Not long after the opening of the autumn term in 1994, Mr. Shihua Li came to my home with the CEE (College Entrance Examination) English syllabus, whose appendix was 2000 CEE English words. The idea came to his mind that we together edited a dictionary, explaining the usage of these CEE English Words for the senior middle school students to study.
Mr. Li was an English teacher of the Petroleum Transportation Middle School. He was fond of writing articles and contributed them to all kinds of English papers or magazines. At the same time, he noticed my articles published. When he got to know that I began to teach in Pengda close to his school, he asked one of my former colleagues to introduce him to me, so that we became friends and co-authors.
His suggestion had a strong attraction to me. It was almost 10 years since I began to write in 1985. At the beginning only small articles like a toufu cube appeared on a low level paper. By working hard for years almost all the famous English periodicals or magazines or papers had used my articles or theses. Early in 1970’s and 1980’s when I worked in Mapo and Zhengji Middle School, I tried writing books, but didn’t dare to go very far. When I came to Pengda, I found that few of the professors older than me had published books. The head of our English Teaching and Research Group Professor Jiazhen Wei said that a certain teacher of Xuzh Normal University was tired out and ended in death because of writing a book. Mr. Shi, who was head of Marxism-Leninism Teaching and Research Group, had written a book “On Jealousy”, which was published in Huanghe Publishing House of Henan Province and had to sell 3000 copies by himself. His rooms were filled with books and it was too hard for him to sell them. As a result, the investment could not come back and his wife could not forgive him. They were quarrelling so often that the old pair would divorce. Now we were willing to write a book. Where could we find a publishing house? How would we do if we had to underwrite? Considering that both of us knew a lot of English teachers in the middle school and editors of some papers and magazines in the whole country and none of all we communicated with were illiterate persons, we were confident that such a situation as Mr. Shi’s would not happen to both of us. We decided to cooperate and began to do it.
First we discussed how to write it. We read several dictionaries for reference. According to the characteristics of the students, sequences of the dictionary were decided. Each of us tried writing the usages of some words and then exchanged so that we acquired a consensus of opinion. We divided the 26 letters into two, namely from A to L and M to Z. The former was to write by me and Lao Li took charge of the latter. When problems came upon us, we communicated in time by phone. (My home phone was installed in 1993 and could just be used for our work). In 1994, we still wrote on papers in ink and the computer was very expensive. One type of 80286、80386、80486 computer cost more than ￥10,000. On the first date of lunar year in 2008, Meilan Zhang arranged some old pieces of paper, finding our family economic investigation table filled by Liangliang Song, who had not brought it to his university because he thought that our economic status could finance his study. In 1993, the salary of Meilan Zhang per month was ￥300 and Defu Song ￥350. We supported two sons studying in the college and it was Arabian Nights for us to buy such an expensive device. There were several computers in the department of computer science and one in our department. Other offices, whether school level or department level, were not equipped with any computer.
Writing for half a year, it was the spring of 1995 and the writing task was soon to be completed. We should contact a publishing house now. Shihua Li led me to see a young teacher working in Kuangda (CUMT: China University of Mining and Technology), called Hongtao Li, who was also an English teacher and worked in the electric classroom. Hongtao Li knew some people working in the publishing houses in Beijing and it was said that he helped several teachers to publish books. His work was somewhat occupational and he himself could sign publishing contract with authors, an actual publishing middleman. The author could not interfere in what he did with the publishing house. He said if we could sell some books and there would be no problem to find a house to publish. The contribution fee was ￥20 per a thousand characters. He arranged for a young girl to put what we had written into a computer and at the same time she set up the type as well. The draft was printed and we began to be busy proofreading. In April of 1995, I remember, the book with 320,000 characters was completed. Hontao Li made it mystery and didn’t tell us anything about the publishing house. We enquired again and again and were told that of National Defense University (NDU), which, we felt, was not fit for this book. But it had gone so far and we had no choice. General speaking, we set our heart at rest, after all Li was a teacher of CUMT, who could not cheat us. The first contact with him made both of us have butterflies in the stomach. In the summer vacation of 1995, I chanced to have a meeting in Beijing and discovered the National Defense University was not far from my hotel. I went into the NDU and found the publishing house in it. The editor in charge is not in the office and another serviceman editor said that it was true and the book was being edited, which set us completely at ease. We began to contact our acquaintances and friends, asking them to help us to complete the duty of underwriting.
On the National Day of 1995, the book we had longed for a very long time came at last. With 320,000 words, it looked like a real book, the price of which was ￥13.8, not too expensive. But its paper was not of high quality. All in all, it was an officially published book. I took it in my hand, weighing and opening it again and again. I was fond of it and unwilling to part with it. I put it close to my nose and the smell of the fresh printing ink went into my lung and heart, a very pleasant feeling of freshman father.
I just reach the age of 50 in 1995, and all my acquaintances and friends were motivated. In the section “Ten Years in Zhengji” I mentioned that my first contribution was published on a small English paper run by Yuncheng Distric, Shānxi Province (capital is Taiyuan, not Xi’an), whose chief editor, Guobin Huang, kept up a correspondence with me, although we had never met. I wrote to him and asked to place an ad on his paper to promote the book. He replied very quickly and didn’t ask for any money. Our dictionary was published in time, and a lot of students from all over the country showed great interest. Almost every day I could get the remittance bill, sometimes one day several bills.
The First Book Published
Pei County Middle School (PMS) was 50 kilometers away from Xuzhou. The pair, Ruiyi Qiu and Xuejuan Yuan were teaching English there and they used to study also in Nanjing University, majoring in English. Lao Qiu chaired the office of teaching affairs in PMS. I contacted him and got reply immediately. Hongtao Li drove his vehicle and delivered 1489 books to PMS. Shihua Li made full use of acquaintances or students inside the city and in Bengbu and Huaibei of Anhui Province and also got excellent achievements. Our underwriting was overfulfilled
In the following years we reedited and enriched the dictionary according to the changes of the CEE English syllabus. We got rid of the publishing intermediary and contacted Beijing Normal University Publishing House and Ocean Press by ourselves. The names of the revisions were “New Edited English Dictionary for Middle School” and “New Teaching Material, New Syllabus, CEE English Dictionary”. Both Shihua Li and myself completed the change from writers of articles to those of books, opening the new stage of our writing.
Nov. 24 2010, in Xuzhou
March 2, 2012, in Chicago Proofreading
Aug 6, 2023, in Xuzhou, Uploading
