ECHOES FROM WUHAN

A writer who spent two years teaching English in Wuhan, China, offers her reflections in this debut memoir.

In 1979, Dykstra was one of the first 100 Americans recruited by the Chinese government to teach English at a variety of colleges around the country. They were considered “foreign expert teachers” and, along with their translators and high-ranking Communist Party VIPs, were accorded a wide range of privileges not available to many Chinese citizens; for example, they did not need to use ration tickets for food or other items. The author was assigned to Wuhan’s Teachers’ College, where she taught young teachers who’d been “worker-peasant-soldier students” during the Cultural Revolution and younger students who were among the first to enter college after that era. Xiao Wang, her translator, was one of the young teachers in training who’d never met a Westerner before. Unlike other teachers, Dykstra did not speak fluent Mandarin and had never studied Chinese history; Xiao Wang would be her guide and facilitator for the next two years. The revolution may have been over, but the physical and emotional scars of China’s recent violent past permeated the country’s psyche. As Dykstra puts it, “I stayed for two years and made some friends and was often baffled.” Along the way, she worked hard to understand the rigid, often unstated rules that governed every aspect of life in Wuhan. Over the course of the work, Dykstra weaves in historical summaries for context, but the heart of her narrative rests in the complicated, personal stories of the students and teachers with whom Dykstra became close. Xiao Wang is revealed as an ambitious powerhouse, and Huang Hua, one of Dykstra’s students, is shown to be a soulful young man with a bright future that’s later shattered. She makes effective use of classroom discussions and free-time conversations to illustrate a vast cultural and philosophical divide. Overall, Dykstra’s memoir will be a valuable resource for readers wishing for a better understanding of the China of four decades past. (A collection of personal photographs is included.)

An engaging and illuminative remembrance.