User:)biyibiyibiyi(/grad project/wangzhen

Departure

Wang Zhen was a figure that orients this departure: she was the daughter of my parents' colleague, we are the same age and the same school year. The narrative/retrospection is situated in the compound we lived in for two years, from 8 to 10 years old. At age 9, English courses become mandatory in school. I bought Wang Zhen's first repeater with her, in the local shopping mall.

Highlights of our talk

The conversation revealed how Wang Zhen's forgetful nature. She did not remember what the repeater was, mistaking it as a radio device. As the memories become more familiar to her, they became more vivid. We talked about the circulation of New Concept English, a English as second language text book widely popular in China since its publication in the 60s.

The conversation also revealed the correlation between foreign language learning and class. Because our parents were teachers, we were instructed to learn during our spare time, while many other households did not emphasize foreign language as a way of advancement, academically and socially and culturally.

Wang as a orienting figure

I want to use Wang Zhen's as an orienting figure for the archive. The repeater was a collective experience of a generation, and I want to depart from a shared experience that's intimate to me, and unravel the rich contexts that illustrate the repeater's context. From the compound we lived in, the schools we went to, how we were told to buy the device per teacher's instruction... These details weave together a narrative that probe to the common experiences the repeater triggered in people's daily lives.

Annet's comments

My thoughts from above, on referring to Wang as a orientational figure was a thought from a tutorial with Annet. Upon asking me to explain what the jargon "anarchive" means to me, I could not give an answer. I thought upon it for another moment and thought of "intimacy". Now several weeks after the tutorial the this thought still holds.

Documentation of the talk

These transcriptions are interesting but I don't know how to work with them in the production. Will think about it later on. For example Artemis' voice production recycled comments of trolls - I am thinking if some of the words we said can be reproduced in an interesting way? At the moment they are very dry!

summary

Location: Paris, France Generation: Post 90s Occupation: Master Student in French for Foreign Language Education Time and Date: March 4th, 9:30PM to 11:30PM, before we went to bed Channel: WeChat Relationship: Friend from childhood

As I asked her I wanted to do an interview with her on the repeater, Wang Zhen's answer revealed her most benign personality trait. “Oh! I might not even be able to remember what that is...But I'll try to answer as much as I can! Or help you ask others?” Wang Zhen is ever benignly forgetful. I remember most of the details of the interwoven memories of our childhoods. As our parents were colleagues in a local high school, both of our families lived in the staff housing temporarily while saving up down payments. Her family lived on the sixth floor, my family lived on the fourth floor. On the stairway leading up to the sixth floor, one of the fire extinguisher storage compartments was inscribed with a poem written in chalk on its wooden closure. It's a poem that appeared in 7th grade Chinese text book. It must be written by one of the staff's children, likely to have gone to 7th grade. This is an example to illustrate how stubborn I've been to relinquish the minuscule details from the past, and Wang Zhen has been generous in letting them pass.

I reminded what the repeater was by showing her my cut-out images of various kinds of repeaters I gathered. “Oh, it's this thing! Did we use it to learn English?” Wang Zhen was the first person I interviewed because of several reasons. She's not only generous about her memories, but this tendency applies broadly to her attitude towards other aspects of life in general. I don't have a very rigid agenda of interview, so I had to approach a person who can be generous about my eccentric questions and my abundant deviations from the central topic. However, the deviations paint a background in order to pull out the valuable threads of every day memory of the repeater.

After I mentioned that we bought her first repeater together led by her father Wang Zhen warmed up with her memories. On the Saturday afternoon her father decided to buy the repeater, since the primary school English teacher ordered every parents to do the same. I wondered why his father took me together on the trip, was it because I already had a repeater and could give some advice? I don't think I made myself valuable advisor during that trip at all. The repeater I had was purchased by my parents the year before, and the repeater market had progressed. For around the same price Wang Zhen could buy a repeater with more accessories that came in the package (newer headphones, tapes, or any kinds of gift materials the merchandiser would include for primary school children). Although I was secretly proud that my repeater had a longer recording period than hers (400 seconds).

Wang Zhen used the repeater to learn New Concept English. The New Concept English was a series of English textbooks published in 1967 for English as second or foreign language learning purposes. It was her aunt who suggested to her to learn the NCE. Her aunt also worked in the same high school and was in the same teaching unit with my parents. Please be mindful that the NCE is additional learning material proactively added to our schedule by parents– especially implemented during school holidays to keep us busy. The prior familiarity of NCE by some parents revealed an extent of social stratification through the lens of English education. Wang Zhen's aunt, my parents, they all work in education and know how to keep us “ahead of the game”, so to speak. My parents were loyal advocates for “advanced learning”. It refers to the convention to study course content much more ahead of time. Since the text books of the upcoming grade were not for sale, borrowing from the older neighbors kids and cousins were common practice. The summer holidays allowed half of the time to play, and half of the time to do “advanced learning”. The paces were incredibly similar, both Wang Zhen and I were ordered to recite one lesson of NCE per day, from the second volume of the NCE. The first volume was all about the basics, the second was somewhere between building conversation skills and slightly more advanced reading and writing abilities. Both of us discontinued at the third volume. Had the content been in Chinese it would have been beyond my comprehension. The first lesson of the third volume was about a puma who escaped and lurking around in the countryside. I have no problem understanding the text today. But I definitely see the what made it difficult back then. I had no clue about what a puma really was, and it's likely that I was more brainwashed by the German sports brand PUMA, than knowing it's an animal native to South America. There were description on how close the puma was spotted, being several yards, and I had no conception of how long is one yard (for those who are also unfamiliar it's close to one meter). Finally I have never set foot in an English countryside, let alone to have some starting point to start to relate to it. Wang Zhen's father did the daily check ups on her, since he was more educated than her mother (her mother worked as a clerk in the school's offices). My mother did the daily check ups on me, since my father was always too busy even during the school holidays. I managed to forcefully memorize lessons in the third volume but eventually gave up.

transcription

You go ahead and ask but I probably won't be able to remember a lot of things...Or I can ask other people for you.

I don't remember what my repeater looked like.

(showing pictures to Wang Zhen of the repeater cut-outs)

Oh did we buy that for learning English as I remember?

I used it to listen to things like New Concept English stuff like that.

Oh...Is it? (giggling) I really can't remember anything...

Oh it looks like that, like you can put cassette tape in there, and listen to radio?

No you can't listen to radio with that.

Oh you can't? (giggling)

But the ones we had were not so cute. (pointing to the ones with cute cartoon figures on them)

It was recommended by the teachers for us to buy...And how much were the repeaters then? Did they cost more than 100 RMB?

No it cost around 400 RMB!

But 400 RMB during that time was a lot! Probably equal to around 1000 RMB now. Was it really so expensive?

Well it's used mostly for listening to The New Concept English...Of course we use it to do school work (dictation homework assigned by the teacher), but it was used much more to learn the NCE don't you think?

Well the teachers in school didn't really recommend the NCE to us. Like your parents they studied English, and my aunt also studied English, so they knew NCE existed.

It's usually during summer and winter holidays...During school days we didn't have the energy, but during holidays it's one lesson per day and they (parents) will “grab” you do recite the lessons.

I think around fifth grade I started to learn English... But also the entire grade in school was divided into two sections, class 1 and 2 started earlier, while 3 and 4 started later. I was in class 4 so I started later, but also I transferred (from another province).

Did you remember the “English Experimental Class”? Yes I did remember those, our school had those as well (we were assigned to enroll in different primary schools). Didn't you think at the time English was not so popularized at the time, but since our generation English started to become more and more popularized. But I don't think I learned the NCF until fifth or sixth grade, it was pretty late. I learned the second volume for sure, not sure about the fifth, but definitely not the fourth. The fourth was too difficult.

Did you remember the voice in the tape recordings? I had no idea if the person doing the voice recording is already dead... (As I said this I thought of a demo picture in the Suzuki Violin tutorial showing a girl's posture holding a violin. My then sixty year old teacher told me, “She was already there when I was little.”)

Roommate

New edition

So kids these days are still learning the NCE.

Well not like that many people have asked but quite a few...Dong Lei's daughter who was born in 2003 also asked for it...But I didn't have those text books anymore.

Did you remember Zhang Qianlong?

No.....Oh I remember it was the physic teacher! Actually I wrote about him in an essay recently. Right how was he? The physics classes I had with him were disastrous. In the beginning my examines were around 60... The next year we had Liang Lixiang as the teacher and I was doing fine. Well not that I was so great with physics but I wasn't struggling anymore.

Right it was that Zhang Qianlong...He used to live downstairs of our house and his son came to me to borrow textbooks. His son is a bit chubby.

Did you see him anymore?

No it was at the old house, since we moved away I didn't see him anymore. But I think their family still lives there.

Well what I am the most curious about is that, if the the New Concept English is so great, why didn't school teachers recommend NCE to us directly. We knew that it was great, but it was never recommended to us...

Well I have a conspiracy theory... Do you have a theory that's more on the brighter side of the spectrum?

No I doubt that... IELTS and TOEFL going abroad Obama speech. English and Chinese departments Staff's children enrolled more in humanities section.

During the summer holiday and Lunar New Year Holiday, one lesson everyday and report back to him.

But if your dad's English is not very good then you can just make it up(talk gibberish) to him?!

Well but he is still a Chinese teacher, you can still tell(from the rhythm of words, etc).