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.
PS:
This Chinese article described quite a bit of Xiao’men village – 代表在线 | 从“烦心事”到“幸福事”，他带着这个乡村实现华丽转身
Answer to the math problem: AB / (AB/1 + AB/2) = 1 / (1 + 1/2) = 2/3 hours
If you are interested in more math questions, here is my GitHub repo/file.