Substitute Teacher, Book One: From Farmer to Principal

Ma Jianguo found a foothold in life at the three-foot-wide lectern where he worked as a substitute teacher. From the awkward young man who “wrote love letters only to tear them up” to the composed principal of Daming Middle School, his story reveals the wisdom of finding another way to survive when one’s ideals are thwarted. Zhu Xingmin carried the fervor of love on his motorcycle, but a traffic accident brought it all to an abrupt end. His “wild romance” and “untimely death” capture the regret of countless ordinary people in that era, who “hadn’t figured out how to live before their story ended”... Their intertwined fates form a portrait of an age: the struggles, perseverance, and hope of ordinary people are never ordinary. The warmest part of the story lies in the down-to-earth details of daily life: a grandmother lovingly boiling corn and roasting sweet potatoes for educated youth; the truth that transplanting rice seedlings in the production brigade was harder than hoeing; the poetry of reading verse around the stove in winter; and the youthful excitement of “racing down the asphalt road on a motorcycle”... The Substitute Teacher series consists of three stories.