The Lesson Before I Quit Chapter 23

The most enthusiastic person who managed the whole process was Li Quanwu. He and Michael Mu have been coordinating lecture matters for a long time, conveying all kinds of information between teachers and students. He will notify them one by one of rescheduling, resumption of classes, and who will transfer each class to. He is also responsible for collecting and transferring fees for those who continue to attend classes or temporarily attend classes. To Michael Mu, for five years, we all called him "principal".

I don’t remember the details of what happened. In short, on January 15, 1989, everyone gathered at the home of Sichuan painter Gao Xiaohua, which was regarded as the launch of the course. The whole room was in an uproar that day, and it took a long time for it to calm down. Michael Mu, in a light-colored suit, sat on the sofa against the wall with a smile. He was sixty-two years old that year, and his hair on the temples had not yet turned gray, making him look very young. The method of the lecture was agreed upon as follows: location, each listener took turns. Provide your own living room; time, everyone is busy in winter and summer, and classes are held in spring and autumn; class time, each lecture is four hours, and each class is two weeks apart. If three or five people take leave due to something, it will be postponed or rescheduled. If one or two people are absent, Classes as usual.

After the class started, I gradually discovered that there might be a topic that I couldn’t finish in one afternoon. On the Bible alone, I went there for two months and taught four lessons in total. It has been more than a year since I finished teaching the history of ancient and medieval literature. The more modern it is, the more content it contains. The original plan was to end with the 19th century, but in response to our call, Michael Mu added a lecture on the various genres of literature in the 20th century. Among them, existentialism alone gave five lessons.

In those years, all living beings were more or less in the embarrassment of making a living in a foreign country. They could not help but be distracted by chores. Courses were rescheduled in many cases. After delays, they would go back to the Spring and Autumn period across the winter and summer, and suddenly the years would pass. This was a "literary expedition" as for the trek. Maybe it’s because of the five years. By the last year or two, this strange little group had become so familiar with each other that every time we got together it was like a small party, with extracurricular chats inevitably happening. What I remember is still Michael Mu’s lectures.

The following memory traces, arranged in order of age, are roughly the list of students who attended the class throughout the course and attended the class for a long time: