#2 – Cai Laoshi

Any experience with first-year Chinese at the University of Chicago would be incomplete without Cai Laoshi (蔡老师). There is a facebook group about him called “The Cai Laoshi Fan Club / Support Group,” and I feel that pretty much sums up a lot of students’ relationships with the Cai. The group description reads, “Do you find yourself in a love/hate relationship with this man? Are you amazed by his efficiency but frustrated by losing .25 points on character mistakes?” Yes, yes, the answer is YES. 

We all love Cai Laoshi, and have an unexplainable urge to please him, yet he bothers us with the impossibility of the work he assigns. When I was in Chinese 101, I had my resident head, who has been studying Chinese for 6 years, look over my homework. He agreed that it was impossible, even for him. One time, just to test a theory, I had my Chinese-American roommate do my homework for me. I (she) got a 60. Something is clearly not right.

However, I have not yet touched upon why Cai Laoshi is such a baller. First, he went to Peking University (北京大学), the best university in China. He often reminisced about how they only served slop at the dining halls, but he endured it and even went back for seconds. During the Cultural Revolution, Cai Laoshi was sentenced to 10 years of heavy farm labor in the rural provinces. He clearly emerged even more baller than before. 

Some more specific examples:

1- He makes every first-year, I repeat first-year Chinese student film a movie in Chinese with 5-minute speaking time per student. Since there were only 2 students in my group, ours was 10 minutes long, but bigger groups made 20, 25 minute movies. These were then all entered into the Chinese Video Contest. I’ll try to post mine in this blog later.

2 – He constantly said “OK Hao.” This seems like no big deal, but the Chicago kids in my summer program were so used to saying it that we brought the phrase all the way to China, and pretty soon all of our classmates were using it. I also used it a lot with my Chinese host father, who didn’t speak any English. To this day I’m not sure if he knew what “OK” meant.

3 – He says exactly what he means. After a student works up the courage to speak out in Chinese class, he does not hesitate to pause heavily and then groan, “Mmmmmm, not very good.” He also told us constantly that the way we said things is simply “not the Chinese way.” 

4 – There are rumors around the Chinese department that he was tortured during the Cultural Revolution and is now not allowed to return to China. I know for a fact that he goes there on vacation (he bought us all Chinese dictionaries there), but maybe he’s just not allowed to live there.

5 – He wakes up at 4:30 AM every morning in order to drive an hour in to work (he lives in the suburbs) and snag that perfect parking spot directly outside of Cobb by 6 AM, before anyone else can get it. He also holds his office hours from 6:30 – 8:30 AM. I believe this was perfectly planned so that no one can complain about having 8:30 AM class five days a week.

6 – The way he explains things is brilliant. For instance, the word 同志 (tongzhi – comrade) now usually refers to a gay man. Or, as Cai Laoshi says, “It used to mean partners in battle, but now it means partners for life!”

Finally, Cai Laoshi has pretty much earned god-like status among all UChicago Chinese language students. While slightly intoxicated, Liz and Tom insisted that he must be “the tank man” from those Tian’anmen Square pictures, because “Doesn’t it look just like him?!” (The “tank man” here refers to the man standing in front of the tanks, preventing them proceeding.)

It does, in fact, look just like him.

Cai Laoshi is a baller, as proven by his proficiency at the game of life, and any first-year Chinese student can tell you so.