Professor Zhang Zhenxian as Described by Charles Wu

写完了张振先教授，我还是不甘心，内容不够饱满丰富。于是写邮件给大洋彼岸的吴千之老师。吴千之，Charles Wu, 50年代毕业于北外研究生，师从水天同、王佐良、许国璋、周珏良等大师，攻读英国文学，是他们的真传弟子、得意门生，英语系里出名的才子。他不仅书教的好，而且擅长演戏，曾与章含之老师二度联手主演英剧。先是王尔德的The Importance of Being Earnest, 后有莎剧 Othello，在英语系轰动一时。70年代末赴美留学哥伦比亚大学，学业完成后留在美国任教并定居。我的题为Help needed的邮件发出不久，收到吴老师的回信，他十分支持和鼓励我的写北外教师的计划，并附有一篇用英文写的描述张振先教授的短文，真令我喜出望外！他的一支妙笔将张振先活脱脱地呈现在我们面前。现把短文附上，与各位英语爱好者共欣赏。

Professor Zhang Zhenxian was an endearing teacher and a funny guy. I had many fond memories of him. He studied in UK, majoring, I think, in Shakespeare production. He published at least one article in the prestigious Shakespeare Survey. I don't remember the title, but it was about Shakespeare in China, a subject I was interested in and published about too, by the way. Yes, he did try his hand at translating Shakespeare into Peking Opera and made Romeo say to Juliet "娘子请了" and things like that. I saw a few pages of his draft. I never actually heard him sing Shakespeare in Peking Oprea though. My indebtedness to Professor Zhang in Shakespeare culminated in our production of Othello, with me playing the male lead, Zhang Hanzhi playing Desdemona, and Professor Zhang her father. His role as co-director (with Professor Xiong Deni) as well as his own exemplary performance and sonorous voice were crucial to the success of our production. Unfortunately, due to the changing political wind, we only gave one public dress rehearsal, short of a formal opening night.
 
Professor Zhang's most popular course was Enunciation. That started when I was an undergraduate in the 50s. The hallmark of the course was what he called "Dog's pant." I remember vividly how he would walk down the aisle of the classroom and make every student, boy and girl alike, put their hands on his big tummy and feel how it swelled when he breathed in and sank back when he exhaled. My female classmates were a little embarrassed at first but I think they enjoyed the experience of touching their teacher. What's more important, a lot of us were seriously intrigued and went out to the sports ground early in the morning to practice the skill and notice how our voice quality actually improved. This skill of diaphragmatic breathing was especially helpful not only in reading aloud and enunciation but in singing too. In that realm too I myself was one of Professor Zhang's beneficiaries.
 
Professor Zhang was a happy-go-lucky person, very accessible and friendly to his students and faculty. He was a big guy with shaved head and some hair at the back of his neck and a rotund abdomen, reminiscent of the Caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland. But his legs were disproportionally thin. He would travel around campus on a small bike. In winter you would see him pedaling his bike wearing a traditional cotton-padded robe tied around his middle with a straw rope. Everything seemed out of whack. The sight was quite facetious, so much so that during one of those ideological movements that featured open criticism on big-character posters, one staff member drew a series of cartoons of Zhang on his bike. He was a serious teacher in class, but occasionally in his "Listening" class he would turn on the tape recorder and doze off, letting the students fend for themselves. That was funny too.

Professor Zhang died of kidney failure on the eve of the Cultural Revolution. He was thus spared the torments of the catastrophe. In his final days I went to the hospital to see him. He seemed quite at peace. Thank God.