(More interesting memories from my Chinese story-telling student)
An article I’ve just read claims that an average seventy-year-old man has spent more than a third of his life asleep – that’s 27 years. I have no difficulty believing that for I sleep 8 hours every night and never get enough. As soon as my head touches the pillow, I’m off in dreamland. I can sleep any time, anywhere. It would be fair to call me a somnolent person.
That caused a problem when I was teaching in China, and in order to tell you about it, I’ll have to set the scene. There were 45 minutes allotted to each class, and the teacher spoke the whole time as in a university. Students were not encouraged to ask questions. In effect, the teacher put on a show something like ping2 tan2 – a kind of drama – in which one or two people tell a story while playing a stringed musical instrument or with a fan as stage properties.
That kind of presentation was good for literature or history class, but it just didn’t fit physics, the subject I was teaching, so I demonstrated various experiments that could be done. I also had the rather unusual habit of pausing after the experiment was completed to provide time for the students to think about the phenomena involved, as that would help them understand the theory.,
After lunch, one day back in 1964, the principal told me that a group of teachers from another city would be attending my class. That was unusual, as he usually gave the teacher a day’s notice, but I wasn’t nervous. It didn’t matter to me if they would be there.
The day was a little sultry and, with 60 people in attendance, the room had become very warm as I neared the end of the usual 45 minutes. While still on the platform at the front of the room, I was aware of being very tired, but I finished a demonstration, and then sat, bowed my head, and stopped talking. The students weren’t surprised, as it was my custom to give them time to think, but at the moment my head bowed all thoughts disappeared from my mind for I had fallen asleep. A while later, I lifted my head, felt quite fresh, and continued the class. I was the only one who knew I had slept. I suppose it had lasted only one or two minutes, but I was fortunate it wasn’t longer. No one was aware of it except me.
That are some who won’t believe that story, but I know it’s the truth.
This next one is even harder to believe. It occurred during the Cultural Revolution, a time when we had to parade every time we were ordered to do so by Chairman Mao. On one of those evenings, all of the teachers were waiting in the office for the start of the parade and I was in the classroom sleeping on top of my desk.
Suddenly I was awakened by a loud voice over the microphone saying “Parade State!” It seemed like the middle of the night to me, but I joined the other teachers, and we were arranged with four people in each rank.
I kept step with everyone as we proceeded down the street, but I was more asleep than awake. It was all I could do to keep moving my feet, and it was fortunate that my friends held me up so I wouldn’t fall. As I look back at it now, I think it’s a miracle that I wasn’t called “The Somnolent One” way back then.
When we neared the center of the city, it became very noisy with people cheering all around us, and then suddenly it was all over, as something unexpected had happened somewhere ahead of us. We were told we could go home, and upon hearing those welcome words, I found myself fully awake and excitedly returned to my home.