An 80s female translator was spoiled rotten by a rough and jealous man.

Chapter 323 The Hope Primary School in Jinsui Village

Meng Youyou stood in front of the gate of a primary school at the entrance of the village. The cement school road under her feet led straight in. Two rows of holly bushes on the side of the road were neatly trimmed, and the leaves were brittle from the sun and had a glossy green color.

She tilted her head back, raised one hand to her brow, blocking most of the sunlight, and focused her gaze on the metal lettering embedded above the arched school gate for a long time—"Youyou Girls' Hope Primary School".

The school's name, embossed in gold, shone blindingly in the blazing sun. Meng Youyou stood there, frozen in place, her brain churning as if the liquid inside her was vaporizing. She felt as if she were about to melt from the glare reflecting off those metallic characters.

It was during recess, and a grown man standing at the school gate quickly became the focus of all the children in the school.

First, a few younger children timidly peeked out, looked around, and then ran back to call their friends, as if they had discovered something amazing. Then, more and more small figures crowded around the iron gate, chattering and jostling together.

Their little hands clung tightly to the slender iron bars, their faces pressed against the gaps in the fence. Some stood on tiptoe, trying to get a better look, while others clung to their companions' shoulders, wanting to see the "fairy's" true face. All their round eyes turned toward Meng Youyou, filled with curiosity and curiosity.

Meng Youyou looked at the little kids through the iron gate and gave them a gentle and friendly smile. The next second, a slightly taller girl, who seemed to be the "leader" of the group, shouted in a clear voice, "Sister, are you a fairy?"

Immediately afterwards, a barrage of questions rushed toward her: "Sister, are you a fairy?" they asked her vying to answer.

Hearing this, Meng Youyou's smile widened. She pulled her suitcase over, squatted outside the iron gate, and chose the girl who had been the first to speak, asking in a soft voice, "Is your teacher here?"

...

After filling out the information, Meng Youyou came out of the teaching building and passed by the grass next to the playground. A group of students from a lower grade class were having a music class. Judging from their average height, they were either first graders or second graders.

The students sat cross-legged in a semi-circle, and in the center sat a young female teacher in a white sweater, holding a wooden guitar. She played the guitar and led the children in singing.

A melodious song drifted into Meng Youyou's ears. The pronunciation wasn't one she could understand; it sounded like a minority language. The opening melody was quite familiar: "...Shi nau ga ai shinghkrung masat na hpang sha lu ai mu hta hpyi lu na re."

Drawn by her will, Meng Youyou involuntarily lifted her foot and walked towards the creators of the song. Her steps were very light, and the students were singing so enthusiastically that no one noticed her arrival.

The female teacher in the center of the circle noticed her immediately, glancing at her gently and smiling slightly as a greeting. The two had met briefly in the office half an hour earlier—Meng Youyou was being interviewed in the corner, while the female teacher was preparing her lesson at a desk by the window.

Meng Youyou quietly chose a seat on the outer edge of the circle and joined the music class without making a sound.

Perhaps it was the shadow cast from behind onto the grass that covered the toes of her shoes. The little girl with two pigtails noticed someone behind her, turned her face, and opened her pink little mouth wide.

Meng Youyou quickly put her index finger to her lips and made a "shh" gesture.

Seeing this, the little girl blinked her big, dark eyes, then cupped her hands into a semi-circle and put them to her mouth as a megaphone. She whispered, "Sister, we're learning to sing. Do you want to learn with us?" The little girl smiled and waved the lyrics paper in her other hand at her.

“Okay!” Meng Youyou sat closer, leaning her head in as she reached out a hand to hold one side of the lyrics paper, just like the little girl.

Staring at the lines of strange characters on the lyrics sheet, even though there were explanations of the Chinese characters below, Meng Youyou still had no way of knowing which line they were singing.
Strangely, he could easily keep up with them, humming familiar tunes without the slightest hesitation, as smoothly and naturally as eating and drinking.

As she sang, without any warning, she suddenly remembered… “One day”—Meng Youyou couldn’t quite remember the exact reason, but anyway, her temper flared up suddenly, and she started picking on him for no reason: “Huo Qingshan, we’ve been together for so long, and I’ve only heard you say ‘I love you’ once. What kind of boyfriend are you!”

"More than once," Huo Qingshan said with certainty.

"Don't try to fool me! How could it be more than once?"

At this point, the children reached the climax of their singing, their voices becoming increasingly clear and bright:

“Mungang hpe lajang ai hta shana，nga ne hpe mung. (Beautiful girl, I love you.)

ne hte shapro ai lajang hpe nga hte hpo nna hkyem ai. (Your smile makes me intoxicated.)
nga mungdang ne hte mungmung hte chye ai. (My heart keeps beating for you)
Laja ai hta shana, nga ne hpe mung.
(My lovely girl, I love you)

......"

"Fairy sister, can you sing this song?" The little girl didn't know her name, but she knew that her friends all secretly called her that, saying that a fairy sister had come to the school gate.

Meng Youyou smiled and said, "I can sing it. My sister's boyfriend used to sing this song to me all the time."

"Is your boyfriend very handsome?"

"It's so-so," Meng Youyou suddenly felt particularly reluctant to praise him.

"So what kind of person is he?" the child thought simply. Since he wasn't very handsome, but was able to win the heart of such a beautiful older sister, he must have some other extraordinary qualities.

"Him... When I first met him, he was very fierce. He scolded me severely and told me not to make decisions on my own. But he was the one who loved to make decisions on his own the most. He always made decisions on his own and never asked for my opinion."

“He has many flaws. His job is always dangerous. He always makes me cry. I always feel very wronged.”

"Fairy sister, if he bullies you, you shouldn't be with him anymore. You're so pretty, you can find another boyfriend!" the child said, speaking up for her.

Meng Youyou stared intently at the words on the paper, then gently shook her head. "My sister has met many people who are more witty, gentler, and more eloquent than him, but none of them are him."

As long as you stay away from him, you stay away from happiness.

The little girl blinked her big, innocent eyes at her, her watery pupils filled with questions, not understanding why she should choose a boy who was bad in every way as her boyfriend.
...

After class, Meng Youyou picked up her textbook and stepped out of the classroom through the front door. A crisp breeze carrying the scent of grass and trees wafted into her nostrils. The Hope Primary School's teaching building was an open-air corridor, allowing sunlight to stream through. The buildings were not tall, and each floor had a railing more than a meter high on the outside, reaching up to her chest. From there, one could see the terraced fields and mountains in the distance.

She subconsciously looked up at the sky. Having lived here for some time, this was the umpteenth time she had sincerely marveled at how incredibly blue the sky was in the outskirts of Fanzhou. She hadn't walked far when a small hand gently tugged at her clothes, and a soft, sweet voice came from behind her: "Teacher Meng."

Hearing the voice, Meng Youyou turned around and saw her class representative holding up a workbook and pointing to a multiple-choice question, asking, "Teacher Meng, why is the answer to this question A?"

Meng Youyou applied for a short-term teaching position and stayed at Youyou Hope Primary School as a volunteer.

When she first started teaching, whenever she walked into a classroom, she would introduce herself to the students: "Hello, everyone, my name is Meng Youyou. You can call me Teacher Meng from now on."

As she finished speaking and wrote the final vertical stroke on the blackboard with chalk, Meng Youyou turned around, and a commotion of whispers arose in the classroom. Occasionally, a bold student would raise their hand and stand up, exclaiming in surprise, "Teacher Meng, your name is exactly the same as our school's name!" Their tone was as if they had discovered a new continent.

Meng Youyou would always reply with a smile, "Oh, what a coincidence!"

During recess, students were playing around in every corner of the corridor. Meng Youyou looked around, first bending down to take the English workbook that Duoduo handed her, and then pulling her to the end of the corridor.

The Hope Primary School has only one teacher's office. Of course, there aren't many teachers at the school right now, so it's not too crowded since everyone shares one office.

Meng Youyou spread her workbook on the table, her eyes quickly scanning the short passage—the cloze test question 4, titled "A Trip to Lijiang": "Last summer vacation, my family and I went to Lijiang. We took a train there and arrived at night. The next morning, we ____ early and visited the Old Town."

A. got up B. get up C. gets up D. will get up
After reading the question, Meng Youyou thought for a moment and then gently guided her, "Duoduo, the teacher talked about it in the last class. The key to choosing the form of a lexical verb is to look at two things. Do you remember what they are?"

Duoduo scratched her chin and thought for a moment, "It depends on the time words and... the appearance of other verbs before and after in the sentence."

“That’s right!” Meng Youyou nodded with a smile, her fingertips tracing the sentence to the blank. “When we do tense questions, we can’t just focus on the options themselves; we have to consider the ‘signals’ in the context.”

Now, read the sentences before and after the blank in their entirety. While reading, pay special attention to these two signals—which time word it should be, and what the other action words look like. Read slowly and observe carefully, okay?

Duoduo lowered her head, her lips moved slightly before she began to read softly, her voice so low it was as if she were afraid of disturbing anyone, each word broken up stiffly: "Last—sm—vken..."

The pronunciation problems were obvious. Short vowels were completely confused, and the voiced consonant /z/ was pronounced as the voiceless consonant /s/. It was clear that there was a lack of correct understanding of basic phonetics. In addition, there was a strong regional accent.

As Meng Youyou listened, her brows furrowed slightly involuntarily. She had long been aware of the phonics proficiency of the students at Hope Primary School, initially assuming that only the middle grades had significant weaknesses, but she hadn't expected that the situation in the upper grades was equally worrying.

What made it even more difficult for Meng Youyou was that Duoduo, as the English class representative in the fifth grade, had excellent test scores, but her spoken English pronunciation was so problematic, which showed how serious the problem was.

...

Teacher Miao waited by the main road at the entrance of the village, watching as a white and green taxi drove in from afar and finally came to a stop at her feet.

The car door opened, and Meng Youyou got out of the back seat, carrying a huge cardboard box in her arms. She turned to her and called out, "Teacher Miao, can you give me a hand? There's a lot of stuff, and I can't carry it all by myself." She gestured with her chin toward the trunk, "There are two more boxes of books in the trunk."

"What did you buy? So much stuff?" As the two walked side by side carrying boxes toward the school, Teacher Miao couldn't help but ask.

"It's mainly some audio English books, and a few cassette recorders." Meng Youyou struggled to walk while carrying the large boxes, and her voice was a bit strained as she spoke: "I've been focusing on the spoken English of students in each grade these past two days, and I've found that everyone's pronunciation generally has problems."

“Learning English shouldn’t just focus on reading and writing; listening and speaking are also very important. Otherwise, they will be at a disadvantage compared to children from other places when they go on to junior and senior high school.”

“When I got back to my dorm that night, I did some research online. It included everything from basic phonetics to all the words in the primary school curriculum, as well as audiobooks and picture books for further learning.” Meng Youyou patted the box in her arms. “I hope it will come in handy and help create a better language environment.”

"You're really something!" Teacher Miao praised sincerely, "It's admirable that you're only staying here for two months, yet you still care so much about the children."

The two of them, panting and out of breath, carried the items to the small library on campus. Neither of them had time to drink water, and they immediately began sorting and organizing them. They both had classes in the next period, so time was of the essence.

Moreover, Meng Youyou was looking forward to getting everything arranged as soon as possible so that she could take her students to the library in the next class and teach them how to use these audiobooks step by step.

The bookshelves in the library were filled with a dazzling array of books, a considerable number of them. While tidying them up, Meng Youyou casually remarked, "Our school has quite a lot of extracurricular reading materials, and the variety is comprehensive!"

Teacher Miao continued, "That's because the principal of Hope Primary School is a famous writer who loves reading. Most of the books in this room were bought with her own money. It's actually her personal study, but Principal Pearl opened it up to the students as a reading room."

"Principal Pearl?" Meng Youyou asked in confusion, her hands slowing down a beat.

“Yes.” Teacher Miao affixed the written label to the spine of the picture book and explained, “Pearl is our principal’s pen name, have you heard of it?”

Meng Youyou searched her memory for a few seconds, and then said in surprise, "Didn't she win a domestic literary award? I remember when I was in high school, her articles were on a reading comprehension test."

"Yes, that's her." As she spoke, Teacher Miao placed a stack of labeled books onto the bookshelf. "Her actual surname is Zhou, but when I was in school, my classmates all called her Principal Pearl or Teacher Pearl, and over time it just stuck. Everyone got used to calling her that."

Teacher Miao is half a year older than Meng Youyou. She was born in a village near Jinsui Village and attended this Hope Primary School as a child. She knows the ins and outs of the school much better than Meng Youyou. Last year, she signed up for the Western China Development Program and chose to return to the village to teach for a year before going back to graduate school next year.

Meng Youyou had previously heard her share some of her childhood memories. For example, when she was in school, Youyou Hope Primary School was actually a primary and secondary school, with an additional junior high school section. Later, in order to benefit more out-of-school girls throughout the county, the principal advocated moving the junior high school section to the county seat.

And, as soon as Meng Youyou had established a little rapport with the other party, she couldn't wait to ask the question she cared about most: "What is the origin of the Jingpo folk song you taught in music class?"

"There's no particular connection between us. I just remember that this song was the first song my teacher taught us in class when I was in elementary school, so I remember the tune very clearly. I thought it sounded nice, so I taught it to the children."

That was their first conversation. By the end, they had become somewhat more familiar with each other, and Teacher Miao couldn't help but exclaim in amazement, "You know what, you and our school are really destined to meet, even having the same name!"

Meng Youyou smiled gently and said, "I think so too."

(End of this chapter)