Most of the students were present on the second day of Chinese class. Like last year, Professor McArthur was habitually late. The students were all talking happily. Apparently, they didn’t know of Wang Peng’s demise. The Measure-word Vampire was quiet, but with an animated expression, “Ha ha ha!” He was indubitably counting something-or-other to himself. Su Xi’s clothes all tightly hugged her body; it seemed her clothes had shrunk over the summer. Perv was sitting to Su Xi’s left watching her finger her cell phone, as she surfed the web and texted.
“Su Xi, are you Sexting?” Perv said lasciviously. “Why don’t you Sext me, in Chinese please.”
Su Xi gave him a steely, cold look, of which about 20% was still beckoning and seductive. “Fuck off, Perv!” she said, “God damn pervert!”
“Yes!” Exclaimed Perv. “There’s still hope for me!” Perv was quite pleased with himself. This had been their basic antagonistic relationship throughout first year Chinese, so the rest of the class took their antics with a grain of salt.
Johnson sat robotically using his fingers to draw character strokes in the air, as he also said the characters out loud. Today’s lesson would be “renting an apartment.”
“Apartment” said Johnson as he traced the stroke orders for various pieces of furniture. ” ‘Chair.’ [椅]. The left side is ‘tree’ [木], and the right side is ‘strange’ [奇]. ‘Strange’ is ‘big’ [大] on the top, and ‘may’ [可] on the bottom.”
“Bed,” [床] he continued. ” ‘Wide’ [广] on the outside, and ‘tree’ again on the inside. Sofa [沙发]. The ‘so’ [沙] part is three dots water [氵] on the left, and the ‘fa’ part on the right is …”
“Hey Johnson!” Gay Guy was getting impatient with Johnson’s little act and cut him off.
“Yes, Gay Guy, what is it?”
“You know that your obsession with characters is a little annoying? Look at Measure-word Vampire. He sits there and counts quietly all to himself. Why don’t you do your characters like that?”
Measure-word Vampire nodded his head, “Ha ha ha!”
Johnson said, “But my method is backed by psychological research. The more senses you use, the easier it is to remember what you learn.”
“Okay, okay,” said Gay Guy. “Let me dictate three characters. If you can guess all of them, you can do whatever you want. But if you miss any, then for the whole semester no more air-drawings, okay?”
At this juncture the Measure-word Vampire excitedly said out loud “The THIRD character, ha ha ha!”
Then Gay Guy cleared his throat and said, “First character. A horizontal stoke, and then “tu” as in “earth [土]. Second character, a left falling stroke, then a right falling one. And the third character is …”
“Okay, Measure-word Vampire” said Gay Guy, “Help appreciated. And the third character is, horizontal with a hook, a person, and then an insect radical.”
Johnson easily knew the first two characters — “King [王Wang] and Eight [八Ba]. But the third character? He was only just starting second year Chinese and hadn’t yet learned the insect radical. He thought and thought, but he just didn’t know it. He didn’t want to say the wrong character. If he missed it, he had promised not to air draw for the whole semester. That would be torture!
Just at this moment, Professor McArthur made it to class holding a steaming cup of coffee. He stood there taking in the scene.
“Bastard!” said Su Xi.
Johnson said, “I know, I know! It’s bastard!”
“WO CAO” swore Gay Guy. “Su Xi, why’d you blurt it out? Johnson, that one doesn’t count, Su Xi told you!”
“What do you mean it doesn’t count? You didn’t included Su Xi in the rules. You lose!”
“God dammit. Su Xi, why’d you have to interrupt!”
“Hey! I wasn’t interrupting. I was just calling Perv a bastard. He keeps staring at me like a god damn perv!”
Professor McArthur was still standing at the back of the class. “It seems all of you have improved your Chinese over the summer. Who taught you all these swear words, Wang Peng?”
“Um, Professor McArthur, for the record, I didn’t say any swear words,” said Perv. “Johnson has a theory about using all of our senses to learn Chinese. It’s called Total Physical Response. I was thinking about practicing TPR on Su Xi, would that be okay?”
“Pervert!” shouted Su Xi. She was still looking at Perv with that steely look, but now the seductive part had increased five percent.
Professor McArthur said, “Okay everybody, we are all university intellectuals. Let’s see if we can raise the level of decorum just a bit. Like today’s lesson engaging our intellects in renting an apartment. But first, I want to take roll. When I call your name, please give me your homework. Oh, sorry I was late today, because …”
“Because of traffic, right?” everybody said in unison.
“That’s right, I guess you aren’t dolts. Not to mention the coffee shop was crowded.”
Professor McArthur took a sip of his coffee, then started to call roll.
“Measure-word Vampire?” — “Here.”
“Mary?” Professor McArthur looked up to confirm Mary was absent.
“Gay Guy?” — “Here.”
“Perv?” — “Here.”
“Su Xi?” — “Here.”
“Wang Peng?”
Professor McArthur looked up and said “That’s weird. Where’s Wang Peng? He didn’t miss a single class last year and he was here last time.” McArthur continued.
“Johnson?” — “Here.”
“Okay, Mary and Wang Peng aren’t here, I guess we’ll …”
Perv raised his hand and said, “This is the apartment lesson, right? Maybe they rented an apartment so they could go and …”
“Go and do what?” said Johnson.
“You know, go and …” Johnson just didn’t get it.
Su Xi and Gay Guy both looked at Johnson, and both snorted their impatience. Professor McArthur was about to ask them all to be more civil, but before he said a word, Mary burst into the classroom, wailing.”Wang Peng is dead!”
“Mary, what are you talking about?” said McArthur. “Wang Peng was here yesterday joking with all of us. How can he be dead?”
Mary managed to buck up a bit, and with some difficulty finally managed to utter in perfectly correct Chinese: “Wang Peng is dead. He was run over by the ice-cream truck. He died in my lap. Wang Peng! Wang Peng!”
Everybody froze; nobody believed it. After all they were just characters in a perfectly standard Chinese language book. How could the lead character die on the second day of class? Incredible. The publisher was going to have to do something about this. But no matter the facts, the lesson on how to rent an apartment comes to an end here so everybody can grieve for Wang Peng!
Wang Peng!