Explore "Snow Falling in Spring" by Ming Li on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
MOST PEOPLE CANNOT REMEMBER WHEN THEIR CHILDHOOD ENDED. I, ON THE OTHER HAND, HAVE A CRYSTAL-CLEAR MEMORY OF THAT MOment. It happened one night, in the summer of 1966, when my elementary school headmaster hanged himself. I was twelve years old.
Three years earlier, I had been among some one hundred children selected to attend the Foreign Language School. Our country needed to step up its language training, Baba explained to me excitedly, now that China had resumed diplomatic ties with several European powers. That year, in Beijing alone, two boarding schools, including mine, were set up to teach students as young as nine to speak several languages. The expectation was that, after ten years of training, many of the students would continue their studies in leading universities, with the possibility of diplomatic careers waiting for them when they graduated.