英语口语 — 一个只面对执着的回音
—— 一个“老三届”毕业生学习和实践英语口语的经历
（英文版本）
谨以此文献给那些
在英语学习和实践的长期历程中
坚持不懈的学友和朋友们
John Y.
（中文版本见本栏目）
English Speaking -- An Echo
Only from Commitment
——The Experience of Learning and Practicing
Spoken English by a Laosanjie Graduate
To my Chinese friends
who have been experiencing
a long journey of perseverance in
learning and practicing spoken English
John Y. 2013.12.
Introduction
It was during the late summer of 1971 at Denghui Tang Auditorium of Fudan University in Shanghai, five years after the eruption of the Great Cultural Revolution in China, and more than twenty years of disconnected communication between the New China and the United States of America since 1949. A ceremony held to welcome a US delegation from people was about to start.
Inside and outside the auditorium was an ocean of human gathering. As "Lao San Jie" alumni (the junior & senior high school graduates between 1966 and 1968) from Fudan University Affiliated High School, driven by the curiosity on those fresh Americans, some of my friends and I were squeezing into the crowds with extraordinary excitement.
A foreign gentleman in a black suit and with grey hair took to the rostrum. He was introduced as the Head of the US delegation. Then a young Chinese man, dressed in green military uniform and with a "Red Guard" (Hong Weibing) armband also took to the rostrum, standing beside the American. He was said the Chinese interpreter.
The American spoke, paused, but there was no responsive interpreting. He spoke and paused again, there was still no response. “Is he dumb? ...” Suddenly, a burst of angry shouts rose up from the audience towards the young interpreter: "Down, down! Change, change ..."
The Red Guard stumbled down, came up a nice looking young woman who was also dressed in green military uniform but with no Red Guard armband. Someone whispered that she was a teacher from the Foreign Language Department. As not bearing the Red Guard but only a “Hei Wulei” (the Five-Category of Bad People), she was banned from stepping up in the beginning. Now the whole hall had fallen into dead silence again, and all eyes were gazing at this young charming face: what would she be able to do?
The foreigner calmed down and went on with his speech, while the young woman gave her interpreted words one after another, with a soft but firm voice so clear and fluent that every translation was broken up by a stormy applause from the audience. It was apparently not only towards the friendly words by the American, but also the young female interpreter herself...
The American ended his speech, the Chinese young woman also stepped down. But the audience didn't want to stop applauding and agitating. "She is so great!" Someone had exclaimed with admiration. Then I was among these crowds, for the first time in my life, experiencing a moment of magical power and shock of perfect language skills with spoken English.
At that time, I was unable to imagine that two decades later it wouldn’t be difficult for me myself either to stand beside a head of the U.S. delegation for such simultaneous interpretation.
PART ONE
1. From the “Pigsty English” to “Foreign Teacher’s Class”
At about the end of 1968 I graduated from Fudan University Affiliated High school and settled at Luodian People’s Commune in Baoshan County, a far northern area of Shanghai. After two years “Fighting against the Sky and Struggling with the Earth”, I was "selected" as a swineherd by villagers to raise all sows and pigs which were possessed by the collective.
In those years, such sayings as "Going to school is useless" or "Learning English is worth nothing" were widely believed in the society. English, as “Garbage of Feudalism, Capitalism and Revisionism" had been swept into trash heap. English study had been abolished from all primary and secondary education in the whole country. But to my mind, it should never been given up. From the "old paper heap" at home I had dug out some English books and took them to the countryside. Whenever there was spare time after feeding the pigs, I’d like to sit by the pig shed and read English books while the squawking of the animals could be heard up and down and all around. But I didn't realize that this would have brought me big trouble later on.
One day, the cadres from Production Brigade headed by the Party Branch Secretary came to my village for a “site production examination”. When passing by my pig shed, the party head had happened to see I was stooped over reading something, so he came up and asked: "What are you doing?" Since I had nowhere to cover it up, I showed my English book to him and said: "I am reviewing English."
He suddenly snatched the book from me and with his face frowning, said: "What? English? How could you dare to exercise such Feng-Zi-Xiu while receiving re-education in countryside?" Saying this, he angrily threw the book to the ground and went away. I knew something was going to happen.
Sure enough, after a few days at the “all brigade members’ meeting”, the party leader launched harsh comments directed at me. "Now, in our brigade, some individual intellectual youth failed to take the re-education, missing the Feng-Zi-Xiu, still read English books while raising the pigs. How come! This is serious and can’t be tolerated. The village leaders must take action to fix it …”
Despite this, I was not scared and kept studying on my “foreign garbage” only now under the table. My fellow villagers also felt sympathy for me and ignored the party head’s threatening. Three years later they further elected me as the Political Chief of the village production team so that a student "swineherd" turned out to be a "village official". Two years later, my performance was finally recognized by the brigade and I was relocated to the Shanghai Normal University (now as the East China Normal University) for teacher’s training. This had laid a foundation for my entry to the university two years later.
In 1977, I took the first National College Entrance Examination after the Cultural Revolution and was admitted to Zhejiang University (ZU) in mechanics major. My English course was exempted because I chose the optional English test in the exam and had scored over 80 points, which was far enough past the exemption line of 60 for English by ZU. Among these 80 freshmen in my department only two were entitled with such honor, and I was one of them. This was in response to what was called “God will never forget those who work with great endeavor”. My "never abandon, never give up" policy in English finally paid off.
In retrospect, I was sticking with my special interest and staying true to my ambitions in English study during my middle school years. This was largely thanks to two middle schools I attended that had high quality English education and outstanding English teachers. I went to Shanghai Tongji Middle School for junior study and Fudan University Affiliated High School for senior study. The teachers who taught me English were Mr. Chen Zongyang and Mr. Zou Jiayuan. They respectively graduated from two top universities with top English specialty in China: English Department of Shanghai Institute of Foreign Languages (now as Shanghai Foreign Language University) and Foreign Language Department of Fudan University. These two schools and two teachers left me with a strong English background that has benefitted me in decades of study, life and work, including overseas study ever since.
After entering ZU, I felt bad with that it had no English class for me at all. Fortunately, in the third year the university opened a special English class for students with exception status – the “foreign teacher’s English class”. The teacher was a white young man invited from the US. Today the foreign teacher’s English class is nothing new for even middle school students, but in more than 30 years ago when China had just opened its doors to the world, a white guy with blue eyes and brown hairs sitting in the classroom, talking with a group of Chinese students, was truly a miracle. Especially since China had just established diplomatic relations with the US not too long ago.
Because the regular courses for us were tight, our foreign teacher’s English class was scheduled quite infrequently, only once a week. But we all attended it with great enthusiasm. Maybe this was because of the way this American guy had been teaching, which was much different from that of our traditional English class mainly focused on grammar and reading. Most of the time, this guy was just having free talks with students. Although there was a textbook, he never followed it. Sometimes he had referred to it, but it was only a simple glance and he would quickly shift back to his boundless but colorful talks again. Sometimes he even took us to school campus or by the West Lake for a so-called "site class".
During that class students were all quite active, competing with each other for more chatting minutes from the teacher. But this young "Laomei"(American guy) liked to chat with girls, the pretty girls foremost and we boys got little chance. Fortunately, he often went to a snack shop near the school at lunch for noodles, and I had the same hobby, so I always had the opportunity to meet him there and chatted with him in English while enjoying noodles. It was from this young American guy that I initiated my learning and practicing spoken English with particular interest.
When recalling my foreign teacher’s class at ZU, I would admit that it was really a start of enlightenment for my spoken English study. I also learnt for the first time, that the study of English could be away from the textbook or out of the classroom, and that might be a more effective way to accomplish it. To these days, when living and working in China, I’ve kept this hobby often taking my foreign friends, no matter if they’re white or black, young or old, American or others, to nearby restaurants, tea houses or other casual places. We are out there not only for foods, drinks or fun, but also for cross-culture communication and exchange.
2. American professor doesn't understand Chinese English
In the autumn of 1986, as a "self-apply, self-pay"(Zifei Zipai) applicant (in contrast to Zifei Gongpai, or those who got funds from and were sent by the government) for graduate studies in the United States, I was admitted to the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) on a PhD program in psychology, lucky enough to be sponsored by its special fellowship.
Before then, I had passed the TOEFL test qualifying me for English proficiency, which was a requirement of the first-class graduate schools in the US. At the same time I was also self-pleased with my oral English, since I had taken “foreign teachers’ class” for a period and often practiced English speaking with my schoolmates at ZU. This situation is quite similar to many college students nowadays who have passed CET 4 or CET 6 then have over evaluation with their own spoken English.
But I had encountered big problems with my spoken English when I first got to the US. My enrollment in psychology at UCLA was a rare case with cross-grade and cross-major studies. Psychology was not my undergraduate major and the department of psychology at UCLA was not offering a master degree. All enrolled graduate students pursued only PhD. In the US, psychology is a comprehensive subject integrating mental, life and social sciences that demanded excellent mastering of English with both background and application skills in communication. This was far beyond what a "layman" could have hoped to approach. Therefore the English language demands, particularly the oral communication skills, had brought me an unprecedented challenge.
The earliest problem came from the communication between my graduate advisor, Prof. Bernard Weiner and I. As a noted scholar in the US and international society of cognitive psychology, Prof. Weiner was well-known for his Motivation and Attribution theory. For a newcomer like me from China, he had shown his exceptional understanding and caring, and during our first meeting in his office, sent me a copy of his latest publication with his autograph: Theory of Human Motivation. Then the problem came up. He treated me as an ordinary student and spoke really fast. I just couldn't keep up with him. When I spoke, though he often seemed to listen to me carefully, I could see signs of confusion and incomprehension on his face, and he always had to interrupt me saying, "John, can you say it again?" I felt that he might have never understood what I was talking about. But out of politeness he didn’t pour cold water on my feelings. That had made me feel even more ashamed. I was confused: “Don't I speak English?”
The other barrier was from my “buddy”, a native graduate student assigned by the department to help a new foreign student person-to-person. She was a blonde white girl, with the same major specialization in "Personality Psychology" as I but in a higher grade. Unfortunately the communication between us later on proved not that polite and friendly as between Weiner and me because of the language barrier.
I still remember the last time I communicated with her on Thanksgiving Day of my first school year when she was back in her hometown Seattle for holidays. Since I had something consulting her about, I made a long distance call from LA to Seattle. After the phone connected, I spoke a few words and heard a voice from the other side, "Pardon?"
This word is popular nowadays and when used here it means "I don't understand" or "please say it again". But in those days many Chinese, including me, had no knowledge about it. What I had learnt was its written explanation: "please forgive me". So when my buddy said "please forgive me" to start the conversation, I didn’t understand what she meant and was really puzzled.
Maybe due to the failure of response, my buddy thought I might have not caught it, so she repeated: "Pardon?" But I still couldn’t respond. Then I heard a sound "pa" from the other side and the phone was hung up. From then on my buddy had never contacted me again.
This event and many others after taught me a lesson of the "instant reaction" principle while speaking English with a foreigner in normal language environment, in which a learner must not only respond, but more importantly, respond immediately and effectively. Otherwise such communication could only end with "sorry, I got to go, bye!" from the other side.
With such problems there was an even more embarrassing case for me. In my graduate classes, most students were American or from English speaking countries and only a few oriental faces could be seen. One day in a class of Human Sexual Behavior, students were all actively following the professor with questions and discussing. Maybe the professor had noticed that there was only me sitting in the corner quietly, so he walked up to me and asked: "Hi, does that make sense to you?"
Not knowing what he meant, I merely remained silent. At this moment in the classroom all other students turned to me as though they were watching an alien and I felt so embarrassed that I just wanted to dig a hole and hide in it.
In fact, this was a very common expression, which means "do you understand?" But at that time I really didn't understand so how could I answer it? There was an old Chinese saying: "Soldiers aware of shame then become brave". This event aroused my resolution to learn perfect communication skills in English from that day on.
After that, I had taken various roles in positions that had given me contact with all kinds of people in the US. I worked in a Chinese restaurant as a busboy, as a Yellow Cab driver in Chinatown, as a housekeeper for a Chinese family, at Pizza Hut as a delivery guy, as a cover teacher at an elementary school, as an errand for a travel agency, as a manager in a downtown motel and as a domestic assistant for a CEO of a brand US company. More than ten years of study, work and living in the States made me realize that what I had learnt and practiced in China with communicative English was just a sort of Chinglish or Chinese English. While in a real English environment it turned to "Li Gui meets Likui" or “fake meets genuine”, all failed and useless. Therefore, to learn the authentic spoken language in English, I must start from scratch.
3. Listening to talk show and watching soap opera help most
However, even in the United States it is still not easy for Chinese to get access to the native English speaking environment, nor is it easy to melt into the American society. Chinese and Americans belong to two groups with different languages, cultures, customs and psychological thinking. Few Americans are willing to initiatively join the Chinese community, and vise versa, Chinese joining Americans is even more difficult.
Then, how could I get into English language environment effectively and to eliminate cultural and psychological differences between Chinese and Americans?
While studying at UCLA, I had some Chinese roommates, one studying Math and one studying Double E. They came to the States a few years earlier than I and could speak fluent English with have barrier-free communication with local Americans. One of them even had attended the 1984 World Olympics in Los Angeles as a volunteered interpreter for Chinese delegation. I found that they liked watching American TV talk shows, soap opera dramas and sports games such as live broadcasts of the NBA. While watching they also liked to imitate the voices and speeches by the hosts, characters or players. Since such programs were rich for oral English nutrition, they were of special benefits for training language senses and skills in English with applicable purposes.
Another roommate was the youngest son of Zhao Dan, one of the most famous movie artists of last century in China. We were all from Shanghai, got visa to the US on the same day, came to UCLA at the same time and lived in a same rental apartment in the first year. He studied in Motion Pictures and his early English could hardly been complimented. But when meeting him again several years later I found there was great progress with his listening and speaking skills in English. It was clear that he had taken special advantages of his major which provided him with rich spoken English materials and required intensive training and practicing in English communication.
While watching American TV I had a breathtaking experience at my apartment. It was on a weekend evening and my roommates and I were attentively watching TV in our apartment, as that was our major leisure activity after a whole day of the stressful academic life. Then we heard from out of the window a mixed loud noise of music and din. It was a group of American students holding a party at the opposite student's dorm, singing and dancing crazily. They did it every weekend bothering us a lot, but this time we really couldn’t stand it any more. One of my roommates Chen immediately removed from the wall a toy gun, then took it to the window, pointed it at the opposite dorm and shouted: "Shut up! Shut up!"
This action resulted in a fantastic response. The opposite dorm immediately turned silent. We were all able to return to our TV again.
After a few minutes, suddenly "bang!", there was a crash at the door. Before we could realize what had happened, a few armed LAPD officers broke in with guns pointed at us and shouted loudly: "Hands up, hands up!”, “Down on your knees, down on your knees!”
We all were dumbstruck with hands up above heads and kneeled down on the floor.
"Where is the rifle?" a police officer asked. We immediately realized that the American students from the opposite dorm called the LAPD and the policemen came to the scene in response to a report of the “bandits with a gun”!
At this moment Chen reacted quickly and pled: "That is a toy gun, officer! We are Chinese students. They were making too much noise, and we were just using the toy gun to shut them up!"
The following story was like a conclusion of a comedy. After our defensive explanation, the LAPD seemed satisfied with that this was just a case of misunderstanding. These Chinese students had overreacted with no criminal intent or harmful results. So they turned friendly and gave advice to us when leaving: "Sirs, this is in America, not China. Remember, never point gun even toy-gun at innocent people, it's against the law!"
This event had not only taught me a lesson of common law in the US, but also punctuated how important the fluent English communication skill was. In fact it might break down the cultural barriers, or in some emergency circumstances even dissolve serious conflicts between Chinese and Americans.
I knew I had to improve my language skills, and first of all, I needed to enrich my English language environment by firstly watching soap operas and American movies, listening to the talk shows and other broadcast programs. Later on I found that the best place to practice it was in my car.
In the United States, people could do nothing without a car. In a big city like LA, there were always traffic jams on Freeways, especially during rush hour when all freeways turned into parking lots. Therefore, stumbling on freeways for several hours to and from work became part of my daily routine. But this also provided me with a best chance to listen to the car radio.
Radio broadcasting programs in the US were popular talk shows and some were really attractive. Talk shows were usually played by two hosts and contents covered everything including news, food, living, entertainment or politicians. They were filled with humor and language wisdoms and were very enjoyable. So I gradually generated a hobby that whenever driving or sitting in my car, I’d like to turned the radio on to a talk show and that would have given me at least two or more hours of "listening practice" a day. Sometimes I couldn’t help stop staying in the car listening even after I got home. My language ability with listening and speaking, in addition to the influence of the ordinary language environment, was mostly obtained directly through watching TV and listening to radio talk show programs.
Inherited from the hobby of listening to English talk show in the US, it has become my favorite past time to this day, to watch CCTV English programs (now as CCTV news) as well as its talk shows, such as Crossover, Dialogue, Up Close, New Money, China 24 and others. From my experience these programs are most helpful and effective at improving skills in English with listening and speaking specially for those Chinese learners lacking English communication environment.
4. The most impressive English class at UCLA
Most international students coming to UCLA, according to the rules of the school, had to retake a few months to one year ESL (English as a Second Language) courses to make up their language proficiency, and graduate students were usually mix-grouped with undergraduate students.
During my first year at UCLA, I also took a semester of ESL course. On the student name list there was an eye-catching Chinese name Wang Ji(王姬) from Motion Picture Department, who was quite popular for her role in Chinese film and TV, but we were not in the same class. At that time there were another two young female celebrities known as the “Double-Queen of Chinese Film Festival”(百花、金鸡双料影后) in China, Chen Chong(陈冲) and Zhang Yu(张渝), also studying in LA. Chen was able to study in the Film Department of California State University at Northridge because of her excellence in English, but Zhang was not that lucky. Lacking college diploma from China and not passed the TOEFL, she failed to enroll into any major universities in the US, could only take some part-time English classes at a local adult-school in LA. This story told how critical the English background was for education in the US.
There was one occasion I still remembered that I had communication with Zhang Yu in English. One day my roommate Zhao Jin had not returned to our rent house throughout the midnight. According to his pre-advice I dialed Zhang’s phone number and asked:
"Hello is this Miss Zhang Yu?”
”Yes, speaking.”
” Zhao Jin hadn’t come back yet up to now and seems disappeared. Do you have any idea where he is?”
"Oh, my god! Is he always like this?"
Though there were only a few English words, her voice was so impressive and powerful that just like reading actress’ lines in a movie.
In my ESL class all students were from Asian countries including Korea, Japan, Philippines, Vietnam, except that only I was from China. Surprisingly I found that all their oral English were better than mine, particularly a mixed American-Vietnamese boy who could speak authentic American English that made me really envy. I thought it should be because these Asian countries successively experienced some special relations with the United States after the World-War Second and people were benefitted from the American English language environment.
The instructors for ESL classes were all senior graduate students from Linguistic Department of UCLA and were native English-speakers. They worked as TA (Teaching Assistant) , had gained wages only from a easy job, just like native graduate students majored in Chinese Literature of Beijing University to teach foreign students basic Chinese communication, that’s a piece of cake.
The teacher who taught my English class was also a native girl from the linguistic department. But I didn't appreciate her teaching style very much, because she still adopted the "cram-education" type of teaching a lot, students seldom had the chance to practice communication. At the same time she’d like to talk lots of grammar. I knew she wanted to show the importance of whole learning in English, but it didn't apply to me. Because we students from China had learnt too much English grammar even in the middle schools, which were of more breadth and depth than in American schools.
So, though our teacher spoke perfect American English, but after half year study I found my oral English got little improved. It was not as good as the spare-time communication between students from different countries in my class. That
I recalled then there was a pretty Vietnamese girl in my class, who liked to chat with me in English often, and the same did I. Why so? It was then that I found one of the "principles" of practicing oral English that boys liked to talk with girls in public to show off their skills, while girls liked to take the advantage of being talked to by boys to help their study. This was in response to a famous Chinese saying: “Men would never get tired while grouped together with women to work".
All in all, ESL class at UCLA didn’t leave me much impression, only the last class was an exception. That was the oral test as final which the teacher used to assess students performance, arranging each student to give a featuring presentation in class.
The topics and contents for the test were all prepared by students in advance, while the teacher would give some advice to students. Each speech time would limit in ten minutes, after it teacher and other students might ask questions for the presenter. Finally the teacher would give remarks and grades on students’ performances.
In my memory the topic of my speech was "how to melt into the multi-national melting pot in America and to overcome the culture shock?" Although I was not quite satisfied with my performance, my teacher offered me a lot of encouragement. Only from this class, I felt my English speaking being helped substantially, and the interest of which being raised greatly.
5. Under a skyscraper blacks robbed my walkman with class recordings
While studying at UCLA in the first year there was an incident related to my learning English which made me so sad for a long time. Some black people robbed my walkman and cassette tapes with lecture recordings.
The incident was back to the recording of my class lectures.
Upon entering the Department of Psychology, Prof. Weiner assigned me two compulsory courses to begin with. One was Personality Psychology lectured by department Chairman Prof. Feshbach and the other was Social Psychology lectured by visiting Prof. Marilyn. These two were my favorite professors besides Weiner.
These two lectures looked into the mysteries of human nature from the perspectives of both individual and social and had attracted me the most. However, since the lectures were conducted with profound theories and various case-analyses in English, coupled with a large number of terms, I was overwhelmed. I knew such kind of difficulties, on the one hand, was due to my lack of social, cultural and psychological background in western societies, on the other hand, was more fundamentally caused by my poor English ability with both academic and everyday communication skills. I know that there was no other way around to step over this threshold but to work harder with my language.
Then how to do it? I had come up with a "stupid" way: when professors giving lectures in class, I record all of them, then after class listen to them once, twice...until I am able to better understand them. To do this, I bought a Sony walkman and some HQ TDK tapes on my part-time work wages. Whenever the professors started lecturing I would click on my walkman to record. Sometimes the American students sitting next to or in front of me were surprised and turned round looking at me, but I didn’t care. Between classes or after school, I would often walk on campus paths, or simply lie down on the green grasses under the school buildings, gazing at the blue sky and white clouds, while listening to my tapes.
At that time I lived in Chinatown nearby downtown LA. Every day after school, I took bus from Westwood and got off at the city center, then walked dozens of blocks to the east. By the time I returned to my residence it was usually after ten o 'clock at night.
These blocks were surrounded by rows of tall commercial buildings, but after 7 o 'clock in the evening, except a few night shops or clubs with lights, all fell into darkness. In the dim lights there could often be seen some tattered persons lingering behind shadows. These were so-called “homeless” and mostly blacks. They were relying on government relief for their livelihood, some begging for food or loose change from passengers, while some were hiding behind the begging but actually living on robbery and likely targeting at oriental singles.
One day after school I took a bus and got off at the main street in downtown, carrying a bag with school stuff to Chinatown. It was already ten o 'clock at night, most streets were deserted and dark, and only a few homeless could be seen scattering under the skyscrapers. When passing a street, there were two black guys coming across. The first walked over to me and said: "Hey man, change?"
I knew this was a term used by black beggars asking for money and usually by giving them a few coins or a dollar you could make them walk away. When I was just searching my pocket, all of a sudden the black guy dragged away my bag and pulled out a wallet, took out a $20 bill, dropped the bag to the ground and ran away. The other one followed him too, seemingly tried to get his share for the spoils. But since the former was running so fast that he couldn’t catch up with, so he returned to me, picked up the bag from the ground and started to search it again.
He quickly unzipped the bag, held it upside down and shook it skillfully. "Hua", among scattered books and other stuffs, a walkman and a few tapes could be seen clearly.
Those years, a high-quality walkman in the homeless could be traded for good money, and this black man certainly knew it, so he quickly picked up the walkman and tapes from the ground and rushed away too.
All of this had happened in only seconds and I could hardly respond. The 20 bucks was indeed nothing much but the robbery of my walkman and tapes, which I was relying on for my class study, was really a big loss.
After this incident, hurt by the feeling of loss I didn’t buy recorder or tapes any more, nor did I take any recording in class. But up to today I have still treasured and kept up one last remaining tape which I recorded from Social Psychology lectured by Prof. Marilyn nearly 30 years ago. Now when I take it out occasionally and play it on, my professor’s voice and the scene of lecturing can still be felt vividly.
At the same time, the incident had also given me experience on how to deal with a robbery and had offered me a rehearsal on how to physically and mentally survive a more serious and deadly attack years later.
6. Speaking English saved me from butcher’s knife
If I say that a person with good English communication skills will be able to show off fashion and education, will help find a good job, will be more likely promoted or get a pay raise in a career, will make more domestic and foreign friends, or will have better chance to go abroad for overseas studies, there should be no disagreement. But if I say speaking English could have saved a human life, perhaps no one would agree.
During my third year in the US, however, there was one incident that made me feel speaking English could be a matter of life and death. I had experienced another robbery and it was speaking English that had saved my ass from a butcher’s knife.
In the autumn of 1989, I moved from Pasadena to West Covina. Security in this area was not good but the rent was cheap. I went to UCLA class during the day and in evenings I worked for a Pizza Hut branch shop at Azusa Boulevard as a delivery guy.
One night, it had already passed ten o 'clock and I was going to get off from the work. Just then the telephone rang, a delivery order had come. The manager asked me to run one more time and I had no other choice. After a few minutes, I packed the pizza in a big case, started my Celica and then rushed into the streets. I wouldn't have expected that a death trap was there awaiting me.
It was a quiet neighborhood, and most residents probably had gone to bed. There was not a figure on the streets, only a few shimmering lights were flashing up from inside the house windows along the roadside.
My Celica stopped in front of a house down the street. I looked at the street No. and told myself: “Yes, here it is”. I parked the car across the street, got out and holding the pizza, walked on to the front steps. But I found the door light was off and the window facing the street was fully covered by the curtain with not even a glimmer of light seen. I stepped forward and knocked at the door but there was no answer. I knocked again and saw the window curtain move a little opening a small corner. Behind the corner I saw a Hispanic face show up and then disappear straight after.
“Fuck, what’s up?” I got a little impatient.
While I stood on the doorway wondering, a figure was coming from the corner of the house towards me. Looking at the size and shape, I could tell that he was a black man in 20s. Guessing he was the right person for the order, I said to him: "Hey sir, your order please!"
He had already walked over to me. Just at that moment, he suddenly struck down the pizza in my right hand with his left fist, followed by a heavy knock with his right fist straight at my left cheek. This sudden attack took me off guard and I fell down to the grass under the footsteps, the pizza scattering all over the ground.
At this time, from the corner of the house jumped out another black guy. They were both wearing tough shoes and kicked me hard all over my body. Then the first guy lowered himself down, put his left knee against my chest, one hand grasped my hair and his other hand pulled out a foot long butcher’s knife that he held against my neck with its sharp edge. Then the latter bent over me and searched my clothes. "Where's the money?" he whispered.
"Here it is!" From my pocket I pulled out a wallet and passed it over, it contained 30 dollars. The black guy dragged the wallet, took out the money and counted. "No… More, more! We want more money!" Obviously, this money couldn’t satisfy their appetites so they started striking me again and I let out a low but fierce cry.
Lying back down on the grass, I was feeling a sharp stabbing pain in the neck, but I couldn’t move at all. In the night sky, I could see only a few stars twinkling weakly. I felt the blood flowing from my nose and mouth, along my jaw and into ears, gurgling and dripping on to the grass.
"This guy got no money, we’d kill him!" I heard one of the blacks saying. Then, he pushed the blade forward against my neck, lowered his head and said to me: "Poor man, you saw us today, we goanna kill you!"
A terrible thought suddenly came across my mind: “They’re going to kill me! Is this the night, now, my last moment in the world?”
Triggered by such a thought, however, I had calmed down and the human survival instinct arose in me with all kinds of emergency reactive mechanisms instantly flashing before my mind, one after another. Benefitting from my profession in psychology, I had good personal character, and necessary knowledge and readiness as well on how to deal with such desperate situations. I knew I couldn't show any signs of resistance or intentions of the kind. I knew I must keep calm, must be rational and must make the assailants calm down and be rational too. At the same time I must also fulfill their desires and let them know I could make it right now. The only way to do all of these effectively was to keep communicating with them, both orally and psychologically!
Thinking of these, I had blurted out a bunch of English speaking:
"Calm down, sir!"
"Don’t do any stupid things, sir!"
"You can take everything you want, sir!"
"Save me and save yourself!"
These words really took effect at once. The sharp blade didn’t cut down and yelling tone also eased slightly. "What you have more?" One black guy asked maliciously.
"I’ve got a car, a Celica!" It suddenly emerged in my mind that I had a car, which might be the last piece of straw that could have saved me from sinking.
.
"Where’s it?”
"It’s over there!" I pointed to the car across the street.
"Where's the key?"
"In the car, go take it!"
"If no key, we kill you!"
Saying this, the black guy searching me immediately gave up and ran to the street. Moments later an engine starting sound came up.
"Come on, let's go!" A shout came from across the street. The other guy on me quickly removed the knife from my neck, stood up and ran into the darkness…
After a while, accompanied by a burst of engine acceleration, I heard the familiar sound of my Celica moving away in the distance. It was like I had just woken up from a nightmare. I rose to my feet from the grass, wiped out the blood from my mouth and cheek, heaved a long sigh of relief, and then, walked to the door of the house...
(End of Part One)
