Memories of a Mentor

Teacher Gui – Gui Biqing (桂碧清) – was my Chinese teacher during the years I lived in Shanghai. When I first met her, in 1997, she lived in a tumbledown old house in a quiet lane in the French concession. Twice a week, I would exit the cacophony of cars and bikes on Eternal Happiness Street and enter the skein of ageless alleys where laundry flapped languidly on bamboo poles, katydids sang fiercely from tiny woven cages, and itinerant hawkers called out wares and services in the sibilant, sonorous tones of Shanghainese; one time I even saw a man selling live snakes from a squirming burlap bag.