法奶日報www.lulijen.com【已刊文章，請點閱版首左側目錄】
李開復博士英文自傳全書（連載【10】）
(圖片請看原書)
The First
Breakthrough of My Life
I made the first major decision
of my life when I was five. I told my mother that I was tired of all the songs
and games in kindergarten. I asked her to let me go to first grade.
My mother was surprised,
because she had never heard of other children doing that. She said, “In a year
you’ll be in first grade. Why wouldn’t you wait a year?”
I continued to persuade her,
“Mom, how about letting me take an entrance exam to a private school? If I
pass, you’ll let me go to first grade. If I don’t, I’ll go back to
kindergarten.”
My mother thought about it for
a while, and then she agreed.
In Taiwan, public schools are
open to all from first to 9th grade, but private schools hold entrance exams.
The situation is not exactly the same as but similar to the common practice of
schools in the United States.
I was the youngest among the
children taking the entrance exam to Ji-Ren Elementary School that year. When
the exam results were posted at the school entrance, my mother took me there.
She immediately saw my name as the first on the acceptance list. In Taiwan, the
acceptance list always starts with the person obtaining the highest total
score.
My mother screamed, “Ah! You
passed! And you are number one!”
I will never forget how excited
she was. That was the first time I saw how a child’s small success could make a
mother proud big time.
In the meantime, I learned to
be bold about breaking through limitations. Now in retrospect, I deeply thank
my mother for allowing me the first breakthrough of my life, especially knowing
Chinese parents conventionally tend to be on the cautious side. My parents made
an unconventional choice of letting me take charge of my future at such an
early age. I was incredibly fortunate!
While I started school a year
earlier than most children, I soon found out even the first-grade curriculum
was too easy for me. The first-grade math only covered addition and
subtraction, but I already knew the multiplication table by heart under my
mother’s tutoring. I was also able to
recite many classical Chinese poems my classmates didn’t know.
Being ahead of the class made
me often get bored in class, so I talked to my classmates or passed messages to
them. Sometimes I made faces for fun.
One day, my restless behavior
offended the teacher. After giving me a few warnings, she sealed my mouth with
scotch tape.
My mother happened to be early
that day for picking me up. I was terrified when she saw my sealed mouth. But she
didn’t scold me.
My mother was a lot more
liberal than most Chinese parents of her generation. While they taught their
children to be obedient, she never stopped me from challenging authority.
Bolder than my classmates, I
would correct the teacher’s pronunciation in English class based on the
standard American English I had heard from my fifth sister’s tutor. That made
my classmates laugh in class and look at me differently after class.
I did like to stand out. Once I
bragged to my classmates that I had learned special kung-fu and could digest
paper. To prove it, I tore off a piece of paper from my notebook and ate it in
front of them.
“Wow!” Their eyes all opened
wide.
“What else can you eat?” One of
them asked.
“I can eat wood,” I said. “I’ll
show you how I can bite my desk.”
I did bite into my desk every
day during lunch time until I made a large dent on it.
To astonish my classmates, I
even claimed I could swallow lead from a pencil, and demonstrated it. That
brought me to an emergency room. The doctor gave me a serious warning and
prescribed medicine.
I stopped telling people I
could eat inedible things. But I still wanted to be different from everybody
else. I dreamed of being a hero who would save lives and punish the evil.
I looked around for the evil to
conquer, and something did appear on my radar. I noticed that a teacher always
fined students who talked in class and claimed the fines would go into the
budget for class activities, but the class budget didn’t seem to have increased
as much as all the fines he had collected. I double checked with the student
officer in charge of the class budget, and found out there was indeed a difference.
Apparently the teacher had pocketed the money.
For the sake of justice, I
wrote a letter to the principal with my left hand despite being right-handed in
order for no one to recognize my handwriting. The principal questioned the
teacher the next day. After that, the teacher shouted at the entire class,
“Don’t think I don’t know who did it. Your behavior to turn against your
teacher is no different from the Communists in the Cultural Revolution!”
I tried to hide my fear and
appear calm. I told myself my work was meaningful, knowing no more money for
the class budget would go into the teacher’s personal pocket. I felt I was
becoming a hero like those in the kung-fu fantasy novels I had read.
I loved kung-fu fantasy novels
so much that I decided to write one in fifth grade. I collaborated with
Wei-Chuan, the nephew one year my senior. It turned out to be a graphic novel,
titled The Mystery of the Animal Fighters, containing tens of thousands of
words and numerous drawings. We marked page numbers to make it look like a real
book. I even put a note about the copyright on the back cover, which read,
“Published on Aug. 3, 1972/ Anyone who copies this book is punishable by
death!”
歡迎各界惠賜各類創作稿件，email：lulijen46@gmail.com
並歡迎轉載，但務請註明出處----編者
【法奶日報www.lulijen.com 2012.8.14.出刊，第9712號】
【法奶日報www.lulijen.com2015.4.15.再刊，第9-1371號】