The Two Libraries That Changed My Life
L. Laura Pan, April 1993
(written for NCAR essay contest "Libraries change lives") (Published in NCAR Staffnotes, April 1993)
I remember vividly an interview ten years ago with a professor at the Johns Hopkins University, who later became my thesis advisor. The conversation I now call an interview was for deciding whether he would take me as his Ph.D. student. After listening to my brief statement of academic experience, he asked: "How did you pass the national exam to get into the university without ever going to a high school?" My answer was: "Libraries. I was lucky enough to have access to a good library."
Yes, libraries supported me in a difficult period of my life, helped me to fight my fate and become the person I am today.
When the infamous political turmoil, "the Cultural Revolution", started in China, I was in the fourth grade. My formal school education was interrupted as the entire school system in Beijing was paralyzed. It did not resume until twelve years later, when I entered a physics department of a university in Beijing. Those twelve years constituted a dark age in the history of China, and in many people's lives including mine. In retrospect, I have to say that those years were not completely dark for me largely because of the two libraries I used.
When all the intellect and intellectuals were condemned to hell in China during the dark age, my parents, along with most faculty members of their university, were sent to a rural area in southern China to build a tea farm. When they finally returned four years later, most apartments in university housing were occupied by the army. My family got one room and a kitchen. My mother was a researcher and librarian in the university's history institute. Having no other resources, she put a bed into the library, in the corner of the book collections.
There it was, my king-sized bedroom, packed with bookshelves. I slept there for more than three years. Difficult? Yes. As in the Cinderella story, I had to turn into a pumpkin before sunrise, for the book collection was to open to the researchers in the morning. There were days when I was sick but could not reach my own bed. Mostly, however, I remember the times I danced between shelves at night, for the whole library was mine. I remember the long nights I was energized by the joys of reading. While the outside world was an intellectual vacuum, I spent my nights with giants. Between the shelves and the wall, my little world was very big, full of wisdom and imagination. At a time when the media were filled with political dogmas, I got to know many good and bad emperors, happy and sad poets, Chinese and Greek myths, Victor Hugo and Charles Dickens... More than a thousand and one nights, I was never bored, for there was a new story every night.
I always dreamed about going to the university when I was a little kid. There was never any doubt in my mind that I would be able to get into a good school, for I was a good student, and I loved study. All of this changed when I was eleven. That was the time when schools were all closed due to the Cultural Revolution. I wished and waited for the day I could go back to school again. Five years later, high schools in Beijing finally resumed class. Only 20% of my peers was chosen to enter the class. The selection criterion was political and random. I was not among the selected, although many of the selected students did not want to go. That was a time when intellectuals were the lowest class in society. For many youths, becoming a factory worker was a lot more desirable than going to high school.
I was devastated. What is going to happen to my university dream if I can't even go to a high school? Many nights in bed I washed my face with tears. To no place could I plead. To no one could I reason. That was not a year of reasoning. After the pain subsided, I decided to continue my education by myself. I was fortunate to be employed at a high school which had a decent library.
That was a great library. It had all kinds of books for students and more books for teachers. I found myself a set of textbooks for self-teaching mathematics. Not knowing what was being taught in class and how hard the exam was, I studied many more materials and did many more exercises than the students in class. My study gave me a lot of hope, but I never thought, even in my wildest dream, that there would be a nationwide college entrance exam six years later, open to everybody with or without high school education, and that I would get a perfect score in mathematics in competition with four classes of high school graduates.
Nowadays, I have access to many libraries. They are all very dear to me. Discovering a good library always reminds me of the two very personal libraries I had and makes me feel so lucky.