Zeng Guofan Experimental School is my alma mater for high school. It’s quite a serendipitous connection, as I was fortunate enough to be part of the first batch of students at Guofan High School. I studied in Class 1 and Class 4, and even served as the class monitor and vice-monitor in both classes. I was also the vice-president of the first student council.

When I went back last year, I noticed that the number of classes had increased from over 20 when we graduated to over 60. When Guofan High School first started, the high school department only had three classes. We all gathered on the second and fourth floors of the art building, living a carefree life with few worries. Occasionally, some distressing incidents would occur, but they would soon dissipate like smoke.

At the beginning of the first year, I remember our homeroom teacher was a renowned chemistry teacher from Shuangfeng No. 2 Middle School, named Xiao Muming. His claim to fame was that after all the students in our class had registered, he was rarely seen again, and a new homeroom teacher took over. I don’t have many impressions of Mr. Xiao, only that his phone number seemed to be 13873873838, which caused a lot of laughter when he first wrote it on the blackboard.

The new homeroom teacher was actually our designated Chinese teacher, Mr. Tan. He had the demeanor of a university homeroom teacher, handling most matters with ease. Occasionally, when things didn’t go his way, corporal punishment was the usual method of discipline. There were several instances where dorm mates were punished with 300 or more squats. One particular incident that left a deep impression on me involved a girl who wasn’t well-liked at the time. After her parents came to the school and there was a lot of commotion, the sound of slapping could be heard from behind the half-closed wooden door of the teacher’s office.

In the second semester of the first year, we got another homeroom teacher, a chemistry teacher (no wonder the term “chemistry teacher” always reminds me of something) - Mr. Lu. I vaguely remember a weekend shortly after he took over, when I and a few classmates were chatting in the classroom. We thought the two names seemed somewhat related, so later, under the encouragement of Fatty (I can’t remember Fatty’s name now, which is a bit embarrassing; he was also from Heye, and I even stayed at his house), I wrote “Lu XX VS Tan XX” on the blackboard. Since it was a metal blackboard and I used a metal tool to write, the marks were deeply etched and couldn’t be erased for a long time (during the college entrance exam, I coincidentally returned to this classroom and saw that the words were still there). Later, Fatty took the blame for me and was mistakenly called in for a lecture by the teacher, but I forgot what happened after that.

In the second year, after much persuasion from family, friends, teachers, and classmates, I resolutely chose the liberal arts track, which turned out to be the worst decision of my life, directly resulting in me spending four years in high school. Although choosing liberal arts doesn’t necessarily mean not getting into university, on the same baseline, the number of liberal arts admissions is less than a third of that for science. The significant disparity, coupled with the large number of liberal arts repeaters, made my failure to get into university almost inevitable (I don’t like to foolishly blame myself for subjective reasons; this issue is clearly societal, and constantly emphasizing personal problems is meaningless! Since the number of admissions is so low, if everyone works hard and strives, most people will still not get in, and that’s the main reason.)

The homeroom teacher situation in the second year was also quite tumultuous. At first, it was an old man - Mr. Zhao, who taught history and possibly Chinese. He was quite rigid, very serious, and liked to nitpick. Sometimes, he was overly critical of students’ studies, but to be honest, the academic potential of my class wasn’t particularly outstanding, and the teacher’s efforts often didn’t yield results. A month later, we got another homeroom teacher, a woman, Ms. He, who was promoted from the junior high school. Regardless of her abilities, her teaching attitude far surpassed that of the previous homeroom teachers.

In the third year, we got another homeroom teacher, Mr. Gong, who, if I remember correctly, transferred from Shuangfeng No. 6 Middle School. He was very capable in teaching and quite bold in handling issues. However, the third year was a troublesome time, as many students, feeling hopeless about their future, often lost their rationality. As a result, the class frequently experienced large-scale truancy and fights, but now it seems like those were just small hurdles in life.

During the three years of high school, due to the parallel teaching system, every class had both good students and so-called underachievers. The good students later went to Tsinghua University, Renmin University, and other prestigious schools, while some underachievers dropped out and went astray before graduation. Therefore, almost all the negative issues you can find on campus were encountered in our high school, and some were even magnified. It must have been tough for those homeroom teachers and teachers back then.

While in school, we privately discussed the English translation of the school’s name. On various official materials and uniforms, it was printed as “Zengguofan Experimental School,” which is a bit of a mix of English and Chinese and not entirely appropriate. The internationally accepted translation of the Chinese name should be “Tseng Kuo-fan Experimental School,” but the biggest obstacle is the general public, as even place names like Peking and Nanking are not widely recognized. So, I added the translation “Tseng Kuo-fan Experimental School” to the “Zeng Guofan Experimental School” entry on Baidu Baike again, and I wonder what the school leaders would think if they saw it.

Today, while searching for “Zeng Guofan Experimental School” on Baidu, I found a discussion on Rednet about the school’s supplementary classes. I’m not sure if it’s true, and I haven’t investigated it myself. From what I remember, my high school rarely had supplementary classes, and there were even instances where students actively requested them. In the first year, we had five days of classes each week, with two days off on weekends and an extra day off every half month. Although there were supplementary classes during the summer of the second year, they were mostly unrelated to the curriculum and were mostly courses independently offered by the school. As for the third year, supplementary classes were common. If the school has indeed resorted to relying on supplementary classes for revenue, as the netizens described, that would be truly tragic.