Summary: Have we mentioned that we love San Mao? A precocious child who read Dream of the Red Chamber at age five, San Mao grew into one of the best and most widely-traveled writers of her generation, attending university in Germany, living for a long time in the Western Sahara with her Spanish husband, and eventually traveling as far as Chile while publishing travel journals, autobiographical essays and reflective letters which remain some of the most charming pieces of writing produced by anyone in her generation. And this selection? What we have for you today is an excerpt from the book 背影, a collection of reminisces in which San Mao looks back at her experiences as a child in Nanjing. This particular essay concerns a run-in she had with a teacher in China's traditional education system....
