Lesson In A Walk Home In China

回家路上

A powerful wave drags an elderly man out to sea. I stop playing in the sand. I race to the water, swim out, and grab his arm. Battling the tide, we finally make it back to shore. As a nine- year-old, I save a life.

巨浪把老人卷向大海。我停止沙滩游戏，冲到水边，游向大海。我抓住他的胳膊，与波涛搏斗，直到我们最终返回岸上。在九岁，我救了一个人的命。

The grateful man offers me a dinner, but I politely refuse. The radiant feeling flourishing in my chest is enough of a reward. This moment, while visiting Mom’s side of the family in Barbados, lives as one of the most significant experiences of my life—until I step into a small, dusty classroom in Beijing.

那人感激涕零，要请吃饭，但我婉言谢绝。我的胸中绽放着光芒四射的感受，这已经是对我的无上奖励。那一刻发生在我去巴巴多斯走姥姥家的旅程中，它成为我人生中最重要的经历，直到我踏进北京的一间落满尘土的小教室。

As a sophomore, I spend a week teaching English at the Dandelion School. Entering the classroom, I face thirty beaming smiles. They stand in my honor. When I ask them to sit down, they look puzzled.

十年级那年，我在蒲公英学校做过一周的英语支教。刚进教室，迎面看见三十张灿烂的笑脸。他们起身行礼。当我请他们坐下，他们显得不知所措。

I expected dedicated students, and witnessing their hunger to learn was powerful. I asked them to name animals who shared the same first letter as their own. They sped through a five-minute exercise in a mere minute. I engaged them with my childhood animal fables. They were infatuated, taking notes and asking questions throughout my lessons. To these children, knowledge they did not possess, no matter how simple, was well worth acquiring.

我期待学生们专心致志，希望见证他们如饥似渴的学习动力。我让他们说出跟自己名字中首写字母相同的动物。他们仅用一分钟就迅速地完成五分钟的练习。当我讲述童年听过的动物寓言，他们听得津津有味，还在整节课堂上认真地做笔记和提问题。对于这些孩子来说，只要是不懂的知识，无论多么简单，都值得好好学习。

Tai Feng, a Dandelion student, invited me home on the last day of class. It was a twenty-minute walk and the closer we came to his impoverished rural community, I noticed something—he knew his neighbors, from the kids playing soccer to the elders in conversation. As I sat with his family in his living room, I recognized that his community was a big part of his drive for a promising future.

冯泰（音译）是蒲公英学校的学生。在支教的最后一天，他邀请我去家里玩。我们在路上走了二十分钟，快到那个贫困的乡村社区时，我注意到一件事情，即冯泰认识每一位邻居，从踢足球的小孩，到聊天的老人，他都认识。等我在客厅坐下跟他家人聊天的时候，我意识到冯泰的社区是他为美好未来奋斗的重要动力。

This experience triggered thoughts of my detachment from my own community. Ever since I was a little boy, I felt estranged from my Harlem neighborhood. Rather than playing basketball in the warm summer sun, I preferred to read a book in the cool atmosphere of my room. This alienation only grew stronger as my few neighborhood friends attended local schools; I trekked to the Upper East Side to a school where I made very close friends.

那次经历让我想起我跟自己社区的疏离感。从我小的时候，我就感觉自己跟哈莱姆社区有点疏远。我宁愿在凉快的房间里读书，也不愿意到温暖的夏日下打篮球。等屈指可数的邻居朋友进入社区内的学校，这种疏离感变得更加强烈。后来，我转到上东区的学校，在那里交到很多密友。

Like the Dandelion students, I possess a hunger to learn. Yet in doing so, my estrangement from my community has grown. My commute home differs so much from Tai’s. After a bus ride, I pass strangers—groups of kids walking home or going to eat. Their faces are unfamiliar.

像蒲公英的学生们一样，我也有如饥似渴的学习动力。但在这样做的时候，我离自己的社区越来越远。我回家的情形跟冯泰截然不同。我先乘坐巴士，然后经过很多陌生人，他们是成群结队的孩子，有些往家走，有些去吃饭。他们的面孔都很生疏。

Experiencing Dandelion inspired me to volunteer at StreetSquash, a Harlem program that exposes youth to squash and academic enrichment. I volunteered as a math and English tutor. At StreetSquash, the drive to learn resembled what I saw at Dandelion. This desire was reinforced when Brandon, a gifted writer who struggled with his honors math homework, broke down crying after struggling on a problem for thirty minutes. His tears reflected his drive to master the material.

蒲公英的支教经历启发我成为“街头壁球”的志愿者。这个哈莱姆的项目旨在丰富青少年的壁球和学术活动。我自愿辅导数学和英语。在“街头壁球”活动中，我看到跟在蒲公英相似的学习动力。这种学习动力在布兰登身上得到强化体现，当这位天才作家苦苦思索半个小时也没有解出一道“荣誉数学”作业难题时，他不禁放声大哭。他的眼泪反映了他想掌握这些教学内容的强大动力。

As I got to know Brandon and the other students, I saw that they came from different parts of Harlem and were also detached from their communities. Unlike Tai, their academic pursuits dictated that they become strangers to many of their neighbors. Like me, they were foreigners to public playgrounds. Unlike me, some became strangers to their classmates while resisting peer pressure in neighborhood schools.

随着我逐渐地理解布兰登和其他学生，我发现他们来自哈莱姆的不同地方，但也都跟社区有疏离感。跟冯泰不同，他们的学术追求决定他们成为很多邻居眼中的陌生人。像我一样，他们不去公共体育场地。跟我不一样，有些学生一边承受着社区学校里同龄人的压力，一边成为同班同学眼中的陌生人。

How do I improve my community if detachment is a byproduct of pursuing my dreams? As a small but important step to answering that question, I’m getting to know my students at StreetSquash, developing connections that are stronger than my ties to the man whose life I saved at age nine. Even his name eludes me. If I passed him on a road in Barbados, I may not even recognize him. Maybe I should have said yes to his offer to pay for dinner. Maybe I would have acquired a lesson as powerful as what I learned during the walk home with Tai.

如果疏离感成为我追求梦想的副产品，那么我如何去改善我的社区呢？为了回答这个问题，我迈出不大却很重要的一步。我开始去理解“街头壁球”活动中的学生们，并且跟他们培养更加紧密的联系，而不像九岁救人以后就各分东西，甚至他的名字都想不起来。如果我跟他在巴巴多斯的路上擦肩而过，我可能都把他认不出来。或许，我本来应该让他请吃饭。或许，我本来可以获得影响深远的人生经验，就像我跟着冯泰在回家路上学到的一样。

Roland Brewster（中文名“罗罗”）毕业于纽约曼哈顿道尔顿学校（Dalton School），被耶鲁大学录取。