澄空写作 Crystal Sky Writing

Constructing a Hybrid Adaptation Workshop from the Perspective of Differentiated Instruction

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 14:46:22 -0400

Abstract: Having emerged overseas, creative writing as a discipline centers on workshop-based teaching while a localized pedagogy of creative writing cannot be divorced from the localization of the writing workshop. At present the major challenges faced by workshop-based teaching at Chinese universities include large-class instruction, low student participation in discussion, and a shortage of faculty specializing in writing. Hence a possible pathway to localize undergraduate pedagogy lies in a hybrid model of adaptation workshop under the guidance of differentiated instruction. As an important frame of reference, the undergraduate pedagogy of English creative writing highlights reading as well as writing, while adaptation activities embody such a philosophy integrating both processes and accord with differentiated instruction at the undergraduate level. Innately, the writing workshop resonates with the characteristics and needs of differentiated instruction, whose theory and practice, especially flexible grouping and differentiated design of learning tasks, illuminate an effective path to the localization of the writing workshop. The hybrid adaptation workshop serves to facilitate students’ deep reading and their connections through writing while inspiring class discussion. Through the flexible, diversified grouping and learning tasks, this new model of workshop breaks away from the traditional one based on homogeneous discussion, leading to a more distinct teaching mode better adapting to the local learning context and responding to the current dilemma.

Key Words: Workshop; Localization; Differentiated Instruction; Adaptation.

Writing 3 (Jun. 2026): 120-128.

An Analysis of “No Name Woman” Based on the Theory of Narrative Therapy

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 14:43:07 -0400

Abstract: While an examination of the Western genre personal essay reveals that the self in the personal essay can always be selected and reshaped, narrative therapy operates in a similar way by replacing the problematic dominant story with a preferred alternative story in order to reconstruct the self, which points to the possible healing function of the personal essay. Adopting the leading narrative therapist Michael White’s theory of narrative therapy, this paper focuses on Maxine Hong Kingston’s essay “No Name Woman” from The Best American Essays of the Century, discussing the complexity and difficulty of searching for an alternative story and reconstructing the forgotten aunt’s life, when restorying happens between dominant knowledges generated by two cultures. This hopefully will complement White’s model based on the system of modern power.

Key Words: Personal Essay; Narrative Therapy; Alternative Story; Unique Outcome.

Writing 4 (Aug. 2021): 65-71.

Writing in a Second Language: Creativity and Self

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 14:40:52 -0400

Abstract: Starting with two different creative writing theories, Hua Li’s pursuit of expressing the self and Jewell Parker Rhodes’s ideal of transcending the self, this paper stresses that writing in a second language can make both possible. The particular movement of “doubling the self” resulting from writing in a second language, the complex interaction between the self and the self as the other, revises the traditional Iowa model Mark McGurl identifies on the basis of monolingual writing, redefining creativity as well as authenticity. An examination of some writers who have written in their second language reveals that such experiences did lead to a changed self and different voices. Various viewpoints brought by writing in a second language urge the writers to cross the boundaries linguistically and culturally, which becomes a source of creativity. In the meantime, as between two cultural systems authenticity has no definite borderline, John W. Berry’s model of acculturation helps explain that only the integration mode embraces multiple viewpoints, encourages the writer to select creatively, and facilitates a deeper understanding of authenticity.

Key Words: Writing in a Second Language; Self; Creativity; Authenticity.

Writing 6 (Dec. 2020): 116-125.

The Zoo

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 14:27:36 -0400

On my eighteenth birthday, my parents asked me where I wanted to go and I chose the zoo. I knew it is not the best place to grow up, but there lived the only panda in my hometown, who I kept visiting when I was a small kid, and who many years later, when she had already passed away, I found was the most long-lived panda in the world. Visiting this panda could be very boring, because almost every time I went there, she was sleeping with her back towards the window, rarely moving, which is natural for an aged granny to do but only understandable to an older me. But when talking about panda, I was enchanted. I could stay there all day, watching her yellowish back hair, holding my breath to feel her heaving chest, and waiting, always waiting for an occasional yawn or an idle turnover. In summer she enjoyed the air conditioning and lay by a big ice cube, always surrounded by dry bamboo leaves and thick bamboo stems she didn’t bother to eat. I could stay there until everybody left and my mother seated dozing aside. Disappointed, exhausted, my feet aching, my waist stiffening, I stood still. I didn’t know why but I had to see.

That day my parents were wise enough to bring me to a show before visiting the narcoleptic panda. We saw normal things, a bear riding a unicycle, a monkey standing upside down on a sheep, and tigers lining up to jump through fire rings. When we came out of the tent, we saw a short girl and a red bucket. There was a small show not free in the zoo, only performed by this girl. A few tourists stayed when hearing the word “snake.” I guess my father was willing to buy extra tickets because it was my birthday. I, most afraid of snakes, lingered because this could be a part of my fear resistance program. Since I found I was scared by snakes, I began to read books like The Secret of Snake Island and news articles on people harassed by these cruel creatures, including a girl who drank spring water and bred two snakes in her stomach, and a man whose penis was bitten by a snake that crawled into his toilet through the sewer. I watched the movie Anacondas and documentaries on viper, cobra, and python. Perhaps it was time to see snakes without a screen.

I sat there, ready to be shocked and disgusted. The girl with a pony tail, thinner and smaller than me, was around my age. A wrinkled grey-haired man stood behind her, who looked like her grandfather but might actually be her father, which is normal if you grew up laboring on the farm in the country. They must come to the city for an easier life, after many years’ hard work. It was disappointing though. When the girl removed the lid and reached into the bucket, what she took out was not a big clammy snake that would raise its head and hiss. A small black snake, a little longer than a pencil, coiled in her palm, and she lifted it up, taking a look at its head before putting it in her mouth. She had to pinch the snake and push it several times to force it to slither in. Then she closed her mouth and probably stirred her tongue. The girl tried to smile. I stared at her throat and waited. I had only seen girls swallowing daggers. It took a while, and the poor snake finally found its way, crawling out from her right nostril. But soon she opened her mouth and pressed the writhing snake, making it return to the mouth. Such a performance seemed not to satisfy some viewers so she picked up a bigger snake and also put it in her mouth. We got to see two snakes creeping out of her nostrils. A man whistled.

But only years later did I learn to shiver, when remembering what my mother told me as a little girl. “You’re lucky,” more than once she said. “You can live a decent life just because you were born here, not there.”

Pembroke 49 (March 2017)

1, 2, 3

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 14:22:04 -0400

“Do you still remember Ms. Sun?” my father asked once. “The teacher who wanted to adopt you?”

That was many years ago, when I was in the first grade, and my family moved to Tianjin, a city in northern China. Ms. Sun was my math teacher, with a pair of eyes as big and smart as a monkey’s and two upper front teeth leaning slightly forward probably due to overenthusiasm. She often hugged me and kissed me in school, which was a little scary. Chinese people rarely hugged or kissed each other then. Even my mother felt embarrassed to do that to me. Two years later, when my parents decided to move back to my hometown, Ms. Sun offered to adopt me, though she already had three daughters and I was the only child in my family.

I have always wondered about her mysterious love, for I was a normal kid, not attractive to other teachers, and ultimately chose liberal arts instead of science. Now there is only one thing I remember about her. Once she asked all the students in the class to think about three numbers: when they were added together, the sum equaled the result of them multiplied together. A kid mentioned 0, another kid talked about two-digit numbers like 12 or 14, and many other students shouted complicated numbers. Ms. Sun kept shaking her head. I was a lazy person so I began with the easiest ones: 1, 2, 3. I raised my hand. Ms. Sun’s eyes lit up, and I got a handmade red flower as a reward.

“That’s the reason,” my father said. “She believed you had talent in math. She really wanted to help you.”

Even such small things have their own magic.

Pembroke 49 (March 2017)

The Laughter of the Big-Bellied Buddha

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 14:14:48 -0400

When I belch, I begin to miss my grandfather. Ceaseless belching is hereditary: my mother got it from her father; I got it from my mother. All the other people in the family escaped from the trouble. Sometimes it was hard to stop belching. Once my mother patted my shoulder and said: “Look! A one-hundred Yuan bill on the ground!” I forgot belching and looked down: there was nothing. And my mother laughed: “I cured it!”

In my memory, my grandfather was always sitting there, sinking into an old, green sofa in the corner of his bedroom, next to a screen door leading to the balcony. He never moved. He never talked. Outside it was bright and sunny, light flowing into the room through the screen. My grandfather stayed in the darkness, his face red, his long eyebrows drooping, his large thick earlobes similar to the ones of the big-bellied Buddha statuette lying on the TV stand. He was near the sunshine but seldom separated from the sofa, as if it were his throne and he were the king of silence, a faint smile lingering on his chin.

That afternoon he was sitting in a chair behind my grandmother, who was playing mahjong with her old neighbors in the community recreation center. As usual, he watched my grandmother silently, a cup of tea in his hand. My grandmother, immersed in the game, noticed nothing until the cup fell down to the floor and broke. Hospital. Cerebral haemorrhage. Craniotomy. Coma.

In the ICU, I was scared by the other patient lying nearby, who spread his limbs on the bed like crucified Jesus. His face was burnt black, his tangled hair like a bird’s nest, his beard wriggling like three dying, stiffening leeches. I didn’t dare to look at his eyes. I was afraid that I would not be able to find his eyeballs. He could not stop shaking because of the pain, howling like a beast falling off a cliff. The survivor of a car accident. How can my grandfather sleep, I thought, with those sounds from hell? My grandfather looked the same, quiet and peaceful, as if nothing had ever happened, as if his skull had not been sawed open and his brain had not been rummaged for blood clots. It was a miracle, the doctor said, few people in their seventies could stand such a surgery. Everything was good and we only needed to wait for him to wake up. If it was not for the pipes plugged into his head, I would think that he slept there like a prince, and a kiss could revive him.

Then came the belching. It didn’t stop. No one could help. I doubted, if my grandfather were awake, he himself could do anything about the belching. Even a one-hundred Yuan bill would not work this time. The pipes could not stay still and my grandfather’s brain kept bleeding. He was removed from the room of howls.

The day my grandfather died, I was assigned to clean the wall of his living room. I was amazed. When you removed the table, removed the chairs, and removed the fridge, the wall was not as green as you thought it would be. The fresh color of apple green, the background with which you were so familiar that you usually ignored it, was covered by numerous tiny, dark brown stains. I didn’t know what they were. Like grease, smoke, all those little unhappy things in life, pains that had been long forgotten, or corroded tears. I tried to clean them with a rag, moving my arm mechanically, not thinking about anything. Inheriting silence, I sat in front of the wall, with my back to all the people coming and mourning. I didn’t raise my head. I didn’t talk. I didn’t miss any stain. I hoped I could make the wall look as new as possible. There were so many stains there that, by the end of the day, I realized that I could never finish the cleaning.

My mother even smiled after the funeral. After all, this was a natural thing. Everyone knew. My grandfather had lived seventy-two years, respected and admired by many people. It was not a sad death. At least he didn’t suffer from the pain. We nodded and shook various hands. But when she sat back in our car, she burst into tears. “I have no father now.” She cried like a little girl, a lost kitten crouching in the corner of the rear seat. I was paralyzed in silence, feeling like in a dream, a weird dream from which I couldn’t wake up for years.

And the ceramic statuette of the big-bellied Buddha disappeared, the one laughing with his belly naked, whose thick earlobes represented a lot of luck. I didn’t see it and no one mentioned it. I didn’t ask. When I belched again, I thought, “This is gonna kill me someday.”

Pembroke 49 (March 2017)