Sky Screen: High School Lessons That Astonish the Ancients

Chen Weiping, forty years old, is the Chinese teacher and homeroom teacher for Class 5, Grade 10, at Jiangcheng No. 1 High School. He has taught for fifteen years, but this is his first time serving as a homeroom teacher. For the first lesson of the school year, he has his students read “Spring in a Pleasure Garden: Changsha,” discussing poetic imagery and youthful spirit. From the Pre-Qin era to the Ming Dynasty, a sky screen appears above every dynasty, broadcasting his Chinese class live. When Qin Shi Huang hears him discuss “All creatures beneath the frosty sky strive for freedom,” he ponders the principles governing all things. Emperor Wu of Han hears him analyze “Tell me, vast earth, who shall rule your rise and fall?” and applauds in delight. Zhuge Liang gives a sigh as he waves his feather fan: “This poem has a sweeping vision. It could only have been written by an extraordinary man.” Cao Cao holds his wine cup and muses for a long while, then suddenly laughs. “What a fine line: ‘Who shall rule your rise and fall?’ The student asks well, and the teacher answers even better.” Yet Chen Weiping himself has no idea any of this is happening. Every day he rides his electric scooter to work, leads his students in reading poems and analyzing essays, frets over the trivial concerns of his fifty-four students after class, checks his children's homework in the evening, and accompanies his wife to the market on weekends. He's an utterly ordinary Chinese teacher, living an utterly ordinary life. But beyond the sky screen he cannot see, countless emperors, ministers, scholars, poets, and ordinary people have, for centuries, been watching a world they have never known through his lessons. So poetry can be taught this way. Teachers and students can get along this way. This is how books are taught in a peaceful age.