When I began to work in the Zhengji Middle School (ZMS) I was 35 years old and was deeply concerned about why I could not issue an article on an officially published paper or magazine. At that time, if a teacher’s article appeared in a journal or paper, he or she would be famous in the whole Xuzhou District. For example, a teacher teaching Chinese in the Houji Middle School (HMS) published an article in the magazine “Jiangsu Education”, and all of us working in the ZMS got to know it. An English teacher called Congyan Zhang from Yunhe Middle School of Pixian County (later renamed Pizhou City) became famous because of issuing an academic thesis on the magazine “Foreign Language Teaching in Middle and Primary School” (FLTS) published by Beijing Normal University(BNU). His principal showed pride in front of all the visitors to Yunhe Middle School that there was a teacher in his school who could issue an article on the magazine run by BNU. The principal of the ZMS mentioned it at the teachers' general assembly. As time went on, all kinds of examinations began to follow correct paths and the educational organizations of all levels paid attention to teaching research so that some new publications on English teaching and learning came into existence. I commenced collecting their mailing addresses and contribution method and try to submit manuscripts to each publication. Since May, 1982, I stealthily mailed more than ten manuscripts, not daring to make it known at all, but like clay oxen entering the sea---never to be heard of again, gone forever. Thinking of infatuated crazy idea to make a Chinese-English dictionary in Ma Po, now such small things still could not be done successfully and I was feeling unbearably painful. Why such short articles only as a block of bean curd could not be printed? I was really not able to bring such things into reality? The contribution road is so far that I would search it from the paradise to the hell wholeheartedly. I got used to reading newspapers every day and came across an article on “Matthew Effects”, which made me enlightened at once. In Matthew 25:29, (New Revised Standard Version of the Bible) there is a sentence: “For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.” In 1973, an American scientist called Robert King Merton studied the reward system in science, priority disputes between scientists, and the way in which famous scientists often receive disproportionate credit for their contributions, whereas lesser known scientists receive less credit than their contributions actually merit. Merton called this phenomenon the Matthew effect.
The Matthew effect (or "accumulated advantage") in sociology is the phenomenon where "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer". Those who possess power and economic or social capital can leverage those resources to gain more power or capital.
Social psychologists hold the view that the Matthew effect has its advantages and disadvantages. Its disadvantages lie in that famous people and lesser known ones are not equally treated if they achieve the same success. High praise is sung for the former, who are interviewed by a lot of reporters and visited by one after another. Various laurel wreaths are flying to them one after another. As a result, some of them become conceited men with a very big ego, stop moving ahead and even come a cropper. Nobody is interested in the latter, who even suffer condemnation and jealousy. The Matthew effect can also play an active role. First, it can prevent the achievements not fully mature or seeming correct from being acknowledged too early. Second, the continuous credit the famous get for their whole life has powerful attraction for those unknown, who will take up struggles, which is like what the ancient Chinese thinker Mengzi said, “When heaven is about to place a great responsibility on a great man, it always first frustrates his/her spirit and will, exhausts his/her muscles and bones, exposes him/her to starvation and poverty, harasses him/her by troubles and setbacks so as to stimulate his/her spirit, toughen his/her nature and enhance his/her abilities. That is to say before someone can achieve success, s/he is likely to suffer severely from physiological and mental grief. Only after those disasters, can s/he succeed doing his/her career. I was determined not to stop before the failure. No matter how brutal the tortures were, I made up my mind to move along the route continuously. Frustration will wear away a will of weak characters, whereas it will make those who have a will of iron stronger and stronger. I believed that I had accumulated quite a lot, and the key point was that I must combine what I had read in Quirk and other books in English version with the practice of English teaching in China, helping students and teachers to solve some puzzles, so that all of them could recognize the value of what I had written. The change of my belief caused my act to alter. I continued to spend a certain time reading books every day, not to be altered under any circumstance. It took me another year, to finish reading GCE by Randolph Quirk, the purpose of which was to solve some puzzles existing in my English teaching. I wrote and contributed again. I had such a feeling that it was a stride from not understanding to understanding what was read; It was also a stride from understanding to expressing in one’s mother tongue what was read; It was the third stride to use what was read to address the puzzles or problems you came across and write articles of high quality. I began also to repair what I had written before, change my way of thinking, reorganize them and enrich their contents. I didn’t mail them to the editors until I felt there were new meanings in them.
No sweat, no sweet. During the Wanli age of Ming Dynasty, there was a scholar named Yingming Hong, who wrote a book titled “Caigentan”, in which a sentence is still very famous: Steeling oneself is just like being tempered into gold. Those who are impatient are not likely to gain sound knowledge and significant accomplishment. Your behavior is just like drawing a very strong bow. Those whose kung-fu is not enough can only pull it slightly. In the spring of 1985 one of my scripts was printed on an English paper, whose level was low, namely, published by the Teaching and Research Office of Yuncheng District of Shānxi Province. In addition, it was not an article, but “Soliciting Exercises with Prize” for General Review before College Entrance Examination. I became highly excited, though, and got the first remuneration, roughly 12 yuan, which I felt a considerable amount, because at that time my monthly salary was only 56 yuan. The excitement encouraged me to write continuously. The students’ enquiry, the teachers’ discussion and articles I read in English papers and magazines were all activating my writing passion. I finished writing at least one article a week, sometimes 2-3 articles a week. I mailed my articles to various English papers and periodicals throughout our country. In the spring of 1987 I went to see my parents in Nantong, detouring to Shanghai in order to buy a portable typewriter, which made my English script much more beautiful. I wrote the Chinese part and typed the English part, even a single English letter, which added to some trouble, because I must roll my script into the typewriter, positioning the place to type.
A portable typewriter cost alomost my salary of two months
Since my first “Soliciting Exercises with Prize” was published, altogether 11 articles were announced within one year, almost once a month, all of which were materials for students. The papers and magazines using my articles were most from Shānxi Province. In my opinion, the following 3 magazines were on the top position of the English teaching for the middle and primary school, whose readers were teachers of the middle school, myself included: “English Learning” by Beijing Institute of Foreign Language (in 1994 renamed as Beijing Foreign Language Study University/BFSU), “FLTS” by BNU, and “English Teaching & Research Notes(ETRN)” by Shanghai East China Normal University(ECNU), among which, BFSU’s “English Learning” was my favorite and I had been subscribing to it, spending my own money, which played a big role in the improvement of my English. Now I was determined to change my status, from a reader to a writer, burning with a great ambition. I had the advantage of being familiar with Quirk’s opinion and the teaching material of the middle school and wrote academic theses, aiming at the three periodicals mentioned above and commencing continual assaults. The three fortresses were all captured by me one after another before July of 1986.
Jan 12. 2010 in Xuzhou
Proofreading on Feb. 14, 2012, in Chicago
Uploading on Aug. 5, 2023, in Xuzhou
