Edinburgh, a fairy-tale world

During the short day and a half I spent in Edinburgh, I used a day pass to ride various buses through the streets and alleys by the ancient castle under Calton Hill and along Princes Street, where in the misty rain I felt as if I had entered a fairy-tale world. In the autumn of 1986, I first arrived at the University of Edinburgh's English department to study for a master's degree in modern linguistics. This is a prestigious European university with a history of over four hundred years and alumni like Darwin. At that time, my English proficiency was limited to listening, speaking, reading, and writing, and I knew very little about modern linguistic theory. It was at the University of Edinburgh that I gained the ability to analyze language style and was exposed to the works of some famous British and Irish writers. Among the many teachers, the one who left the deepest impression on me was Professor Black, who drove from Glasgow twice a week for her tutorial-style classes. Now, 38 years have passed, and I have long since taken to the lectern at foreign universities, explaining different styles, rhetorical contexts, and rhetorical analysis to my students. This brief return to Edinburgh was not only a return to the place where I had lived for a year, to see the familiar streets, castles, and statues of famous people on the sidewalks, but also a reminiscence of my busy student life, absorbing knowledge like a sponge. In the mid-1980s, China was still very poor. I remember that at that time, China's foreign exchange earnings were mainly from exporting shoes, selling soy sauce, and small commodities. There were very few Chinese students abroad. I recall that once on Calton Hill, a local Scot asked me if I came from Tokyo. I encountered similar assumptions in Paris on a Seine river cruise, where I was also mistaken for Japanese. At the same time, I also remember that Chinese people, including Chinese students abroad, suffered quite a bit of discrimination. I once met a Scottish father and son on the street; the boy, about five or six years old, pointed at me and said, 'He is a China man,' while the father, holding the child's hand, remained silent. In English, this term is equivalent to pointing at a black person and calling him a 'black X.' Even worse, at a celebration of the friendship between Xi'an and Edinburgh held at the city hall, a Scot publicly mocked a young pianist from Shanghai, saying he played the piano as if he were hitting the keys with bricks, and the distinguished guests below laughed without care. A professor from Taiwan who taught in the East Asian department at the university mocked the mainland Chinese students' use of words, saying, 'Isn't the term 'lover' that you use just another word for mistress?' Nearly 40 years have passed, and China has risen. There are now large numbers of Chinese students and tourists all over the world, and the era of casually belittling and mocking Chinese people and China is gone forever. As the afternoon progressed, the fog grew thicker, and the drizzling rain added a lot of mystery to the city. Some pedestrians opened their umbrellas, but many more seemed to enjoy walking in the misty Edinburgh. People slowed down, some even sat on the benches at the edge of the Princes Street Gardens lawn, admiring the beautiful rain-soaked scene before them. And in my heart, there was an impulse; since I had already entered this fairy-tale world, why not let myself blend into this beautiful scene and become another splash of color?