Tales of a Mischievous Student

Tales of a Mischievous Student is a collection of essays from Sanmao's later period, first published in 1989; the edition most widely circulated in mainland China is the 2003 "Complete Works of Sanmao" edition from Harbin Publishing House. The book centers on Sanmao's student life in Seattle in the mid-1980s, writing about classes, teachers, classmates, and everyday trivia in a light, playful style: practicing spoken language with classmates in language class, classrooms as lively as playgrounds, spring not being a time for study, and a hurried farewell in the final lesson. Besides this "mischievous student" experience, the book also includes pieces such as "Words of Experience," writing about surprises and composure during travel, the kindness of friends, neighbors, and strangers, and the taste of farewell, relocation, and rebuilding a life. The two prefaces at the front of the book were written by Sanmao's parents, "Our Second Child—the Third Miss" and "I Have Something to Say," supplementing from a family perspective a more everyday Sanmao with more of the flavor of ordinary life; the end of the book has an afterword and "A Chronicle of Sanmao's Life." Unlike the legend and desolation of Stories of the Sahara, Tales of a Mischievous Student writes about foreign classrooms, rainy streets, and ordinary human feelings; the prose is more relaxed and more humorous, regarded by critics as a representative of the shift in style of the "late Sanmao period." It also preserves her self-description regarding reading and travel: these were precisely the two most important stars in her life.