（【文繫中華】第65期）
作者：黃秉驥
認識劉老師是在美京華人活動中心，大約在1996年美京華人活動中心成立了一個社會服務小組，為地方社區的中外人士提供各項服務。中心的成人中文班就在那時候成立。由於當年蒙郡已有多所中文學校在教授中國家庭子女中文，所以中心中文班招生的對象就針對是外國的成年人，或是想學中文的華僑。但是要找到一位能用英語教外國人，也要對中文有深入的造詣的義工老師，不是一件容易的事。而劉老師是西南聯大外語系畢業生，也作過外文刊物資深編輯，也在學校教過學生，所以自然成了最佳人選。
劉老師不僅學識淵博而且教學嚴謹，態度認真。多年來每週五晚上6:30，她一定準時在她住處等她學生Larry Nix 來接她去上課，要上到晚上9:00 下課。當年上課地點是在 Tilden Middle School，要用中學生的小座位上課，劉老師當年已是七十多歲的長者，但是他從來都沒有抱怨過。
當年來學中文的學生有各式各樣的背景: 有年長的，有年輕的，有男生，有女生，有在國家標準局工作的科學家，有在政府工作的公務員，有東南亞來的華僑，有華裔音樂老師，有華裔醫生，有高中生，有要去大陸旅遊的遊客，幾乎每個學生都有不同的學習中文的目的。劉老師是有教無類，誨人不倦，不管那個學生都喜歡她，都對她非常尊敬，她贏得所有學生的愛戴。記得當年有一對很年輕的美國夫婦Barbara和David，他們來學中文的目的是想到中國大陸去教書，結果在中文班和劉老師學了三年中文，在劉老師的協助之下，在沈陽醫學院找到教英文的工作。讓他們在中國住了兩年，暢遊中國各地不說，還在大陸生一個小寶寶才回美國。一時傳為美談。劉老師的學生們一直對劉老師身存感激，念念不忘。雖然後來中心成人中文班結束了，但是在每年十一月劉老師生日時，有些學生還是會和劉老師一起歡聚，慶祝她的生日。這裡附上一張2016年慶祝劉老師生日的餐聚照片。
在我印象中劉老師是一位溫文典雅，永遠不老的長青樹。所以在上週一收到作協有關劉老師仙逝的消息後，甚感震驚和難過。我聯絡了幾個當年她中文班的學生，大家都表示不捨和懷念。這裡附上劉老師兩位學生Setha Lim和Sue Yen寫的紀念文章。Setha是中南半島的華僑，在政府工作，和劉老師學了很多年的中文。從劉老師那裡她接觸到華人社團參加了好些華人中心的活動。Sue是在印度出生的華僑，她是美國軍醫。她老家是湖北武昌，有一陣她約劉老師每週四中午餐聚，一方面學習中文，二方面認識中華文化。她特別感激劉老師告訴了她很多她故鄉湖北武漢的事蹟。
最後劉老師她老人家以一百零一歲高齡在安睡中仙逝，也是積德有福之人。我們祝福她乘仙鶴旅遊去，一路好走，我們都會懷念她！
黃秉驥 2020/4/30
In Memoriam
BY Setha Lim Honma (Zheng Xiao Fei)
I had been Liu Laoshi’ s student in her Chinese class so many years. Liu Laoshi was a kind, generous, and humor teacher. In her Chinese class, Liu Laoshi always cracked up jokes and funny stories to make her class more enjoyable. Liu Laoshi shared with her students of her life stories during the Culture Revolution war.
Liu Laoshi not only teaching Chinese class, she also taught English class for Chinese beginner, and volunteer to work in the library where she used to live. Liu Laoshi introduced me to join the Community Center activities on the weekend, which I have participated in Yuan Chi dance for over twenty years now.
My former Chinese classmates and I used to take Liu Laoshi out for annual dinner for her birthday. I also took Liu Laoshi out to celebrate the Cambodian, Lao and Thai New Year at the Thai Temple on Layhill Road, Silver Spring, MD.
I am grateful to know and have Liu Laoshi as my teacher and my guidance. I am sure all of her former Chinese Class students will miss Liu Laoshi.
In Memoriam
BY Sue Yen
In 2006, I met Liu Laoshi, a vibrant twinkle-eyed lady with an abundance of humor. She exuded a positive persona, despite experiencing hardship in communist China. She was my Mandarin teacher and my Chinese historian. I was in awe of her story telling, ecstatic that she spoke fluent English for my benefit. We decided to meet every Thursday over lunch. She picked the restaurants, explained the history of the dishes, and answered my gazillion questions on China. I am a foreign-born Chinese with gaps aplenty in my knowledge of China, gained in bits and pieces from my late parents of Hubei who walked out of China in 1937. My late parents told me about the Chinese Civil war and the Sino Japanese war. Hankou, Hanyang, and Wuchang were stuck in my head with many questions. As a teenager, with limited Hubei language competence, I interpreted these as three threads and the name Manchu went over my head. Liu Laoshi explained that these are famous cities now merged as Wuhan and that Manchu or Qing was the dynasty that fell at Wuchang. She further explained that these were major commercial cities in the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties which later were of prominent commercial and industrial interest to the Japanese, British, French, and Russians. This explained what my late dad was trying to share with me and it did not stir my interest then.
Wuhan and that Manchu or Qing was the dynasty that fell at Wuchang. She further explained that these were major commercial cities in the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties which later were of prominent commercial and industrial interest to the Japanese, British, French, and Russians. This explained what my late dad was trying to share with me and it did not stir my interest then.
I am forever grateful for her role in my circle of influence, learning from her, and sharing our music. Glen Miller was one of her favorites. She was one special person of extraordinary fortitude and courage. She may not be physically present today but her spirit lives on.
A verse by Sarah B Blackstone says it best:
Imagine if I was given one moment,
just a single slice of my past.
I could hold it close forever,
and that moment would always last.
In Memoriam
BY David Stramecky
I have studied Chinese for many years, and in many settings, but I have only had one “Laoshi.” Liu Laoshi taught Chinese in the broadest sense of the term, transcending mere linguistics, although she was certainly an expert in such matter. Instead, she taught her self, her way of existing and surviving. In those Chinese lessons she imparted where history had been inscribed into her being. I came to realize that the asides and digressions (which in my fascination, I came to actively elicit) were a piecemeal telling of her biography, variously prompted by the setting of a given textbook dialogue, or the morphology of a particular Chinese character. In the process of revealing herself, Liu Laoshi illuminated history.
In Memoriam
BY Barbara & David Stramecky
When we think of great historical figures, we usually call to mind the movers and shakers who fill the history books with their deeds, great or horrific. Yet we some- times meet less assuming persons who nevertheless embody history in their very being. Liu Yuanzi was the latter. Twenty-odd years ago, my wife Barbara and I were looking to take elementary Chinese lessons as preparation for what we hoped would be a year of teaching English in China. Barbara happened upon information that a Montgomery County Chinese community group was offering evening Chinese lessons for non-native speakers. That was how we met Liu Laoshi.
The class was made up of a diverse group of people, some whose names we remember, some we don’t. There was Frank and Setha, a Hakka couple who wanted to learn putonghua; John, a NIST scientist, who travelled frequently to Japan for work, and loved to learn language; a woman who was adopting a baby girl from China; Larry who was interested in China and others who came and went over the almost 3 years we were in the class. The first few lessons were mundane enough: greetings, hotels, taxis. There were moments of levity when one of us mispronounced some word or phrase in a way that caused her to hold her hand over her mouth while giggling, usually because it came out as something that was unrepeatable in English. However, as we got to know each other the lessons seemed to change. After Liu Laoshi learned that I had been taking evening Chinese courses for a few years at the NIH-FAES school from a Hong Kong-born teacher who taught only traditional Chinese characters, instead of the modern, simplified characters in our Beijing Language Institute textbook, she occasionally digressed into discussing the history, morphology, or other meanings of a given character. Finding out that I was especially interested in Chinese history, she would often speak of events or persons with which she had some experience or connection. I came to realize that many of her seeming digressions were autobiographical.
Liu Laoshi told us about her father, one of the last scholar-officials of the old imperial regime, but also a modernizer who educated his daughter, and wrote poetry that has since been recognized in Chinese literary history. She spoke of the large home in which she was reared, and dropped the names of famous persons in Chinese history whom she knew, or whose children she knew. We also became aware of her wide erudition. Barbara and John often liked to discuss, compare, and even debate the finer points of grammar, and that was how we became aware that Liu Laoshi had been a language teacher at the Tianjin Foreign Language Institute, having learned or taught French, Russian, and Japanese. A lesson that mentioned Kunming, caused her to recall that she first heard a dialect of Chinese that sounded like the twittering of birds when she joined the long procession of Chinese university students who retreated to from the north to the southwest when the Japanese invaded China. As a rich northerner, she found life in Kunming difficult. Sometimes her historical recollections were more painful, as in her telling of the difficult years of the Cultural Revolution, when she was banned from teaching and exiled to the basement of her apartment building, collecting rags and newspapers to survive, and educate her daughter. I came to realize that for Liu Laoshi, Chinese lessons were not mere linguistic exercises for which she could make a little money, rather the lessons were a teaching of Chinese culture and history through autobiography.
About two and a half years after Barbara and I began our lessons, we landed a gig teaching English at the China Medical University in Shenyang, Liaoning beginning in August 2000. We had only been there a few months when Liu Laoshi traveled to Tianjin. We arranged an overnight train trip to meet her for a whirlwind weekend. She secured a driver who took us around Tianjin so that she could point out various sites of historical or personal significance, from the old French Concession where she had once bought her fashionable clothes, to various old legations, mansions, and the Foreign Language Institute where she still had an apartment. We went to Nankai University, founded by her father-in-law, and there went by a statue of the university’s most famous graduate, Zhou Enlai, about whom she apparently had some complex feelings. Seeing her in her old hometown gave a materiality to her asides in Chinese class.
That winter, Barbara and I traveled to Beijing during the long Spring Festival vacation period. One wintry day at dusk we were wandering around Tiananmen Square when we happened to meet a Chinese art student who invited us to have some tea and to meet his teacher at a gallery south of the square. Of course, they really wanted us to buy some paintings. We really did not want to buy any of the undoubtedly overpriced paintings, but we happened to see a small painting of bamboo, that we both recognized as the proper gift for Liu Laoshi.
The last time we saw Liu Laoshi, before we left Maryland to move to Illinois, we went out to a dim sum restaurant with our almost 2 year old son, David. We were happy to have some time with her before we left. We ate and reminisced about our class and our time in China. She was delighted to see our son and that he enjoyed eating the dishes that she chose for us from the carts roaming the restaurant. Parting was difficult, because we were moving far away and we knew we probably would not meet again.
Liu Laoshi had lived through the vicissitudes of China’s long Twentieth Century, then immigrated to America. She had been blown by the wind, but like the ideal of the traditional Chinese scholar-official (perhaps like her own father) she had been bent in the winds of change, but she proved strong enough to endure and keep her humanity, her sense of humor, and her memories.