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San shi neng he dong,San shi neng he xi
This is a Chinese idiom which literally translates to:
30 years on the east side of the river,
30 years on the west side of the river.
I'm teaching my class English, by teaching them American idioms. At the beginning of each class I write a couple of English idioms on the board and ask the teachers to translate it.
I like this exercise, in fact I learn as much as them from it. It requires them to come up with a corresponding Chinese idiom, and write it on the board. If they can explain the idiom, and it matches the American idiom then I know they've understood the exercise.
Since my students are teachers themselves, I can't help but wonder if I'm teaching them, or if they're teaching me.
Initially I had thought the above idiom meant the following:
To achieve balance in your life,
One should live in both the East and the West.
Thus was call to go out and experience as much as possible. And that it's not good to become stagnant in your ways. I've lived on the West Coast of the United states, and now I live on the East coast.
On the last day of class, I told my students my family history. How my great grandfather, a hundred years ago, came to the United States, the son of the second wife of a merchant from Guandong. How my grandfather, born in the United States graduated from Cal Berkeley, brought my grandmother here from China through an arranged marriage, as a paper daughter. How my father, who immediately after graduating from Cal, left for Seattle so far from his home to make jet airplanes in the 1960's. And about me, how I graduated from Cal and left for Boston to make computers in the 1990's.
So the teachers asked me "Did they ever return home?"
I told them that my father, after many years, returned to California.
Many generations later, after living as a rich man for generations in the United States, the only remaining superpower. I find myself out here in the far West of China, about to go for a job interview in Shanghai contemplating whether I have the courage to move.
The teachers clarified that there is an even deeper meaning in the Chinese idiom. It's more than simply east and west, and creating balance in your life. The river is more like a set of railroad tracks, with a "right side of the tracks" and a "wrong side of the tracks"
Thus it also implies a greater truth. The rich will become poor, and the poor shall become rich. The oppressed will rise up against the powerful. The complex will be made simple, and the simple will somehow become complex. Great empires will fall. The prize does not go to the swiftest. Goodness will triumph over evil.
Most
of the teachers who came to my class had been teaching for many years.
Paid a pittance, they work long hours teaching poor farm
kids, in poorly heated, dusty, overcrowded classrooms.
San shi neng he dong,
San shi neng he xi
To them this is a psalm promising them justice and salvation.
Thus, more properly it translates as:
And the first shall be last,
And the last shall be first.
I turn 30 years old this month.
To the shy young woman who had just graduated from teacher's college
and had only been teaching for a month. Who said so very little all
week, straining to understand me. In the end, to you, the little
lamb among us, I gave the rose. You are the least and the greatest
amongst us.