by Yuan Changming

Unable to video or even audio-chat with Hua on WeChat, you had to resort to writing to re-present your old self to her after you two had lost each other for almost half a century. In so doing, you hoped to reach her heart and soul both across the vast Pacific and beyond the Pandemic. 

  In your eighth long diary-email, you began by recalling how, right before the millennium celebrations, you established “Ming’s mobile tutorial center,” as suggested by a successful businesswoman-student from Singapore. But before long you found this business model too demanding: every day, you had to teach at least eight hours and travel almost three hundred kilos, eating two meals while driving on highways or side streets, never having enough time to go to the washroom, for every parent would protest if you embezzled a single minute paid for the class time. To reduce your workload and maintain your income level, you decided to raise your hourly rate substantially and tutor only those students individually whose parents could afford to hire you. Among hundreds of them you had worked with, you believed some were particularly worth mentioning to Hua.  

[January 18, 2022]

The first student on your list was Charles, a smart and hardworking boy from a superrich Korean family living in West Vancouver. During the interview, his mother proudly told you that they only hire a PhD holder as his tutor for every subject. In the following month, she complained several times to you that if her son “failed to get into an ivy university, his billionaire father would divorce” her, but she promised you that if through your effort Charles could get a high score on his SAT and English provincial exams, she would give you a diamond ring as a gift for your wife; however, this generous offer made you feel more offended than motivated as she had probably calculated, for as a professional tutor, you would work just as hard with her son to your best abilities even without any extra incentive, as Confucius himself would do. When preparing the application material for Charles, you suggested the family asking South Korea’s president to write a reference letter as their family friend, and another internationally well-known charity leader to write a second one. When he finally received his acceptance letter from Duke, his mother formally invited you and your wife for a grand celebration party in one of the most expensive restaurants in the whole country, but you turned down her invitation politely, because you were too busy teaching other students to attend the event. As you had cynically presumed, there was of course no more mentioning of the diamond ring on her part.  

Anthony was a unique boy in many ways. His parents were among the richest business owners in Hong Kong, but unlike most others with similar family grounds, he was never a bratty boy; rather, he had always been an outstanding and self-demanding student in Eric Hamber, one of the best public schools in British Columbia. Afraid that as a new immigrant, his English was not good enough, his mother hired a double PhD holder, a former physics professor at UBC, to be his tutor in charge. When it was time for Anthony to take the SAT examination, the tutor tipped his hand by asking the family to pay a basic amount of a quarter million US dollars in cash so the student could score at least 2,300 points out of 2,400 and, for every point more, the family should pay an extra of ten thousand dollars. After a serious discussion, the family realized that the whole thing was not so much a business scam as a blackmailing scheme based on cheating or criminal teamwork. Finding themselves deeply trapped by then, Anthony’s parents paid fifty thousand dollars in cash as the security deposit, but the son resolutely refused to go ahead after knowing the truth. Instead, he came to you for real and legitimate help. Though he did make impressive progress within a short period of time, it was, alas, too late to prepare well for a really high score. Luckily, he was accepted by Vanderbilt. As he kept outperforming all his competitors along the way, he eventually got his PhD from UC Berkeley. His diligence, self-reliance and moral integrity made him one of the few students that you were most proud of as a professional tutor.  

Bill was a nice and handsome Japanese young man pursuing his master’s degree in architecture at UBC. Though his family owned many restaurants in Japan and across North America, he refused to get any financial help from his parents; instead, he worked part time to support his life and studies in Vancouver. He came to you because there were many “unacceptable syntactic and stylistic errors” in his thesis. He told you that he was a poor self-sponsored student who couldn’t afford to hire a professor or a professional copyeditor to help him. Knowing that those he had approached charged him one hundred dollars an hour, you offered to do the job for him at a significantly lower rate. When you worked on his thesis, you found that most errors resulted from his confusion between MLA style and APA style. After six working hours, you assured him that his thesis would be officially accepted without any problem. When he passed his oral examination successfully in time, he was so happy he recommended you to every Japanese student who he knew was in need of help. 

Henry was a gorgeous and well-bred boy, whose family was among the richest in Taiwan. Though he did well with all other subjects in high school, he simply hated English and constantly failed the course. This was no surprising, since he was already a ninth grader when he moved to Canada. Knowing his passion about cars, his mother motivated him by offering to buy him the newest model of a BMW the day he scored high enough for UBC on the TOEFL examination, a Porsche the day he passed the LPI test and meet the language requirement for the university, and a Maserati the day he completed 100-level English courses as required of all majors. Unlike most other parents who used similar incentive strategies but seldom honored their promises, Henry’s mother meant whatever she had said to her son, word for word. Even after Henry was well on his way in his second year at UBC, his father advised him to continue coming to spend two hours with you every week for another term, saying to him, “They intellectuals would talk about things very different from what you hear at home. Remember the ancient Chinese proverb, ‘A single conversation with a learned man is worthier than ten years’ study of books.’”

  By contrast, James was a typical spoiled son from another superrich Taiwanese family. He was by no means stupid though somewhat slow. With all his bills refundable by his parents, he had a net sum of five thousand dollars as his monthly allowance, much more than a full English professor could earn in the first few years of the twenty-first century. While the boy spent all his time and money on the newest computer games and various kinds of girlfriends, he begged you to do all the school work for him. For as long as seven years, he insisted on hiring you as his “all-purpose tutor.” With a perfect understanding of his character and potentialities, his father told you several times to be patient with the son, since the family never expected him to do really well in any school, but they did need him to get a decent university degree to take over the family business once he left campus. Before he graduated from University of Simon Fraser, his sister followed suit and hired you for another two years. To make sure to pass her last course, she even bribed you with a handsome sum of cash to answer the three essay questions online for the final examination while you were visiting your parents in China.  

Unlike James’s sister, Jessica did very well on her own at SFU Beedie School of business, but she had much difficulty writing a research paper acceptable to her professors. On a Friday evening in April, she came with two of her classmates to plead with you to write a term paper for her within three days. You told the Taiwanese girl to pay an extra fee, since you had to cancel at least two tutorial sessions with other students. To this reasonable requirement, Jessica readily nodded her agreement and gave you a cash deposit on the spot, but her two friends from Hong Kong said that they would prefer to purchase their term papers from another native-speaker tutor, because he never charged such extra fees. About a month later, there was an interesting news article in local daily newspapers, reporting that as many as eleven Beedie students were caught cheating because their term papers were basically the same, except for some different wording in the opening and concluding paragraphs. One early afternoon, you received a call from Jessica, who thanked you for your good help with her essay. “By the way,” she added, “you still remember the other two girls going to your place with me? They both were among the eleven students, and their student status got suspended for cheating!”

[January 20, 2022]

Since writing term papers for students was so challenging a job few tutors could take, you began to work more and more as a ghost writer. By authoring term papers for a wide range of academic subjects, which included English, history, literature, art history, sociology, psychology, political studies, Asian studies, geography, education and organization behaviour, within a restricted timeframe for varying lengths, you could stay at home most of the time while making no less money. 

On a mid-summer morning in 2008, you’re tutoring a college student in your own house when you got a message from an unknown student with an Italian name, which read: “Am Harry’s pal at NYU Stern, now writing an in-class essay. Could U compare 2 fotos in 500 wds within 1.5 h? Money is NP. Pls reply ASAP. TIA” To challenge yourself, you responded promptly: “OK! 700 USD?” A few minutes later, you saw the full amount in your bank account as well as the photos of two ancient roman buildings. On the following weekend, you received a phone call from Harry, a straight A student whose parents owned one of the most prestigious law firms in Taiwan. “How have you been, my tutor?” he asked. 

“Same old, same old,” you answered. 

“The Italian guy’s my best friend at Stern. He wants me to thank you for your great help. He got a B minus for the essay, and you should really have charged him much more, for his father’s a major shareholder of the Goldman Sachs.” 

Yes, you really should have, but the most special student you had ever helped was no other than Janet, whose father was an internationally high-profiled businessman from mainland China, often referred to as the world’s richest teacher by profession. Intelligent, pretty, respectful, understanding, talented, and hardworking as well as self-demanding, Janet was a top performer in York House, the best private high school of the province, but she didn’t enjoy her school life at all. Her celebrity father hired many PhDs to help her, but she said that she found you more helpful than any others. You thought that you could develop a friendship with her father, since you two had so many things in common, yet every time you happened to meet him in his house, he kept a distance from you as if you were one of those approaching him for some hidden purposes. Seeing how her papa tended to give you a cold shoulder, Janet felt as resentful as embarrassed, telling you not to care about his cynicism. After much discussion with you, she finally chose to apply to U Penn instead of Harvard as her father had hoped or even pre-arranged. That might be one of the reasons why her father didn’t like you, you thought, but how could you have known beforehand that there was a failure of communication between father and daughter?  

Last but not least, you mentioned Vincent, also a student from mainland China, because he, more than anyone else, had given you the hardest time in your entire teaching career. Though a nice and well-behaved kid, he was particularly slow if not really mentally-retarded. To help him correct a single small mistake, like the misuse of a semicolon or the failure to capitalize the first letter of a new sentence, you had to remind him literally hundreds of times. While everything you said to him went in one ear and out the other, his mother had both high confidence in, and great expectations of, him, constantly urging you to encourage him to aim at Harvard. Even after he had been fired by as many as half a dozen tutors, Vincent kept refusing to improve in any sense and drove you nuts at every session. For dozens of times you wanted to fire him as well, but with Confucius’s teaching in mind about “providing education to everyone without discrimination,” you found it hard to do such an unprofessional thing. Besides, his parents had always been considerate and generous to you; for example, to give your gifted elder son a chance to make his own pocket money, they suggested you asking him to work as Vincent’s math tutor. Each time you entered their house, the mother would give you a warm cup of tea and ask you to take a few minutes break first because she noticed that you looked pale and fatigued. During the spring festival season, she would give you a red envelop as a bonus. To show your gratitude, you decided never to give up on her son. With your persistent help, Vincent was eventually accepted by a decent Canadian university after a year’s delay. When you left their house for the last time, you felt so relieved as if all your miseries as a teacher had come to an end. “My life expectancy’s been shortened at least by five years because of Vincent!” you often complained to your wife. 

 “Your last two letters are both interesting and informative! They read like tidbits, or gossip news that’s so popular among ordinary folks like us,” Hua texted you. 

“You really enjoyed reading them?” 

“You can say that again! From the letters I’ve learned a lot about how the superrich bring up their sons and daughters, and how some so-called ‘social elites’ become who they are behind the scenes.”