you place yourselves in a false and humiliating position. You cannot read a single sentence of classical epistolary official or commercial Chinese; you have laboriously worked it up with your teacher. You cannot write in Chinese the words or sentences which you stand up before your classes to teach. Your boys cannot; you can do it but have indeed the advantage over them in one way.
You walk into the class room with a crib in your hand, bid your Chinese teacher read and explain the Chinese texts while you, with your hand, copy from it and write on the blackboard a poor translation done, however, in good English. Then you dismiss your Chinese teacher and tell the boys to transfer to their manuscripts what you have written on the board. They commonly do so, making all sorts of blunders which are never corrected. But the advantage of the plan is that these operations occupy two thirds or three fourths of the time allotted for the lesson.
When at last they have finished, you barely have 10 or 15 minutes left for the examination, which follows. You call out four or five boys with the Chinese text in their hands, read a few words from the English translation, and ask each boy to read the corresponding Chinese words. If you are wise, you confine yourself to that and go away satisfied that you have