Brad and Joey
"I want to talk about my favorite movie," Brad said, "Braveheart." He was giving his final speech, as his 31 classmates listened. He told the story of William Wallace: inspired by his father's death at the hands of the Brits, leader of a peasant uprising, killed in battle, inspiring a new generation of peasant rebels. Plot summary over, Brad said, "Now, I want to re-enact his final words. Is this okay, Daniel?" Of course.
He took a deep breath, composed himself, searched his memory for the proper English words. Finally, they came. With poise and spot-on timing, and with quiet passion, Brad delivered Wallace's final words (at least as portrayed in the movie). In English. With a Scottish accent. By the time he got to the final syllable of the last line, "You can't take away my FREEDOM," his classmates -- and I -- were on our feet, ready for battle. All we lacked were pitchforks. The students cheered wildly.
Nearly every student who speaks of his or her favorite movie speaks of "Braveheart." Some book (or Website) that they all read describes the movie as being about a "peasant uprising." Those two words -- peasant and uprising -- hold absolute supremacy in their vocabulary, given the past half-century of Chinese history. To combine them, in one movie, as Braveheart does, makes it an easy choice as their favorite.
Brad used the same movie to give a distinctive, beautiful speech, in his own voice and using his own words. And then he delivered Wallace's speech, word for word! Not that I was surprised. First semester, Brad used his speech to show me how to make paper frogs. Dozens of his classmates also showed me how to make origami animals. But Brad's frogs included one with a mouth, that moves, and one with legs, that leap! To close his speech, Brad, through the paper frog, sang me Christmas carols.
Back to the Braveheart speech, it was time for questions. I asked him if there's an equivalent figure to Wallace in Chinese history. Brad paused, thinking. After a moment, he talked of some guy from the Han dynasty, 2,000 years ago, of whom Wallace reminded him. Unbelievable. If I were to pose that question to any of his 31 classmates, I'd get one response: Chairman Mao. In fact, while Brad was silently considering the question, his classmates started whispering, "Chairman Mao."
Then, a girl asked him, "if you see a woman drowning in the river, and you jump in and save her, will you consider yourself a hero?" Again, long pause. "No," Brad said, "it's every man's responsibility." And his classmates again cheered wildly as he went back to his seat and his best friend, Joey, walked to the podium at the front of the class.
"I could choose a topic that's funny, but I've chosen a topic that's serious," Joey began. "I want to tell you, I don't care my score, I just want to tell the truth. My topic is, if I could change one thing about my country, what would it be? Education."
And then he walked to the board, wrote "Rape" in English and Chinese, and asked us if we know this word. Yes. The room fell awkwardly, brutally silent. We could guess what was coming.
Joey (he named himself after the drummer in the band Slipknot) is a heavy-metal rocker from Beijing. When he's not pounding his drumset, he's feeding his ravenous musical appetite, through his ubiquitous headphones, with Pantera, Marilyn Manson, Megadeth and their ilk. The musical tastes of his classmates, the edgier of them, lean to Backstreet Boys and John Denver; most stick to love songs from Oscar-winning movies.
China's entire education system is rotten, Joey began. There are three reasons for it: rich kids can buy their way into good high schools and colleges; the system rots students' minds, and creativity, with its focus on standardized tests which, Joey said, turn students into test-taking robots; and the educational leaders have a corrupt stranglehold on power.
To illustrate his last point, he told a story. A female friend of his was a student in a famous Beijing high school. One of the school's most revered teachers asked her to stay after class one day for some extra help. Joey walked to the board, pointing to "Rape." "He raped her."
Then, he wrote "Suicide," in English and Chinese. "She told some people about it, but the authorities said she was lying. They protected the famous teacher, because he has all the power. And so she had to kill herself." He was talking nearly at a scream, with occasional pauses where he fought back tears. He pointed to "Suicide." Silence for a few seconds. Then, he quietly said, "that's all." Time for questions.
His female classmates peppered him with questions: how does he know she wasn't lying? couldn't she just transfer to another school? couldn't her classmates rise up and demand the teacher be fired? Don't you think this is maybe just a Beijing, and not an overall Chinese, problem?
On question after question, Joey gave increasingly more defiant answers. He didn't yield an inch, didn't soften his stance at all. One girl asked him what he'd do if he had power. "I don't want power," Joey responded. "I want money so I can buy a gun and shoot the teacher."
Another girl asked what he would have done if he was in the class? Nothing, Joey replied. He explained how speaking up about it would ruin a student's chance at getting into college and, by extension, ruin the student's life. Joey said he would have waited until after he was in college to report the rape.
Another girl asked, don't you think your view is too dark? "No," he answered. "The light just covers a lot of darkness." He drew a pyramid on the board, said the upper half is light, but the bottom half is dark. "Darkness hides in the corners," Joey said. "You can't truly know the light unless you face the darkness first."
His female classmates were trying to bring Joey around to a more moderate position. We all know him to be a gregarious kid, who talks all the time and acts hyper and is everyone's friend. But he's also a stubborn bull, with convictions that can't be budged and a voice he refuses to silence.
Joey's was the last speech of the class, and after it all the students filed out, saying goodbye to me, as usual. Joey went back to his seat, at the back of the class, next to his best friend, Brad.
Their temperaments couldn't be more different. Brad was born, and will die, with a smile on his face, with no change in expression in the intervening 80 or so years. It's not possible not to like him. He's just naturally a dazzling person, charismatic without trying to be, a graceful leader despite being introverted and about 5 feet short. His approach to life is constanly optimistic, constantly focused on the light half of the pyramid. He'd fit right into his favorite band, The Backstreet Boys.
Joey was born, and will die, with a disbelieving, and outraged, scowl on his face. In between, his expression has and will change constantly, with one eye on the light, and one eye constantly trained on the darkness. He's a leader because he's extremely outspoken and he questions authority in a country where you're not supposed to. This bluntness draws both admiration and outrage from his classmates, and I imagine he's frequently in a heap of trouble with his university leaders. He fits right into the heavy metal band he's formed in this little village.
What makes them friends, I think, is that each is an individual, true to himself. Brad smiles constantly not because he's trying to be shiny-happy boy, but because it's his actual, true personality. It's not an act. Joey calls for revolution and criticizes leaders out of genuine conviction, not vanity or some desire to be rebel boy. In both cases, they can't open their mouth without saying something interesting, because each has such a clearly defined, distinctive vision for how the world is and should be. And each, in his own way, expresses that vision quite forcefully.
Joey and Brad were joking and laughing, as usual, as they walked out of the room. I said goodbye to them. Brad smiled and said goodbye. "Maybe I gave a speech about the wrong topic," Joey said. "No, it was a perfect topic," I said. "Thank you for understanding," he replied, and they walked out.
