing (swinging chair) under the porch was her companion to relieve the loneliness of being single.
Breakfast was eaten at the host's house, in the elegant dining room and open kitchen, the host baked bread for us, fried eggs, poured us milk, let us add our own cereal and fruit pieces, such a Western-style breakfast is also the first time I have eaten.
The clothes we changed from the shower were going to be washed by ourselves the next day, but when we got up the next day, we found that the attentive landlord had washed them for us, which made us feel very embarrassed.
The next night, the Xiao Lu student from the new middle and senior high school went to his classmate's place to play, I was alone at home, despite the language barrier, I still tried to communicate with the landlord mother and son, I relied on some simple words in my memory and a booklet of common sentences in English to go abroad, plus gestures with my hands, I finally reluctantly chatted about homely things.
Evelyn asked me if I had a car at home, and I replied no without shame. Indeed, it was rare for anyone in Shanghai to have a private car at that time, but I didn't expect that now, 234 years later, my daughter's family has two cars, and my son's family has three work cars. The host asked me again if I had a dog, and the owner had a white puppy, which was very likable and affectionate to our two Chinese guests. I said that most people in Shanghai don't have dogs. At that time, this was indeed the case, and I didn't expect that raising dogs and cats in Shanghai has been basically popularized now. I still remember the English expression of numbers, so I taught them to say Chinese one, two, three, four, five...... In his twenties and thirties..... Jonathan was very serious about learning Chinese with me, and he learned it quickly. Unexpectedly, this kind of communication is also quite flavorful, in the specific language environment, as long as you say a few fragmentary words, you don't need to form a sentence, people can understand.
Just three days later, we are going to fly to Los Angeles to let the teachers and students of the participating teams visit Disney and Hollywood. There was no gift to express our gratitude to the temporary "landlord", so I gave her son our team jersey and a white sports jacket I was wearing as a souvenir. Jonathan gave me a small portrait with a metal frame, chubby and cute, which I still keep. I left Evelyn a business card in Chinese on the front and English on the back. We also agreed that next spring, the mother and son, together with other members of the Regional Mind Olympiad, would come to Shanghai to observe and participate in the China Mind Olympiad.
Evelyn drove us to the airport with her son, and as we said goodbye at the airport, I saw her eyes moist.
After returning home, Evelyn and her son sent me a New Year's card on Christmas Day in 2000, but unfortunately they did not reply to them due to their lack of ability to write letters abroad on their own and their sudden hospitalization due to a serious illness. But I always thought that they would come over when Shanghai hosts the 14th China Mind Olympiad next spring, and I thought that I would be her "China landlord" by then. Unexpectedly, when the 14th China Mind Olympiad was held at the Xuhui District Youth Activity Center the following year, there was only one person in charge named Linda in her area.
After more than 20 years, when I think of the sincere and kind American "landlord" Evelyn and her son Jonathan, although many things are no longer true, some details are still unforgettable. During the three days of her family's short life, she was warm and friendly, tried her best to arrange our food and accommodation, and tried her best to enrich our life and make us happy and fulfilling. It seems that among the general population, the beautiful things in human nature also have no borders.
Twenty-four years have passed, and Jonathan, the cute little chubby dun back then, should be nearly middle-aged, how have you developed along the way? Evelyn, you may have retired and become a grandmother?
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