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“Peking Duck” | The New Yorker

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In my first years in the U.S., my parents take me to the library to encourage my learning of English. With my mother’s guidance, I check out ten, fifteen books every weekend. Though I gravitate toward picture books, my mother pushes me to start reading more advanced chapter books. “Just the words themselves should be enough,” she says. “If you can’t think up the image on your own, then that’s a failure of imagination.” This is how I come across “Iron & Silk,” recommended by a librarian as an adult book that’s easy to read. It’s a memoir by Mark Salzman, a wushu enthusiast who was among the first wave of Americans accepted into China in the early nineteen-eighties. He travelled to Changsha and taught English at the Hunan Medical College. Salzman recounts how, during one lesson, he asked the students to read aloud their essays on the topic of “My Happiest Moment.” The class consisted of middle-aged teachers brushing up on English. The last to read was Teacher Zhu, who wrote about attendi

Save this story Save this story 1. In my first years in the U.S., my parents take me to the library to encourage my learning of English. With my mother’s guidance, I check out ten, fifteen books every weekend. Though I gravitate toward picture books, my mother pushes me to start reading more advanced chapter books. “Just the words themselves should be enough,” she says. “If you can’t think up the image on your own, then that’s a failure of imagination.” This is how I come across “Iron & Silk,” recommended by a librarian as an adult book that’s easy to read. It’s a memoir by Mark Salzman, a wus

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