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Tongueless (excerpt)

By Lau Yee-Wa 劉綺華, translated by Jennifer Feeley, published by Serpent's Tail, June 2024

(Excerpt from pages p47-51)

Read in Chinese.

At first Ling thought Wai was competing to climb to the top, but after spending more time with her she didn’t find her to be overly ambitious, just. . . weird. Ling still remembered how, during exam week in November, she’d received eight stacks of test papers that she had to administer to students during a one-week period. That week, she worked overtime until eight o’clock every night, and Wai likewise stayed after school, working in the cubicle beside her.

The crescent moon outside the transom window rose higher and higher. The sound of Ling dashing off checkmarks on the test papers was too loud, surprisingly in tune with Wai’s click-clacking on the keyboard. Ling’s phone kept buzzing, the screen flashing her mum’s message urging her to go home. Her mum wasn’t easy to please – if she went home too late, her mum would give her the cold shoulder. Ling wanted to finish grading the test papers as soon as possible and head home, but the rollerball of her red pen suddenly sputtered, and, after getting stuck a few times, no ink would come out. Ling tried two other red pens, but they wouldn’t write either. She and Wai were the only two people in the office. She had to look around and borrow a pen from Wai.

Wai was writing a test paper, her cheek almost touching the computer screen. Ling cleared her throat and gently called her name, afraid she’d startle her again. This time, Wai wasn’t startled, but turned round slowly. ‘Sorry. I fell asleep. . . I worked till three in the morning yesterday.’ Rubbing her eyes, she handed Ling a red pen.

Ling had never seen Wai so worn out, the upside-down V of her eyebrows flattened from exhaustion, her slipped-down glasses overlapping with her eyes, making it impossible to see the whites of her eyes and her irises. For the past three months, Wai had kept her nose to the grindstone, and there were times she couldn’t keep up. Ling thanked her, then rushed to bury her head in her desk. She’d grade five more test papers, then head home.

Before long, Wai swivelled her chair toward Ling and stretched. ‘How. . . how many test papers have you graded?’

‘Most of them. Three to go.’

‘So fast. I still have more than ten left. What should I do? I’m dying, dying.’ Wai held her head in her hands, her voice like gossamer. ‘So then. . . how many essays have you graded?’

‘I’m done.’

‘I still have half left to grade – I’m dying. . . so. . . did you collect all the trav-traff-travel notices?’

‘No.’

‘I did.’ Wai sighed in relief.

Ling thought it was funny. She thought of students comparing their grades, but this wasn’t a test, it wasn’t a competition.

Wai continued talking. ‘Alas. . . the principal at my last school didn’t renew my contract because my work place-pace was too slow, and I didn’t pass the LPAT.’ The LPAT – the Language Proficiency Assessment for Teachers, used by the Education Bureau to assess Chinese language teachers’ ability to teach in Mandarin. ‘This year, I’m sleeping less and working faster, but. . . my biggest problem is my poor Mandarin. I failed all four papers of the LPAT. I must’ve been born without a talent for lane-lane-languages. . .’

Did Wai want to vent her grievances again? Ling didn’t raise her head to respond. She finished grading a page, then sighed and flipped to the next one.

‘What do you think is the best way to learn Mandarin well? I asked the mainlanders in my class to privately teach me, but they just laughed.’

‘Huh?’ Ling put down her pen.

‘Mandarin is their mother tongue. If I talk to them more, I can speak like a mainlander. But some students make fun of me. “Go back to school, don’t be a teacher. . .” That Tsui Siu-Hin, he laughs loudly in every class, dis-disrupting the classroom order. . .’

Was she kidding? The teachers taught the students – no teachers asked the students for guidance. If you didn’t respect yourself, how could your students respect you? How could you maintain order in the classroom like this?

‘I told them, if you learn Mandarin well, then you can learn Chinese well, because Mandarin is the same as the standard written Chinese lane-language, but that Tsui Siu-Hin re-feud-feud-futed me, saying that the students with the best grades in the Chinese class aren’t from the mainland, that learning Chinese well has nothing to do with learning Mandarin well. . . no matter what I say, he claims I’m partial to mainland students.’

Ling felt that this student was more sensible than Wai. Rumour had it there had been a student at Sing Din Secondary School whose parents were Hong Kongers and whose mother tongue was Cantonese, but, after he started primary school, his parents forced him to speak Mandarin at home and forbade him from watching Hong Kong TV programmes, only allowing mainland TV. However, most subjects in school were taught in Cantonese. As a result, there were some words he only knew how to pronounce in Cantonese, some only in Mandarin. Each time he submitted his homework, the Chinese he’d written was awkward – he couldn’t differentiate between the vocabulary and grammar in the spoken and written languages. His grades in Chinese were much worse than those of his Cantonese-speaking classmates. Moreover, there were many everyday things he didn’t know how to express in Cantonese – he referred to aubergine as ‘eggplant’ and courgette as ‘zucchini’. Everyone thought he was weird and made fun of him behind his back. As a result, after two years he couldn’t take it any more and switched schools.

However, Wai was so stubborn that, no matter how Ling explained it, she still wouldn’t get it. When Ling didn’t say anything, Wai lowered her head and poked at the edge of her blouse. ‘Actually. . . am I unfit to be a teacher?’

Only you know whether you’re suitable or not – no one can answer that for you. Ling raised her hand and glanced at her watch. ‘Wow, it’s already eight p.m.. . .’

‘Will I not be able to renew my contract this year?’

‘Uh. . . there are many factors that determine whether a contract is renewed. . . Go home early and get some rest. I’m off. You’ve got this!’ Ling quickly tidied up, setting aside the uncorrected exams, and hurried away, leaving Wai, who was on the verge of tears.

Wai was just too strange, and she oozed tension. However, after reflecting on what Wai had said, Ling felt that she was a simple person who spoke without thinking.

Nowadays, the majority of teachers were on a contract basis, and it was commonplace for contracts not to be renewed. No one would’ve known if she hadn’t said anything, but not only had Wai told Ling, she’d also disclosed the reason for her dismissal in great detail, as though she was worried that Ling didn’t understand how much of a failure she was. As for the LPAT, there was no need to deliberately emphasise that. The truth was, Ling was in the same boat as Wai – she hadn’t passed any of the four papers – but she would never ask her students to teach her Mandarin, let alone discuss her LPAT scores with others. Silence was golden, wasn’t it?