Drizzle Beyond the Window

#2026-0408

Drizzle Beyond the Window

A story from Dreamlike Reality

Our school stood quietly in the mountainous countryside, as if it had grown from the earth itself. Surrounded by trees, shrubs, and narrow winding paths, it was both a place of learning and a small, self-contained world. Yet from time to time, nature reminded us of its greater power—especially during the typhoon season.

After a strong storm, the campus seemed almost transformed. Tall trees stood wounded, their branches torn and scattered across the ground. Flower beds in front of the classrooms lay flattened, their colors pressed into the mud. Shrubs leaned at odd angles or lay uprooted, as if bowing before an unseen force.

Strangely, as a child, I did not feel sorrow at such scenes. Instead, I felt a quiet excitement. The school, once so familiar, suddenly wore a different face. It became a place to rediscover. We had more work to do—sweeping fallen leaves, clearing broken branches, restoring the gardens—but even that carried a sense of purpose, almost of adventure. In those moments, disorder brought a kind of freshness, as though the world itself had been rearranged overnight.

It was in such a season of change that I entered my final year of elementary school.

Our new homeroom teacher was Mr. Yunxing Liao (廖運星老師), a young man who seemed full of life. He had recently graduated from Provincial Hualien Normal School, and there was something at once energetic and quietly reflective about him. His name, “Yunxing,” meant “lucky star,” yet he once told us, almost in passing, that he had used other names in his writing—“Han Xing (寒星),” the cold star, and “Gu Xing (孤星),” the solitary star. Only later did I learn that his mother had already passed away. At the time, I could not fully understand such loss, but I sensed a depth beneath his lively manner, something that made him different.

To us, he felt less like a distant authority and more like an older brother. During breaks, he would run and play with us, laughing as freely as any of the boys. He taught us games, including one he called Gaisen. On the dusty ground, we drew two square “countries,” each with narrow passages opening toward the other. Divided into teams, we became soldiers guarding our “king stone,” pushing and pulling our opponents across the boundary lines. A single misstep meant “death,” and we would wait, eager for the next round.

Those games rang with shouting and laughter, with the simple joy of movement. Yet Mr. Liao was not only playful; he was thoughtful in ways that quietly shaped us.

He rearranged our classroom into small groups, mixing boys and girls together. At first, the arrangement felt unfamiliar, even slightly awkward. In my group were several girls—Guiying, Xiuhua, and Xuemei among them. We sat closer than before, sharing space and tasks. Gradually, conversation became easier, and a sense of cooperation replaced the invisible boundaries that had once separated us.

He also believed in fairness in a broader sense. During the morning flag-raising ceremonies, each sixth-grade class took turns providing two students. When it was our turn, he always assigned one boy and one girl, saying that men and women should stand as equal citizens in any nation. Guiying and I were once chosen together, perhaps because we were of similar height. Standing on either side of the flagpole, we pulled the rope in steady rhythm, watching the flag rise into the open sky. In that quiet moment, I felt both a simple pride and a growing awareness of the principle he wished to teach us.

Beyond the classroom, he shared even more of himself. He played the violin, like our music teacher, and he knew an astonishing number of songs—more than one hundred and fifty, as he once told us. Under his guidance, our classroom often filled with music. We sang songs from many places: Words of the West Wind (西風的話), Santa Lucia (散塔蘆淇亞), Azalea (杜鵑花), How Could I Not Miss Her? (教我如何不想她), Kangding Love Song (康定情歌), The Girl from Hangzhou (杭州姑娘), and Mongolian Serenade (蒙古小夜曲). Even now, those melodies return to me from time to time, as if carried on a distant breeze.

There were also quieter moments—moments that seemed ordinary then, yet have since grown luminous in memory.

Near the edge of the school grounds stood a simple shelter classroom, built of bamboo, clay, and wooden posts. It stood slightly apart from the main buildings, modest and solitary. Not far from it lay the field where, years earlier, my classmates had found the remains of a dog—a memory that had once filled us with unease.

One day, during a light drizzle, I stood by the square window of that shelter with two of my good friends, Longsheng and Yizhen. The rain fell softly, slanting in the wind. Beyond the window, the mountains were veiled in mist, and across the gray sky, white egrets moved in quiet flight, their wings tracing slow arcs through the rain.

We said very little. We simply watched.

That moment, though brief, remained with me. Whenever I recalled it, a poem we had learned in our language class would rise naturally in my mind:

Before Xisai Mountain, white egrets glide in flight;

Peach blossoms drift on flowing streams where mandarin fish grow plump.

In a blue bamboo hat, in a green straw raincoat,

Through slanting wind and gentle rain, I need not go home. *NOTE

At that age, I could not fully explain why the poem touched me so deeply. Perhaps it was the harmony between nature and human life, or the quiet freedom suggested in its closing line. Whatever the reason, the image of the egrets in the drizzle seemed to dwell within those lines—and within me.

Life in our final year unfolded in small, memorable scenes. Once, during a picnic by the nearby Changliu Creek, we cooked our meal in groups—rice, vegetables, and a little meat. Simple as it was, the food tasted unusually good in the open air.

Part of that meat had been bought by a tall boy we called Kun-Bear, who had secretly taken money from his father. At the time, we accepted the food without question and ate with appetite. Only later did we hear that his father had punished him severely. The story spread quickly, and what had seemed like a simple act of sharing was suddenly shadowed by shame. Even now, I remember that incident as a quiet lesson—how easily enjoyment can be touched by wrongdoing.

As the year drew toward its close, Mr. Liao introduced an unusual task. With no calculators or computers available, he asked several of us who were good at arithmetic to help compute the total scores of each student from Grade One through Grade Six.

We stood at the blackboard in small groups, chalk in hand, listening as he read aloud long sequences of numbers. One by one, we wrote them down and added them carefully. If all of us reached the same result, the total was accepted; if not, we checked again.

It was a simple method, yet remarkably effective. And it gave us a sense of participation, as though we were briefly sharing in the teacher’s responsibility.

When the calculations were completed, I learned that my overall score ranked first in my class. A quiet satisfaction settled within me. There was still a final examination ahead, but at that moment, hope seemed close and within reach.

In those days, the top student in the entire school could enter the nearby junior high without taking an entrance examination. It was an opportunity both practical and honorable, and for a time, I believed it might be mine.

Yet life, as I was beginning to understand, does not always follow the paths we imagine.

After the final examination, the results were not publicly announced. They were added quietly by the teacher. When everything was settled, it was not me but Shuilin who was recommended for direct admission.

There was no dramatic shock, no outward disappointment. Only a quiet realization took shape within me. The place I had thought secure had shifted—just enough to lie beyond my reach.

In the end, I sat for the entrance examination and continued my studies along another path. Life moved forward, as it always does.

But when I look back across the years, it is not the rankings or outcomes that return most vividly.

It is that small shelter classroom, the square window, and the gentle drizzle.

It is the sight of white egrets crossing the mist-veiled mountains.

It is the echo of a poem, carried softly through time.

And in that memory, untouched by success or failure, I remain for a moment—

a boy standing quietly at the window, watching the world drift by.

= = =

*NOTE:  This poem was written by the Tang dynasty poet Zhang Zhihe (張志和). Entitled Yugezi (漁歌子), its original Chinese lines read:

西塞山前白鷺飛，桃花流水鱖魚肥；

青箬笠，綠蓑衣；

斜風細雨不須歸。

= = =

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