The handwriting and grammar was perfect. I assume it was an English homework for the student in Hong Kong or Taiwan? (The character was in traditional style which is mainly used by Hong Konger and Taiwanese.)
Or he's just getting really into the persona of an 1870s immigrant, who would have been using traditional characters anyway! Such attention to detail :D
I immigrated to Vietnam in 2012. Even though government and society was much more welcoming than this case, the overall experience was... not that different!
Maybe immigration is just a pretty awful experience overall.
I live beautifully here.
The working environment can't live, and the welfare is gone.
But don't worry, only about ten people are seriously injured every day,
And I am also very careful. We opened a small shop, and the business is doing well.
Although I don't know English very well, I can speak a little
Right. Understand what those white people are saying.
I hope I can get ahead! I will work hard here, and
Be careful with your body.
How are you? I miss you very much and hope we can meet again.
I'm pretty sure that question mark on the second to last line is anachronistic. I don't know exactly when western punctuation was incorporated into traditional Chinese script, but I'm almost certain it was well after 1870. The character at the end of that line, before the question mark, is "ma", which, by itself, turns a statement into a question.
I don't think it's 嗎, looks more like 吧 to me, which also has question like properties. But you're definitely right about the question mark not being included until much later. The character alone says it's a question.
History teacher here. If this was turned in to me, rhe first thing I'd do is laugh, then have a conversation with the student. If s/he says they'd be ok with me emailing a copy of this to their parents (I'm assuming the parents speak Chinese), then I'd just give them an A for pure gall. If the kid isn't from a Chinese-speaking family, I'd probably still give him/her kudos and then make them turn in whatever they put into Google translate to begin with. But really, this is the kind of malicious compliance I wish my students had the creativity to pull off.
Exactly. I probably wouldn't actually email it home, just look for the reaction. If they look worried, then yeah, I'd definitely send it home. I've had kids cuss me out in Spanish on papers before, not believing I'd actually translate it and bust them.
It takes effort to rebel this hard. That effort should be rewarded not squashed. Eventually they'll find something that interests them and their effort will be naturally put into improving that. Basically, don't kill a child's spirit.
Exactly this. I’m successful a cybersecurity compliance analyst today because whenever I got around my IT father he laughed and was impressed with me. If he yelled and made a stink about me circumvented firewalls or gained admin privileges, it would have turned me off of this path real quick.
If no one is getting hurt, foster that shit! Make ‘em think and make ‘em work! They’re always smart enough to know when you let them win versus when they impress the pants off you!
If they don't actually read/write Chinese, then it took more effort to do this than it would have to just write the letter in English as intended. It's impressive.
Ehh it's testing the kids to see how much they learned of the racism Chinese people faced on the West Coast (North America) back then. It's also a good way to have students emphasize empathize with those experiences too by making them write from that perspective.
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