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Try to Remember
I was caught off guard when Jason of Ottawa Beida Alumni Association called
and asked me to be on the CFP (Call for Paper) Essay Review Committee for
Beida's 110th anniversary due to my English background. Humbled and
flattered by the request, I hesitantly agreed.
The call brought back memories, and humility quickly gave way to smugness as
I looked back across a span of 20 years. I have had a successful career makeover. I have been indulging myself in the lucrative but worldly land of IT. I have settled down and lived a good life with my family. I have been busy with work and domestic duties and coping with everyday banalities. I have had little time for recollection, until now.
It all goes back to the fall of 1981, when I started my first year with Beida. I was to stay there for the next 6 years. I was initially not very impressed. At registration, I was handed an uninviting wooden stool along with a rusty key to my assigned dormitory room, which was a small cramped space of undetermined size on the 2nd floor of Building 32. This building was one of the many identical matchbox-shaped grey-bricked eyesores, many of them deteriorating with severely weathered facade and dangerously rickety doors, giving the campus a touch of unpleasant uniformity. The room, with 3 bunker beds, a dull green metal shelf and two moderately-sized writing desks - the sort of thing you would find in a permanently under-funded school library, was shared by me and my five roommates. The space was exploited to the point of no return, taken up by furniture, books, and basic accessories only to allow a small doorway area to move around. The hallway was a long and wide corridor lined with rooms on both sides and leading to a very unwelcoming washroom that smelled urine and some other unidentifiable odors. The corridor was dark and damp with dimly-lit lighting fixtures hanging from the ceiling. This area was quiet throughout the day but came alive with extracurricular activities after the sunset.
Most of the inhabitants on this floor were foreign language majors, known for their daring, avant-garde and thought-provoking behavior. Intriguing stuff happened on this floor. There were casual discussions, heated debates, friendly and malicious name-calling, and various forms of ad-hoc entertainment. There were wild summer nights with nude adolescents roaming up and down the hallway like zombies after lights were off, as well as bedtime chitchat bordering on obscenity on girls and Building 35, a much-needed happy note at the end of an otherwise unbearably boring day. To the disappointment of many in Build 32, No. 35, the female-only dorm building, was guarded by a very menacing old woman at night.
There was a large room diagonally across mine where private parties were thrown from timeto time. One of them, a so-called blackout party, was receiving unwanted attention. It was described, in graphic details, that the party featured overly intimate and seductive dance moves with all lights turned off, a definite no-no in the draconian days of early 80s but could well be contemptuously dismissed as old-fashioned and conservative in these days of unrestricted exploration of both sexes. Isn’t it just amazing to see how far we have traveled on the road to enlightenment as a society? As I recall, the party was well publicized and eventually earned the righteous ire of departmental functionaries. There were no more parties like it in the next few years.
Class 81 was an elite group of varying talents: provincial top scorers of the national entrance exam, would-be scholars, aspiring poets, lawyer wannabes, future entrepreneurs, you name it. I consider myself mediocre at best in the company of these highly intelligent overachievers. There wasn't much for me to brag about except the fact that I was an avid and promiscuous reader. In hind sight, this turned out the greatest gift I received from the English Program. I read indiscriminately during my 6 years on the campus, for both entertainment and course requirements. There were books I read over and over - Sophie's Choice, God Father, Eugene O'Neill's plays, Arthur Hailey's industry tales, and a lot more; There were some that pained me so much that I just turned away – Moby Dick, Finnegan's Wake, and harrowing narratives of Charles Dickens, to name a few.
I was learning from some of the greatest literary minds in China. I enjoyed Professor Tao Jie's well-prepared lecture on American literature. I eagerly looked forward to Friday each week when the drama class huddled in Professor Chen Ruilan's cosy living room to share her eloquently-expressed insight on American and European drama. I remain a big fan of Eugene O'Neill and Tennessee Williams thanks to her attentive guidance. I felt privileged sitting in Professor Li Funing's class on Middle English and once painstakingly pored over Beowulf and the Canterbury Tales. I was awed immensely by Dr Zhao Luorui's passion when she recited Walter Whitman's Leaves of Grass, although my interest in poetry was next to minimal.
It has been over 20 years since and my memories are nothing more than fuzzy, incoherent montage of this not so distant past. But deep in my heart, there is alwasys a special place for Beida. I am and will be forever grateful for the opportunities and learning it accorded me. I'd like to revisit the campus some time, to feel the serenity of the Unnamed Lake, to cross the hustling intersection known as the Triangle, and to relive the pleasure I had in that little English library tucked neatly into one corner of the lovely antiquated architecture called Democracy.
We as alumni come and go. Beida stays, amid all the pandemonium of an ever changing world, till eternity.
Chi Chen
April, 2008, on the 110 anniversary of Beijing University (BEIDA))
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