Okay, it’s Saturday and it’s good time for some chicken soup.
I went to swimming at the JCC indoor pool just now, with my younger daughter because she prefers the indoor pool over the outdoor one, also her tennis lesson got cancelled at the last minute. So I got to hang out with her for a bit: for real it’s just a bit, because she will be 11 in about 3 days, and I usually do my lap swimming. She mostly plays by herself in the recreational pool (the water is slightly warmer there). The temperature at the lap swimming pool is slightly lower, probably at 78 Fahrenheit or 25.6 Celsius, and my younger daughter doesn’t like either lap swimming or cold water. She calls it the cold pool.
When I was doing lap swimming, I noticed at the other end, a little girl who is in green swimming suit, she is probably 5 years old, and she was scared to get into the water. I swam to that end, and hear the young male swimming coach says “you have to go in either today or next time (assume next Saturday). The coach is probably a college student, I guess. The girl didn’t want to go. Eventually the coach gave up. After a while, I noticed the girl’s dad, with mom and her little sister nearby, helped the girl get into the water (the cold pool) the first time 🙂 It’s quite accomplishment. Now I remember the 1st time my older daughter (now 15) got into the cold cool the 1st time, many years ago (probably summer 2017 with the one and only coach Alyssa L).
Now if I can convince the soon to be 11 year old to swim again tomorrow. Btw, I am back to swimming daily after about 7 years break (was doing joggling or walking in last 7 years or so).
(07-13-2025) Was able to play Racquet ball with my younger daughter a bit at the J. A small win. I also swam at the J (both outdoor, and indoor pools). Went to the outdoor pool first, swam 200 yards, it started raining cat and dog, and everyone went inside.
(07-22-2025) Yesterday evening, I was napping and sleeping on my bed in the evening, at about 10 pm or so, I got up, and my older daughter noticed me getting up and asked “dad, can I have your tweezers (link goes to google). I realized she was a bit shy to wake me up. Similarly, probably 2 nights ago, my younger daughter saw I was napping, and because she usually says “good night” to me before her bedtime, she just climbs to my bed, and reach out her hand, and gently said “good night dad” 🙂 Back to my older daughter, it’s hard to get a hug from her nowadays. The other day, before the hug, she said: do you smell (meaning do you have bad body smell 🙂 I fully understand. They are 11 and 15 years old, respectively. We Chinese have a saying: 男女有别 nan nv you bie (link goes to google).
(07-23-2025) S6 suggested I took her to get boba tea at Sharesweet in the afternoon. And I did.
(07-26-2025) Something in my mind: I realized that if I sign up S8 for a math acceleration class and she will probably have better chance to pass the acceleration on 08/08. Now I will probably study a bit algebra 2 and try to poke her around (it’s not an easy job to say the least, because she doesn’t want to share).
(07-27-2025) S6 suggested I took her to the Korean grocery store next to the Tai’ke. And I did.
I worked in the USA for almost 25 years. This is actually the 2nd time a coworker or a colleague died while on the job. We (software engineers) all work from home at my current place, and I did see him once at a company function (probably Diwali?). And although we were not on the same team for the most part of my 4-year tenure here, we did have some interactions mostly around the app dev env setup, and so on. Recently due to re-org we are getting on the same team, and under the same manager. Because the new manager is basically a micro-manager, and we even briefly chatted about his management style. I did notice something a bit off because he seems quite weak, and slim on the video meetings (compared to last time I saw him in person, maybe 9 months ago). But I didn’t speculate much. The news came on 7/9/25. He died from cancer. This colleague is originally from India. And I am guessing he is probably a few years older than me.
Last time something like this happened, it was almost 20 years ago, when I was working for UGS/Siemens PLM software. It was an American colleague, and he worked for a special project for our company in Japan (more specifically Toyota’s main part supplier Denso) for a few years (maybe 5 years). And just got back. And he was diagnosed with liver cancer. He did smoke and I assume he drunk a bit when he was in Japan. He is a fun-loving American guy (probably my current age at the time he came back). And I believe he was not married or didn’t have kids. His mom was in 70s. Some of my female colleagues (a Japanese colleague come to mind, later she switched career form language localization to nurse) made some special comfort food when my colleague is gravely ill. So that was very nice of them (her). We used to be lunch buddies, and I recall riding on the gentleman’s GM Tahoe. I attended his visitation too. My former boss (also an American guy, probably in his early 50s), joked we can probably have a drinking party at the funeral home (because the mentioned colleague likes to drink or hangout with people). Note his joke was in good taste (per American standards).
Both colleagues died from cancer. I am going to the visitation for my colleague today, if nothing urgent happens. (Update 07-10-2025) I went. The visitation is a bit different from American ones (for obvious reasons), but I did like the music and so on. I was likely the only Chinese person there, there are a lot of Indian friends including a few I know, and a few Americans.
Other deaths or close call
Technically there was another young colleague died unexpectedly recently too: but I only knew his name before that and never knew him or worked with him in the past. While they didn’t explicitly say, I was under impression that the younger colleague died from suicide: probably related to PTSD from the military service. My impression is he was deployed in the war zone(s). And he worked for police department in St. Louis area, before joining my workplace (we are a veteran friendly place) as a software engineer (he attended code academy before the job). Now I remember his mom and stepdad’s sadness when we were there. Because he was probably in his early 30s or late 20s. His parents are probably my age 🙁
Couple years after I left UGS/Siemens, probably in holiday season of year 2010, I bumped into my former boss at Macys’, and he told me one of my colleagues (he was a few years younger than me) died suddenly (after I left the company in fall 2008). It made me quite sad, because I had quite a bit overlap with colleague and he is from India btw. To made things worse, in the company benefits annual enrollment, somehow, he didn’t indicate that he wanted the company provided life insurance. I believe his wife didn’t work and that’s just adding salt to injury.
A few years later at Mercy Health, I met a very nice colleague who was fighting the breast cancer. I don’t know how she did eventually. But I really liked the atmosphere my Mercy coworkers (that’s also the place call colleagues as coworkers) created to support her. She is wonderful too. She has some hens, and from time to time, she would bring eggs to the office, and colleagues can have the eggs (free will donation to a sort of colleague coffee/snack fund). The comradeship (we are in this together) is something I felt is solely missed in this post pandemic (work from home) work place.
Chinese colleague’s husband
About 20 years ago, I think it was year 2005, my Chinese colleague’s husband, who was 41, passed away due to cancer. I remember that because I was about 34, and he is about 7 years old. His wife and I worked at the same company then. I also attended the “celebration of life” at the time, at the request of my colleague (his wife). He seems like a nice very guy. I also recall one of his Chinese friend, a good friend, tries to come up with some humor or fun stories to cheer up the crowd. Note this was a bit unusual for Chinese people because from Chinese culture perspective, funeral is usually associated with a lot of tears. And I saw some of that today (7/10/25) at my India colleague’s visitation too.
PS:
I recall one of my AVP (Assistant Vice President, he is more like a VP if we are at a different organization, my current place is a bit thrift to hand out VP title to IT people), recently said (he actually said it in the visitation for the young colleague I mentioned above), one of the most important jobs for the leaders is showing up in occasions like this. I tend to agree. Note he said “leader” not “manager”. Everyone can be a leader at workplace. I recall also many years ago, while at UGS/Siemens, I drove to Illinois to attend a visitation for a colleague. And he was pleasantly surprised to say the least. So, there is that.
For those of us that are still in this world, I encourage us to be happy and healthy. And music is a great diversion or hobby to have, in my humble opinion.
Yesterday morning I was a bit tired after driving for about 2 hours. Next time I should remember take some “coffee breaks” every hour or so, that is, if I drive for more than one hour. Usually I just drive one hour nowadays (refer to my most recent post on Uber driving, refer to “PS: early morning Uber driving“)
They are within walking distance, or a very short drive.
(Update 07/07/2025) Bumped into an engineer (or an executive) from Faith Group, LLC (LinkedIn, company website). The gentleman didn’t tell me the exact company name during my Uber driving this mooning, but I am 100% sure this is the company, from the descriptions. He gave me $5 tip.
(Update 07/08/2025) Drive in the city of St. Louis. Occasionally I drove in the city of St. Louis. I would be a bit more careful when driving in the city of St. Louis. Not just because of the crime rate. In fact overall the crime rate is down if you look at the Google search overview – pasted below for the ease of reading.
(Update 07/10/2025) Tips sometimes can come days late. A lot people now live in “motel” which is really more like a studio apartment: they apparently cannot put in number for the motel, other than the main address. This morning, I had something like this, had to text the passenger to get the exact room number (she has some mobility challenges). More re: driving in the city, I noticed some people don’t obey the traffic lights, even official cars such as fire truck. That’s why I said earlier “be more careful when driving in the city”. Btw, the Uber business sort of dried up in recent mornings.
(Update 07/11/2025) This morning I went to Panera Bread at Westport after my Uber driving. This morning’s 3 trips are all for caregivers, the 1st one is for someone who lives in the apartment complex across the street, to a home in west county (home caregiver?). The latter two are drop offs at nursing homes (senior living places): one in Clayton, another one in Maryland Heights.
Btw, it seems a lot of my trips are drop offs at nursing homes (senior living places), especially now I mostly drive in the early mornings. I thought about evenings but considering the high temperature and potential damages to my car (battery), and I decided to skip.
Also, I happened to see this apartment complex Prospect Creek – Ballwin in a nice neighborhood (with privacy and walking trails etc.). You would do more research on apartment yourself, if applicable.
(Update 07/14/2025) I did 3 trips from or to Airport on 7/13/2025. This was a bit unusual because the airport terminal 2 got busy due to an end of a big conference. Today I did my usual: 3 trips total, white castle (fast food restaurant), wustl (off big bend road) to home (custodian get off work?), and lastly take a kid’s caregiver to kids care place. I think in terms of tips, the airport trips are usually better. But I don’t just work for tips. One minor thing though, between yesterday and today, I got a score of 3 (out of 5) and it lowers my average score a tiny bit. It’s not the end of the world, as it used to be though. Because right now I have 98 “5”. For comparison, I have 2 “4”, and 3 “3” and 1 “2”. I don’t have any “1”.
(Update 07/15/2025) This morning I only did 2 trips, because I am a bit tired and also today is my younger daughter’s b-day. For the 2nd trip, I took the same passenger as yesterday – WUSTL (off big bend road) to home (custodian get off work?). 1 trip was from an apartment near Page Blvd to a medical facility near Schnucks U city. I overshot a bit over there because my mind was a bit off at the time.
(Update 07/16/2025) I didn’t drive this morning as I need to do some work for my day job.
(Update 07/17/2025) This morning I did two trips related to the hotel (or nursing home). First trip was from the senior living behind Diebergs off Craig road, to his temp housing at Craigshire road. There was a bit hiccup. The customer thinks he ordered a stop at the Mobile on the run gas station, but it didn’t show up in my driver app. I honored his request nonetheless. The second trip was from the courtyard behind Aldi in Creve Coeur, to a hotel in Clayton.
(Update 07/18/2025) I did two airport trips this morning. I took a gentleman from WUSTL (Knight Center, business school) to airport (American Airline). And I intentionally didn’t leave as fast as I could, and lucky me I got another trip as I was leaving, from terminal 2 (southwest) to west port. After that I got food and coffee at Panera bread at west port and went home.
(Update 07/19/2025) Two trips this morning. One is taking a guy from his apartment in Overland to the gas station and back. He bought a pack of cigarette. I think he can walk, because it’s about 0.5 miles one way. The second one is take a lady from her home in Overland (I think it’s still overland) to the McDonalds’ in the U city China town (there is no actual official China town, but if you are from St. Louis, you probably know what I meant).
(Update 07/20/2025) 3 trips this am. Took the same lady (C) from wustl to her apartment at north county (slightly different from her other home). Took another lady (girl) from nearby apartment to the Amazon facility at St. Peters. And last but not least, took a Russian lady (nurse) from St. Peters to the JCC senior living apartment.
(Update 07/20/2025) Two trips this morning. It was raining and the driving conditions were not good. First trip was from the Hilton Frontenac to the Dr. Pepper plant off Page and 170. I was thinking we were going to airport and didn’t pick up the new trip on the way there initially, including an exclusive request. I picked up new trip after I dropped off a passenger, this new trip is from north county to the south city. After that I was a bit tired, and I went to the same bread company the one at Lansdowne and Chippewa. I was happy I drove about 5 miles along Chippewa in south city – my 1st time did something like this.
This post is getting long, and I am thinking start a new post next time I drive for Uber.
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St. Louis has seen a significant decrease in crime, with the first three months of 2025 showing the lowest number of homicides in 20 years, according to the City of St. Louis (.gov). Homicides are down 45%, robberies are down 20%, burglaries are down 33%, and auto thefts are down 39% year-to-date compared to the same period in previous years. However, there was a recent uptick in robberies during a specific week, but investigations led to arrests. The city is actively working to address crime through various strategies, including street intervention and focused deterrence. Here’s a more detailed breakdown:
Overall Crime Reduction:In the first three months of 2025, overall crime is down 28% compared to the same period last year and nearly 50% compared to 2023.
Homicide Rate:The city is experiencing the lowest number of year-to-date homicides since 2005.
Robberies:While robberies have seen a recent increase during a specific week, the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department (SLMPD) is actively investigating and has made arrests related to carjackings.
Property Crime:Property crimes, including burglaries and auto theft, have also seen significant decreases.
Violent Crime:Violent crime in general is down, including rape, aggravated assault, and simple assault.
Targeted Efforts:The City is pursuing a strategy of street intervention, cognitive behavioral theory, and focused deterrence to further reduce crime.
Community Collaboration:The SLMPD, the Circuit Attorney’s Office, the Office of Violence Prevention, and community partners are all working together to build a safer St. Louis.
Public Access to Information:The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department provides crime statistics and a crime map for public access.
When I first started to drive for Uber, and if I drove to the airport, I usually would call the day and turn off the new requests. After a while, I decided to leave the incoming request on (basically I didn’t do anything special), and twice I got a ride right away the the drop off location. Btw, in terminal one where most airlines fly, the ride share pickup location is near door 6 at the upper (departure) level.
This morning I was hoping for similar magic as I was driving my customers for flight. It didn’t happen right away. So I was pulling away before a request coming in – as I was driving I usually cannot see all details for the request. I accepted it. Turns out to be the beginning of a small disaster for me. The rider (customer) did a loop request for Uber (basically the pick up and drop off at the same location). And they didn’t speak English. They come to STL for an adventist world congress. After looping through airport a few times, and also attempt for them to call their son who speaks English, and also attempt to put in the new destination for the ride (was not successful), I finally gave up. I did what the ride request asked, dropped them off at the almost same spot. They did tip me one dollar.
This is one of the strangest Uber ride I did so far.
PS: early morning Uber driving
Since my most recent China trip, I resumed my Uber driving, and I drove almost entirely during early morning hours (after sunrise, in other words, I still don’t drive for Uber when it’s dark outside). I think early morning Uber-ing has a few benefits:
1) Airport rides. This is usually the most safe, and also sometimes people tip (because of luggages). And in rare cases, I got a new Uber ride at the airport (happened to me 3 times total, and with the last one I mentioned above).
2) People go to work or get off work. I have picked up people go to work (or get off work) at nursing home (this is probably the most common). But really I drove for people who works at Walgreens, Starbucks, Dierbergs, warehouse or assembly line, cannabis* store, hospitals, schools, office buildings and hotels. Basically pretty much anywhere you can think of. And this is as safe as airport ride.
*Cannabis: this is the smell I dislike when driving for Uber. I usually was not in a position or really like to tell people not to get on my car.
I have a Mac Mini, and I owned it for quite a few years now. I bought it at Costco St. Peters store, at around Christmas 2021. I used to use it to get to Citrix via Citrix Workspace, the remote desktop software that I used for work. The main reason I prefer this over the company provided IGEL product is I like the keyboard and touchPad for my Mac Mini better than the IGEL’s. I no longer uses Citrix as my employer switched to another software for remote work, also they provided a company laptop for work.
But I still have the Mac Mini, and sometimes I like to see my kids use the Mac Mini, instead of the laptop. Because the Mac Mini (the desktop) is in a public location, and I know what they are doing there. My older daughter (15) has the MacBook Air too: and not surprisingly she would goof around much more – aka doing TikTok etc. compared to do real things at the desktop.
Other benefits of a desktop computer is a larger display or screen, and family members can work on something together, if/when applicable. This is similar to the good old days, when we work in office, we have desktop or large screen, we can do pair programming or debugging together.
If you have limited budget, and don’t have extra money for Mac Mini or something similar, I fully understand. And if you have an extra display, you can still connect the laptop to the external display, to take advantage of the real estate. In fact, I think I have one or two extra external displays, if you are in STL area and are interested, shoot me an email at minjie dot xu at gmail dot com, and you can pick it up at my home at Olivette (aka 橄榄村)。
Separately, I just bought a new iPad for myself. I hope to use iPad more often (instead of iPhone). This has been my goal, but previous effort (a Samsung Android tablet) has been fallen short.
I started to learn Cantonese about 3 months ago, via Duolingo. I am still there (in terms of using Duolingo), but I think I should start to learn Cantonese beyond Duolingo.
I wrote about Cantonese songs as well (5 minutes read). People especially my friends could wonder: why learn Cantonese, especially now?
That’s a legit question.
For me, I think preserving the Chinese culture is a fun and rewarding endeavor. One fairly common consensus is Cantonese preserves the traditional Chinese the best: this is partially due to a decent size of Cantonese speaking people. Some stats on the English, Mandarin and Cantonese speaking population, from my blog post here. And I am pasting some stats below.
Google estimates there are 1.18 billion mandarin speakers in the world, vs 120 million cantonese speakers (refer to my blog post here 全球将近有1.2亿人口使用粤语 ). For comparison google search indicates there are 1.5 billion English speakers in the world.
My listand Playlist
Janice-卫兰: I started this list from Ayen何璟昕, who btw, is an excellent singer. Ayen何璟昕 was born in Guandong Province, and she sings in Cantonese, Mandarin and English. She is also a very good content creator, and last but not least, a pop music curator. This is something I realized as I saw she sung quite a few 副歌（英语：Refrain，惯称Chorus）and shared the short video on Douyin, WeChat and RedNote.
Last but not least, not 100% Cantonese (there are some Mandarin songs), nonetheless, I like to listen to them as background music at work (I work from home), or when I drive.
An old family picture (I published this photo earlier, actually, in this blog post). I talked a bit about my paternal grandma and my big uncle in that blog post.
Back: my grandma, my dad; Front (left to right), Minjie, and big bro, and my little big bro
Interestingly I saw that my grandma holds me, and my dad holds my little big bro. I think our mom was probably at work, and at the time she doesn’t have much freedom to walk off work. But in real world, my grandma likes me the most among 3 grand sons, my dad likes my little big bro the most, and my mom likes my big bro the most 🙂
I think this is probably taken in year 1974 or 1975. Let me will explain why. My big bro is wearing a red scarf 红领巾 which also means he already attends the primary school (or elementary school). You have to believe it’s red although it’s a black and white picture. Both my little big bro and I don’t have red scarf and we haven’t started attending primary school yet (we are all about 2 years apart), kids usually start attending elementary school at about age of 7 (in the case of our big bro, he was 6 and a half when he stared). My big bro started school on 09/01/1974, my little big bro on 09/01/1976 and I started school on 09/01/1978.
Back to my grandma
My grandma Zhang San’mei 张三妹 was born in year 1904. Her name 三妹 means she is the 3rd daughter of the family. She was born in 北仑霞浦. And she died in year 1988, in November 1988, when I was attending the Zhenhai Middle (High) School as a senior*.
Explanation about the High School in CHN: in China there are only 3 grades in school, and I was in the last year of high school. Note in China, the middle school includes both Junior Middle, which is equivalent to Junior High or Middle School in the USA. And Senior Middle, which is equivalent to Senior High in the USA.
My grandma gave birth to 7 kids: 6 girls and 1 boy (my dad, also he is also the youngest). Only 4 out 7 kids grew to their adulthood. My grandma sometimes would tell me the story of one daughter (she was probably between my two younger aunts 姑妈), and she was very beautiful. But she died before 14 or 16: I don’t know the exact age or circumstance under which she died. Keep in mind in those days girls were treated much worse than boys (I mean 1930s), and the fact they lived in rural areas does not help either.
My grandma is quite smart, as I talked about her smartness in my maternal grandma’s piece. Keep in mind 2 grandmas have different kinds of smarts: my paternal grandma can read a bit (she probably attended a few years of school when she was a little kid), my maternal grandma doesn’t read, but she has attention to details on household work and homemaking, cooking and sewing (mostly by hand). Also, I am both grandma’s favorite grandson, among my two older bro and me.
My primary caregiver
I have no memory of my grandpa because he died in December 1972, when I was only one year and 5 months old. My grandma helped my parents to raise us 3 boys – note this is very common arrangement in China, up until in recent decades. The social contract is we take care of our parents when they are aging, and the grandparents (our parents) usually help with babysitting when possible. This is pretty much true when my mom took care of my big brother’s daughter, and because they both live in Beilun, and also because both my mom and my dad were fairly young. They are each 53, and 52 years respectively, older than my niece – my big brother’s daughter. But I saw issues around those kinds of social contracts as increasingly one side doesn’t honor her/his side of the contract. Because it’s mainly just a custom, or moral responsibility, there are very little the justice system can do about it.
Back to caregiving part, as I think it’s more important. Keep in mind both my parents work full time even when we were babies (infants). Some of the job of taking care of babies fall to my grandmas (I think both my maternal and paternal grandma). Things such trivial as help baby fall into sleep or co-sleep. My understanding, in China co-sleeping with parents or grandparents when kids were little, is still quite common. I understand co-sleeping does cause other types of issues, which I am not getting into in this blog post.
She cooked and fed us
This is especially true in the summer breaks, when we spent about 2 months at our home in Xiao’men. I have said in other occasions, I did hide behind her back during vaccine drive, and especially when the Da Tou He Shang （大头和尚) showed up, during Chinese new year celebrations.
She has some money from my aunts – she would buy candies for us when she goes to the 小店; she saves moon cakes for us, they were sent by the aunts in Shanghai; she also buys fishes and cooks for us, sometimes.
Some fun episodes or stories
In most of her life, she doesn’t have a TV. Our family bought a TV in winter 1986 (note she passed away in fall 1988). She doesn’t understand or appreciate all the sports such as basketball, badminton, gymnastics or soccer. I recall we played badminton in the courtyard during very hot summer afternoon. We were kids then, and we were not that scared of the hot sun and so on. She just felt frustrated when we won’t listen to her and stop playing. She would say: boys, if you have that much of energy, why go to the fields or farm do some real farm work 🙂
Or Primary School if we use British English. But sometimes British English is cool, right? And btw, do you know that Indian English is more close to the British English?
Xiao‘men Elementary School 小门小学
Oh well, back to my topic. I started 1st grade at the age of 7 at Xiao‘men Elementary School 小门小学 （now 白峰宁国寺). Note: it used to be a temple before converting to the elementary school. My very rough guess was that the conversion happened in 1950s or 1960s.
My 1st teacher is Su Lao Shi 素老师，her real name is 胡素贞. I recall because there are other 胡老师，she took the 素老师 name. She is probably 5 to 10 years older than my mom (again very rough estimate). And my mom worked with her husband in the 小门大队。I vaguely recall 素老师 asked me the infamous “shooting at the birds on the tree” question (how many birds will be left on the branches if someone shot at the birds). 素老师 taught me both Chinese and Math from grade 1 to 3. I was a pretty serious learner then, as my teacher also told my mom “Minjie is sitting straight and his eyes are glued to the blackboard during our class”. In my recent China trip I learned from my dad that 素老师 passed way – she was probably in her late 80s 🙁
I did well in terms of academic performance at 小门小学. I recall we also participated some competitions at Bai’feng Elementary School 白峰中心小学 where all the kids from elementary schools in Bai’feng area compete. I recall once during the “listening words and write down words” competition, I did pretty well. Keep in mind many teachers in China at that time are very competitive, and 白峰中心小学 probably didn’t like the fact 小门小学 did better than them in some competitions. Because 白峰中心小学 is the organizer of all this, I think that’s probably one reason they didn’t run more competitions during my 3rd and 4thgrade. This is just my hunch though: I don’t have any evidence (too long time ago, and I was a little kid then).
As a side note: we as students actually sort of helped build the school at certain point. I recall we carrying bricks and this is probably unthinkable from western’s point of view (use kids or children as labor?).
My 2nd teacher is teacher Chen 陈老师。She teaches Chinese. And my 3rd teacher is teacher Xu 徐老师 who teaches math, and he is also my family friend. During the early days of my 5th grade, there was some change, that is my dad decided to move me from 小门小学 to 白峰中心小学.
Bai’feng Elementary School 白峰中心小学
Although I only studied there for less than one school year, I think I thrived quickly, especially on the Math. The math teacher there Mr. Zhang is quite creative, he used stars and quizzes etc. to encourage kids to study. And I did so well, and in the 2nd semester of my 5th grade, I was consistently ranked 1st on Math. My Chinese teacher and 班主任 teacher Hu was cool too. She was young and a bit strict. Once in her class she saw me spinning around with my pen that was gifted by my cousin in Shanghai. She took it and later returned it to me 🙂 She is a good teacher too.
And during the admission exam for middle school: I beat expectation again and I got into Zhen’hai Middle School. There is also an interesting math problem in the end during that exam. Here it goes, not exact words, the idea is the same.
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Q: It takes 1 hour from Peter to walk from point A to point B; it takes Mike 2 hours to walk from point B to A. If they start at the same time, Peter from point A walking toward point B, Mike started at point B walking toward A. How long will it take before they meet (assume point A to B is a straight line). I will put the answer in the end. (I will put the anwser in the end. The word in town is only one out of thousands of kids in Zhenhai County was able to solve it.)
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I also had quite a bit more fun interacting with friends in my grade. I recall we have at least two students whose dads worked close my dad (I mean the location, not the work area). There are also quite a few girls and they are very good academically too – in 小门小学 the class size is small, and I have fewer competitions. We do have one boy (whose father was the principal of Bai’feng Middle School for a long time), who is pretty good and went on to attend college (he and I are the only 2 kids in my 小门小学 class that graduated from college). Also another girl (whom I liked) went to become a nurse. At least in the beginning only 3 kids got out of the village after middle school.
