Chapter 1. Once 從此我聽見了故事 This is a section discussing events regarding the first hearing in court. If you are having difficulties, it would be better for you to read it now. 此部分主要談講兩次法庭之開會部分。若發生困難，請盡量閱讀本篇。 I am not being serious. But for the sake of the readers, let us assume that this time I really had gotten lost. 我本人沒有說。不過本題為書呆子們而已。 It is probably best for me to start this section by describing the facts that I encountered. It is important to stress this. It would be really interesting if I were to write about my first trip to a real courtroom in China, wouldn’t it? Now that I think about it, I can go one better: I can actually say that it was the first time in my life that I had an encounter with an actual, real courtroom. It sounds better. This is also as good a time as any to mention a friend of mine who is also a writer. For reasons I would rather not discuss, she is currently out of touch and has been living abroad for quite a while. During that time, she has been reporting to me on everything that happens in her region (a somewhat remote region in the north-east of China, though things will probably move around after this time). I will probably not give all of the details of everything she has been reporting to me, only the parts that I think are interesting. This, my readers, is very nearly as interesting as being in China. And I’m not lying when I say this. 即使您本人不太感激，我也還是想讓大家有所收集。 Our first incident occurred at about 8 o’clock in the morning of December 28, 2015. Our teacher did not make it to school. After a few hours had passed, there was still no news. We waited. We waited. We waited. But our teacher still was nowhere to be found. Later that afternoon, around 1.00 pm, we received a phone call from the administration. A small number of our classmates had shown up at the main office of the school to see about our teacher. She had not shown up. The teacher had told us that she would be going to court on the last day of the first week. But it seems like we really couldn’t tell just from our teacher’s words. After all, we are just students. And we haven’t been to court. Still, it was a big problem for us not knowing how much of what our teacher told us to do was still applicable. This is a big issue. Around 3.30 pm, the school called again. They said that our teacher would be at school tomorrow morning. We still do not know what happened to our teacher that day. I know this incident did not affect my parents. They are very understanding people. But it has not stopped me from asking them this: Just what in the world was your teacher thinking? Our teacher also did not arrive at school that morning. Our teacher had told us that the other side wanted to speak with her before the trial. To this end, we had spent the night of December 27 worrying about our teacher’s safety. We have been left worrying once again. This morning, the district went to the teacher’s residence. They had taken with them all of our teacher’s papers. She had not brought her cell phone with her. We did not know where the teacher was at this time. Today, she finally showed up. But we have been wondering what has been happening to her. When she was at school, was she being harassed? She told us she had seen her fellow teachers and the administrators for various meetings. But we were unsure whether those meetings were happening because we had been missing from school. We wonder if her colleagues had given her the cold shoulder after missing our morning meeting. We were also curious as to what our teacher had been doing while she was not at school. We were at the moment considering that she may have been doing something illegal. She also told us that she had been on a flight to Beijing. We are still unsure whether this was an official trip or not. We need to get in contact with a student from school who travels a lot by himself (to Japan), and have him check the flight data. Our teacher also said that she was not sure where her luggage was. We are asking our school to help with that. It is difficult for us to contact our teacher at the moment. Apparently, she doesn’t have a phone, or a telephone card. She does have a cell phone, but she has not activated the phone card. Apparently, the school made the decision to lock her cell phone away until further notice. We are unsure if that was necessary. I am going to ask about this. We will see. At this time, she has yet to return to school. But she may return on Monday or Tuesday. At the time of the district meeting with our teacher, the district had said that they would come to school for the next ten days. We do not have a lot of confidence that they will stick to their word. There have been reports that our teacher is going to be transferred to another school. I think that this is not possible. She has not violated the rules of the school. She did not go to the police. In the morning, she went to the school to talk about class. She did not go out of the building. She did not break the rules. But even if she had, this is not something that the administration could easily punish her for. It’s probably better for me to just explain why I say this: 別當令我怀疑。要知道，會議尚未結束的當中，她還選擇遷近大海。她可不能跑到警察。 I am not worried for our teacher’s safety, but for hers and our school’s. How many people are going to support our teacher this time around? I think that if the school’s students were not going to support her, our school would not have been. It will be harder for the administrators to handle this next year. They will need to come up with a more clever tactic. Now, let’s turn our attention back to the trial. First, let us begin with the way our teacher reported to the school. After our teacher had told us that she was going to be missing from school, she asked to talk to each of us one by one. Our school decided that we should prepare some material and present it to her during her absence from school. My teacher had told me that she had to prepare two things. The first thing that she had to prepare was something for our school. She went to the city’s school district office. I was away on the day that our teacher had gone to school, and I was only able to follow this second part of the conversation. I was not able to hear every word of what our teacher had said to our school. However, she had told me that her boss had been extremely angry, and had made her apologize for several hours. The school had apparently been hoping for her to write an article to be published on our school’s blog. But I think that the problem was that our teacher was supposed to write about the things that she thought would benefit our school. But she told them that what our school needs to do is to find out what their students want. Also, our teacher had told the school that our school needs to focus on the education that they are providing and not on how many students have signed up for various class. It is necessary to make sure that you know what the students want. To go back, the school had given our teacher a series of questions to answer. She had written them down. But what our school was looking for was different. They asked for us to write to them about what we think the problem is. Our teacher had also come to talk about her class. Our teacher told me that she was planning to change her class’s lessons. Previously, our school had been doing a lot of things regarding her classroom. The district took her curriculum and her textbook away to be replaced by a curriculum for a different class. Apparently, the district was doing this because the curriculum used by our teacher was very expensive and was costing them quite a bit of money. The district said that they wanted our teacher to take over the curriculum. We are unsure of this, because we do not know why the district suddenly wants to change the curriculum. We are going to get in touch with our teacher. We will check the facts, and will take into account the situation in which we have found ourselves. Our teacher had also told me that she was going to take pictures. She would take them during her summer break, and then email them to our teacher. But if she couldn’t, she would just be sending the pictures over to our school’s blog. I do not know why it is difficult for our teacher to give her personal email to the district. She had told me that she didn’t want to do so because she didn