Snow Falling in Spring by Ming Li — Read

ONE FROSTY MORNING IN JANUARY 1973, I HUDDLED WITH MY FRIENDS BY THE OLD SCHOOL GATE FOR THE LAST TIME. OUR TEACHERS, SOME of whom had become closer to us than our parents during the past tumultuous years, were too choked up to speak as they tried to shake the hands of all of their "children." Dusty trucks pulled into our gate, and one by one, we climbed onto them. From the back of our truck, I leaned over, trying to hold on to my friends one last time, feeling numb from both the cold weather and the sadness deep inside my heart. At eighteen, I was being sent off to face a new life-one that I had not chosen.

At our language school, classes had been suspended and resumed a few times since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. Then, in 1971, the school was transformed into a vocational high school for language teachers-a profession all of us were now ordered to enter. By then, most students and teachers had returned to campus, and classes resumed. After years of chaos, most of us were ready, even eager, to get back to some form of normality. I was grateful that this career transformation had, at least, spared us from being dispatched to the remote countryside of Inner Mongolia, as my cousin Lee had been. I had also grown to love the joy and fulfillment reading brought into my life. Baba's reading list and my secret reading club had rekindled my desire to learn. For the first time since the Cultural Revolution had begun, I felt I had regained some balance and direction in my life.