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notgonnashutup · 4 years

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i feel like a tiny small part of me probs also likes zyl appearance wise besides being a cutie because he just kind of has that look of familiarity to me. really the first time i ever interacted with anyone from mainland china, who didn’t grow up or move to my country as a kid, was my chinese teacher in high school. he was from beijing, he was like 6 ft tall and seemed huge to tiny teenager moi. his name was mr. wang and he was doing an exchange program through the local university. the local university placed him in my public (huge) high school to teach chinese. once i grew up and lived a few more years, i realized in retrospect that in some ways his program sounded a lot like the Fulbright program or the tesl programs, in other countries, like JET maybe in japan, that go through universities to place their teachers.

mr. wang was the first time i really got a perspective on what anyone who lived in mainland china might be like. we had one other substitute teacher in high school once, who was also someone from mainland china. She was from a small village, not a city like Beijing, and she was a lot more like the chinese mothers i’d met growing up who’d moved from mainland china with their children and who’s kids i grew up with. She had super long hair to past her waist and considered it important to grow it, she did not like the wages or job situation for her family back in their hometown and that was part of why she moved, she was very feminist and encouraged women getting better jobs and being treated better. she did not speak english as well as mr. wang, but she didn’t need to teach a language as her specialty after all though, she spoke sufficiently to teach any substitute teacher topics like history class/english class etc. she was a lot like the families i grew up with, except she was just more like my friend’s parents than my friends.

mr. wang was more like the teen and adult artists i interacted with online on social media, who drew comics and raised awareness on political topics and got affected by the censorship of websites over time. mr. wang acted a ton like most of the local university teachers placed in any class, so he acted like i expected any college person to. he dressed pretty much like everyone else did, he was like most people in the college town overall.

he was a super good teacher, despite obviously being trained less than a full on teacher with a degree done etc. It was his first teaching experience, and they gave him 40 kids most of whom didn’t care at all about the class or learning. We all saw him get whiplash when he learned american schools are way less respectful to teachers, and don’t sit quiet and raise their hand, and aren’t organized and disciplined, and generally he just got thrown into a hot mess.

I had a german language teacher, an american, who dealt with the exact same kind of unruly classrooms full of 40 kids who don’t care. She yelled constantly, often got angry and stressed at the chaos and lack of order and cooperation, and often called public safety and sent kids to the main office. She did all this Daily.

My chinese teacher took a way different approach, and mostly just tried to engage with his class on Why things were different. Why did we not want to be orderly, what DID we like to do, what activities WOULD we like to do to learn, would we please try to cooperate with him and participate in an activity if he let us help him pick the activities. Because my school was a hot mess full of 40 kid classrooms, he occasionally did have to still send kids to the main office - that’s just normal language classes in my high school. But he wasn’t doing it every day. He maybe did it 3 times the whole semester, and it was the same kid. And he ended up managing to talk to that kid and work things out so that they could get along so that they stopped having to argue. He was a really, really good natural teacher. He was teaching a brand new class in our school, with bare bones materials, with no prior teacher-job experience, with 40 kids who didn’t care, and its one of the harder things to teach in theory. If I ever teach I want to try to be like the kind of teacher he was.

He was super supportive. He never told us it was hard, he never acted like it was hard, but he also didn’t discourage us if it was not easy. He made cool little powerpoints, had us use our language practice to talk about culture differences (we had one talk where we were learning to discuss food we ate and he was shocked how little/plain american breakfasts and lunches Actually are compared to the idea of bacon/eggs/toast and burgers/fries. that discussion he also mentioned how BIG chicken was in chinese mcdonalds with a whole bunch of sandwiches you can’t even order in america). He got us to remember what China looks like by saying it looks like a Chicken. He got us to willingly get in order and greet our teacher at the beginning of class, and so he got most of the chaos to happen when we were told to do activities for X minutes, then he’d have the chaos stop when we’d show our progress - which was a good way to let the class act wild for some time without having to punish it, while also keeping us pretty on topic when it was time to settle down. The kid he always argued with mostly got in trouble because she never stopped talking in class, and this activity-time to talk and get a little off-topic helped her and other kids like her get some time to do off-topic stuff in class without getting in trouble. I think that helped a lot in keeping the class working better than my German class ever did lol. My German teacher constantly yelled when kids were off-topic, even during activity time, and I think the lack of time for kids to goof off actually made them just goof off more and hate the teacher more. In retrospect.

Anyway ah. Mr Wang made this huge impression on me. Cause he was like in his 20s and younger than my sister, and he felt kind of like my sister. He was super encouraging when kids wanted to learn (which also made them try harder in class). He was encouraging with my art even though it wasn’t art class lol. He appreciated and started a lot of talks about culture which were cool, and made class lectures feel more like fun discussions then droning lessons. He told us that where he grew up, you only had one chance a to take the exam to get you into the college you wanted, or else you had to do a lot of jumping through hoops to do it again. So he told us all it was good we got to do AP tests more than once if we needed to, it was more flexible for us. He told us we should pursue the things we wanted to, because we have the freedom to. He was so supportive man....

The dude also had played kingdom hearts and final fantasy vii growing up just like me, even though I guess video games were ‘illegal’ for a while in china. He told me i should try an art job in china, an art exchange. and i still think about that idea sometime. he thought i had a lot of potential. and you know how much it means to you, when you’re a lost teenager, and people show they believe in you and support you. when i was a teenager, i was valedictorian and a 4.0 student and in all the ap/ib classes and honors classes, and i did everything my parents expected of me - i joined sports just because they told me i had to. they love me, but they had certain expectations of me. it was always ‘do this because you’re smart enough, BETTER be smart enough’ and ‘do this because its the choice we think is best.’ Mr. Wang was one of the first adults in my life that really told me ‘you can and should do what you LIKE, because you like it, and because you MIGHT be able to, and just maybe being able to is a good enough reason to try.’ He told me, regardless of the fact that i COULD be an engineer or some ‘impressive career’ because of my hard study work, that i could be an artist. That it was a valid choice. That it can be a good choice. that it CAN be a better choice for me Than the choices my parents expected. You have no idea how life changing that belief in me was. That care for what I actually like, instead of being expected to do something just because i’m told.

A big reason i applied to art colleges at all is because of him. I only got a 50% scholarship to the art schools, because its the biggest they offered - so i picked engineering instead. (WOOH A LIFELONG MISTAKE ENGINEERING SURE WAS FUN AGH). In the end, i picked what i was expected to pick because its all i’d ever done in my life. But Mr Wang was the first person who made me start thinking... maybe i should be living my life FOR ME and MY HAPPINESS and MY HOPES and MY WANTS. and its actually making me tear up, making me cry Right Now to even think about it.

after him... it took years of depression then suicidal months and suicide hotlines, and emergency counseling visits, and a few suicide attempts, and some great supportive friends, and quitting college - to realize those lessons again fully. to realize i did NOT want to be alive if i hated every choice i made based on other peoples expectations of me. realizing if i wanted to survive and keep myself alive, i NEEDED to start quitting things i hated as MUCH as i could, and pursue things i liked (or at least was OKAY with) as much as possible.

When I graduated college he was one of the people who wrote me a graduation card. I’m crying right now. My heart is so heavy. He wrote me a graduation card thanking me for being in his class, and wishing me good things, and saying he was proud of me. He wrote that he thought i could accomplish my dreams, and that i should pursue the things i want in life. I am crying so much right now. He had such good wishes for me. I regret, I regret so much, that I did not take his advice for years. If I had listened to his kind words sooner in my life, maybe I could have avoided some of my bigger mistakes.

Back when that class ended he also gave me one of the mandarin textbooks. He said I was good at it and I should keep learning it. I kept it for years and years and even now after 8 years that book is still on my bookshelf in my room. After 7 years I started learning again and a big motivation for me is remembering what he said all those years ago, and remembering how much he believed in me and wanted good things for me and my happiness.

He was so fucking nice. I have nothing but thankful memories for having gotten to have him in my life as a teacher. He was a friend too in a way, and he was a really good one. At that time in my life I had no one wanting good things for me, no one wanting me to pursue things that actually made me happy or would make me happy. All the authority figures in my life made me feel trapped. And my friends were all in the same boat as me, and like my parents they thought since i was smart i should make the ‘smart’ choices and keep doing things i hated since they were ‘the best choices.’ I’m still crying, god.

If I ever got the chance to meet Mr Wang again I’d tell him how much he helped me growing up. I’d thank him so much. I’d hope I make him at least a little proud of me, for finally following his advice a little bit now that I’ve grown up more. I remember, once, I went to a local dollar store - and a girl i didn’t know came up to me. She said thank you, and hugged me, and she was so sweet. I didn’t know her or remember her - but she remembered my name, she remembered me. I guess in elementary school, she had been in a younger grade than me, and I’d helped her a lot. She ran into me as an adult and still remembered that. You can change lives and mean the world to someone without ever knowing it. To that girl I made her happy enough for her to remember me and still be happy she knew me. For me, Mr Wang was one of those people I’m still so happy I knew and still remember, even if he might not ever remember me.

Aha. I’m still crying. It’s a good kind of crying.

If I never meet him again, he still changed my life. I will be grateful for that forever. I will be so grateful for that.

---

Anyway. Going back full circle. I guess, I’d be at least a little fond of zyl no matter what anyway. Because when I first saw him in Guardian, he was a teacher who looked just a little like Mr Wang (I don’t remember if Mr Wang was attractive lol since you don’t think about teachers that way, I just remember he was a regular guy, and his eyes were kind). He was a teacher, and the show was in all mandarin and the only words I knew were the ones Mr Wang taught us years upon years ago. And it made me remember Mr Wang telling me I should keep studying when the class ended, it made me remember how much he believed in me and encouraged me to pursue things I loved. Then, here was this show, that I also was starting to love, that was reminding me of other things I loved and reminding me I should pursue things I love. And so of course, all these positive emotions and memories got tangled up in my impressions.

In a way, studying chinese is immensely rewarding for me personally. Beyond the already huge always increasing rewards of getting to understand more stories and cool things, and people. It’s also rewarding because i WANT to study it, and the simple act of me CHOOSING to study it is the act of me picking what i want instead of what is ‘best’ or ‘easy’ or ‘expected’. I’m not doing it for some job or someone’s expectation, I’m doing it because i like it and enjoy it and enjoy these stories and people i get to get to know. Every time i do it and learn a little more i get to happily think, that Mr Wang was right, and maybe i can learn this and improve. Every time i study, i get to think about how much he told me i could be whatever i wanted to be in life. I want so badly, more than anything, to be the person he thought i could be.

I am crying hard again.

I want to be the person he believed i could become. I want to be the person who pursues their dreams, who pursues their happiness. who does things because its what they want, what they like, what brings them job. i want to be the person who Tries to do it, who Does do it, who Succeeds at doing it. Who keeps doing it.

I don’t want to live up to others expectations, even if i’m capable of it, because its not my expectations and not my dreams. I don’t want to live trapped again. I don’t want to be trapped.

Whenever i study chinese, i think of all these hopes and beliefs and lessons. They’re so tangled up that i can’t separate the feelings about them.

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