My mom is called Su Lin.
She also has a younger brother and a younger sister,
whose names are “Nong” and “Jing,”
all these names are strong and resonant,
probably all chosen by my grandpa.
I often chat with my mom about her childhood.
In the scattered fragments of memory,
she’s told me from pre-Republican times to my childhood.
I learned that my grandpa’s grandfather did business in Hunan long ago,
and also heard how my mom, born in 1968, lived her ordinary life with great relish.
Hunan’s weather isn’t very different from Shanghai’s.
Last year Shanghai got a stretch of snow,
my mom lamented on a voice call:
when she was my age (around 30),
she experienced taking her mother and son south by train on a snowy day,
meeting my dad who had gone ahead with the move in Guangdong,
ultimately the two of them settled in Guangdong,
and taught school there for thirty years.
“Time really does pass fast!”
Teacher Su Lin lamented.
Then she added a line for me:
“Feels like you grew up in a flash.”
By now my childhood memories have gradually faded,
but the stories parents told me when I was little are hard to forget.
One scene is engraved on my heart:
after finishing homework in elementary school, my mom would hold “The Legend of Yue Fei” and read me a passage.
This kind of “interactive storytelling” where I could listen and ask became something I eagerly looked forward to.
After that, even though I never reread that book,
the figures of Yue Fei’s mother, Niu Gao, Wuzhu, Yue Yun all etched into my mind along with mom’s words.
A while ago I recalled this old story,
and asked my mom to verify: “Why do I remember you reading me one book?”
Teacher Su Lin helplessly told me the truth:
at the time because I didn’t know many characters,
and she disdained the dumbed-down phonetic children’s readers,
she tried reading me a passage,
and didn’t expect a year became most of a year.
Later, seeing I could half-understand and read on my own,
she let me go read by myself.
Teacher Su Lin takes full responsibility for her son’s education,
which is something she’s quite proud of, with strong sense of accomplishment.
After starting work, I also experienced a similar feeling:
as a programmer, I take full responsibility for the home’s computers and network,
which also makes me quite proud, with strong sense of accomplishment.
Teacher Su Lin teaches middle school history.
When the teaching workload at school was heavy,
she also moonlighted as a Chinese, English, or geography teacher.
Later under the school’s arrangement,
she takes on the history group leader and graduating class teacher roles every year.
I only then realized,
not all teachers teach the same class for three years.
Rare good teachers, it turns out, teach a different class each year.
Besides excellent professional ability, Teacher Su Lin is also very popular with students.
Not only does she get voted Most Popular Teacher every year,
when Teacher Su Lin goes shopping at the supermarket she gets enthusiastically recognized by students who graduated more than a decade ago.
This year in the graduating class,
students heard rumors that she was retiring,
and were very shocked, going to verify with Teacher Su Lin.
But she teased the students: “I haven’t retired this year, remember to come back to school to see your teacher after graduation!”
Teacher Su Lin is also one of the earliest netizens.
Her name on forums is “Qing Xia,”
with many online friends she’s known for over ten years.
At first I curiously asked her: “What is this forum for?”
“It’s for online friends to exchange seeds.”
I was shocked: “Exchange seeds?!?”
Yes, Qing Xia is a member of a local gardening forum.
She made a vegetable-growing space at home.
This patch of ground grows cucumbers, loofahs, pumpkins,
that patch of ground grows mangoes, dragon fruits, cherry tomatoes,
and in the dozens of flowerpots at the corner,
there are jasmine, baby’s breath, croton, nasturtium and other colorful flowers…
The gardening forum occasionally holds offline flower-friend meetups.
Qing Xia, carrying flower seeds, jumped from online to offline.
Meeting spots are usually local parks,
flower friends also bring fruits and local specialties,
and there are flower friends driving in from other places to participate in this grand event.
Qing Xia coming back from the flower friend meeting not only brings fresh seeds,
but also tells her son about newly met friends and new things.
Later every time I see “Chinese people have built-in vegetable-growing genes,”
I always have some doubts and expectations.
Both feeling this saying doesn’t seem made up,
and not knowing when that part of my gene will awaken.
After my grandpa retired he also became addicted to fishing and growing vegetables.
When obsessed, every morning at 5am he had to go out to hoe the field.
Later his health wasn’t good and he stayed home enjoying tranquility.
My mom then picked some vegetables suitable for balcony growing for grandpa,
letting him cultivate a big world in a small garden.
People around all know Teacher Su Lin is a plant master.
When going hiking before,
friends would often ask her: “Teacher Su, what flower is this? What tree is this? What plant is this?”
I also often ask her this.
She answered the same questions many times,
seeing that I really don’t get it and have no memory,
she sincerely taught me: “You can download a Baidu app, the homepage has photo-recognition function, very useful.”
Now when I see flowers and grass on the roadside,
my curiosity gets a little restless.
As you can read between the lines,
Teacher Su Lin has blooming curiosity and desire to learn.
For example, she always agonizes over correct Chinese pronunciation,
when encountering uncommon characters she’ll definitely check the correct reading on the spot,
and will also correct mine and my dad’s wrong pronunciations,
even though we no longer have to take Chinese language tests.
This probably greatly influenced me too,
along with my prickliness when I hear coupon “juan” or threshold “fa” mispronounced.
My mom turned 55 this year and is retiring.
Whether counted by lunar birthday on the 4th of the 7th month,
or by ID-card birthday of August 22,
this is the last summer break she’ll have.
She also finally made up her mind
to drag my dad to Tibet for a graduation trip.
In her whole life I’ve only seen a few times Ms. Su Lin had places she really wanted to go.
In 2008, she nearly signed up for a teaching support team to Sichuan, leaving home.
But with her child around, hard to travel far.
In the dozen years since, she’s been looking forward to going to Tibet.
This time she finally got to travel smoothly without serious altitude sickness.
I’m happy for her.
Since I was born, mom has been the figure of “mom.”
But I always feel, as Teacher Su Lin, mom also has a very unrestrained side.
The person who understands my mom best is my dad,
and his evaluation of her is:
your mom is a person with inner beauty.
This line is shockingly consistent with Qu Yuan’s self-evaluation:
“I have inherent inner beauty, and add to it cultivated talent.”
In the past searching “Su Lin” online,
the first result was the first giant panda sent to America, also named Su Lin.
I hope from now on, Teacher Su Lin can also live, alongside this article,
in some corner of the internet with an unrestrained image,
just as Qing Xia once was active on some flower friend forum.
Her retirement days
will surely, like her students and the people she’s influenced,
live the ordinary life with great relish.
This is my mom,
Teacher Su Lin.