Crazy English

There was little reason to bank on the business of teaching English. China and the language didn’t have an auspicious history. In 1636, King Charles I authorized a small fleet of four ships, under the command of Captain John Weddell, to set sail for the East. The expedition headed for Canton but encountered a firefight with a Chinese fort, and more clashes ensued. As the linguistics scholar Kingsley Bolton recounts in “Chinese Englishes,” an exhaustive history, the British blamed their problems partly on a failure to communicate; they had no English-Chinese translators. By the eighteenth century, though, local tradesmen in Canton had begun to make sense of the alien language. Eventually, they composed a pidgin-English vocabulary, using Chinese characters to capture the phonetics: January became “che-na-wi-le” and the west wind was “wi-sze-wun.” They wrote it all down in “The Common Foreign Language of the Red-Haired People,” a pamphlet of sixteen printed pages and three hundred and seventy-two entries, beginning with the numeral “one” and ending with “shoe buckle.” The cover depicted a man wearing a tricornered hat and flouncy knickerbockers, and carrying a cane.

Speaking basic English was no virtue. It was the language of the compradors, the middlemen, who were so roundly reviled that they had trouble finding women who would marry them. “They serve as interpreters only because they have no other means of making a livelihood,” the reformist scholar Feng Guai-fen wrote. “Their nature is boorish, their knowledge shallow, and furthermore, their moral principles are mean.”

China urgently needed proper English for diplomatic negotiations. Feng called for special new language schools that would provide “double rations” to talented students and expose them to foreign teachers. “There are many brilliant people in China; there must be some who can learn from the barbarians and surpass them,” he wrote. And, by the twentieth century, a fresh crop of mission schools was spreading foreign languages in China in the name of God.

But when Mao Zedong took power, in 1949, he expelled the missionaries and declared Russian the primary foreign language. Within a decade, China had fewer than nine hundred secondary-school teachers of English in the entire country.

By the mid-seventies, the study of English had been cautiously restored, with limits. “ ‘Foreign language is a tool of class struggle.’ That was one of the first English phrases we learned,” Zhang Lijia, who, at the time, was a teen-ager in Nanjing and is now a bilingual author, told me. “The other was ‘Long live Chairman Mao!’ ”

Finally, in the two decades that followed, Deng Xiaoping thrust his country into the world and returned English to prominence.

In 1997, Li was trooping from city to city. In the soot-stained industrial redoubt of Zhuzhou, in Hunan Province, he met a man with a red face and an earthy farmer’s accent. Ouyang Weijian was the deputy principal of Zhuzhou No. 1 Middle School. He had first heard Li speak in the city of Changsha, and was so impressed by his “magic English-study method” that he encouraged the local board of education to invite Li to lecture in Zhuzhou. Ouyang rented the city’s largest venue, the Zhuzhou Sports Stadium, but he wasn’t prepared for the response. “It was a three-thousand-seat arena,” Ouyang told me. “We got five thousand people.”

They were an improbable pair: Li, the scion of a cosseted cadre family, and Ouyang, one of five children raised in a dirt-floor farmhouse. He was the family’s only college graduate. China, in the nineties, was crackling with new ventures, and Ouyang wanted to try his own luck. He was a natural salesman—he knew “how to talk,” as the Chinese expression puts it—and he thrived among backslappers. “Even after I became a principal, my desire to do something big was still not satisfied,” he said. After Li spoke in Zhuzhou, Ouyang quit his job and joined him as general manager of the company.

For their first big gig together, Ouyang badgered the radio station, the schools, and the education officials in the southern city of Guilin to help him promote a show. This time, Ouyang recalls, “there were three thousand stuck waiting outside.” The crowd toppled a stadium gate. The police arrived to try to control traffic on the surrounding streets. The city’s vice-mayor approached Ouyang and urged him to call it off, because the temperature inside was climbing dangerously high. “I said, ‘No, we can’t stop now. Everybody is moving and sweating and happy. It’s O.K. as long as everybody is moving. We can’t stop this now.’ ”

With recognition came controversy. Li was harshly criticized by both newspapers and professors in the province of Guangdong and the western city of Chengdu. Yet the business continued to grow. On several occasions, Li received a rare disposition to lecture inside the ancient walls of the Forbidden City, in Beijing. He led English-yelling classes for soldiers on top of the Great Wall. A prominent Chinese filmmaker, Zhang Yuan, made a documentary entirely about Crazy English.

Li was teaching in the northern coal city of Jilin, in June, 1999, when he met Kim Lee, a tall, confident brunette from Florida who had been sent by the Miami teachers’ union on a research trip to study foreign-language teaching practices. When Li introduced himself, he joked that he was a computer engineer from California. Kim brushed him off. He then approached her again, this time with the truth. “He said, ‘I’m just kidding. I’m really an English teacher, and I’ve never even been to America,’ ” Kim recalls. “So, at this point, I just think this guy is a nut job.”

Within days, Kim was teaching beside Li onstage. They had a natural rapport. Her dry wit and all-American looks were the perfect foil: an American Alice Kramden to his Chinese Ralph. They married four years later, in Las Vegas. Even there, on the Strip, Kim said, a Chinese shopkeeper spotted Li and chased down the newlyweds to shake his hand.

Kim was baffled, at first, by Li’s antics, his fire-breathing. When she noticed how students responded, however, the educator in her came to see things differently. “This guy is really passionate about what he’s doing, and, as a teacher, how can you not be moved by that?” she said. Today, she rolls her eyes at his critics—“P.C. crusaders,” she calls those who object to Li’s nationalism—and plays a major role in Crazy English, both as an editor and as a performing partner. In social settings and in classrooms, he often glances her way for a nod of judgment or encouragement. She has imposed a “ten-day rule” on his tours: if he’s gone for more than ten days straight, she gets on a plane with the kids. (“I’m just a mom who came into a bizarre life by happenstance,” she says.) While we were having dinner one night at a neighborhood restaurant near Guangzhou, Li and Kim took turns depositing shreds of chicken on a plate for their two-year-old, Lila. At one point, Li was caught up in a conversation about management styles and the toddler got her tiny hands on a drumstick. Kim nudged her husband: “So you’re just going to let her eat like a Viking?”

Last fall, Li’s blog site posted photographs from a middle-school lecture in Inner Mongolia. One picture showed hundreds of students on their hands and knees, kowtowing. Bowing one’s head to the ground is, in China, a potent symbol reserved mainly for honoring the dead. It was once required of visitors to the Emperor, and during the Cultural Revolution it was used as a tool of humiliation against those who were accused of committing political crimes.

The response to the photographs was swift. A columnist in the state-run China Daily pronounced Li a “demagogue,” and his lectures “like cult meetings.” “Cult” is a dangerous word in a country that affixed that label to the spiritual group Falun Gong nearly a decade ago and has been rounding up its followers ever since.

Li fought back. “I was pissed off,” he told me. The students, he asserted, were bowing not to him but to their teachers, at his suggestion. The explanation did little good. An article in the South China Morning Post asked whether Crazy English was becoming “one of those cults where the leaders insist on being treated like deities.” Kim’s cell phone rang so much that she stopped answering. To her, the storm felt unjust, as if they were being blamed for China’s “burning passion” for learning a language.

“People have that within them,” she told me. “He’s just bringing it out.”

For weeks after the kowtow story, Li avoided the spotlight. (The controversy “scared me to death,” he said.) His most high-profile contract was on the line: the Beijing Organizing Committee had appointed one of his companies—a joint venture between Crazy English and Aigo, an electronics-maker—to teach as many volunteers as possible. Officially, Beijing wants half of its hundred thousand volunteers to be able to speak a foreign language. That seems unlikely, but the city is going to unusual lengths in the effort. Cabdrivers have been issued an “Olympic Taxi Handbook,” a three-hundred-and-twelve-page primer on the world, which features not only a list of useful English expressions—“I want to go to the People’s Hospital”—but also a section of do’s and don’ts that account for purported national preferences and taboos: never rub the head of a Thai child; a Frenchman likes his handshakes brief and light; Americans shun “goods and packaging that use a bat-shaped pattern, believing that those animals suck people’s blood and are inauspicious.” (In China, bats signify good fortune.) The “Olympic Taxi Handbook” concludes with a section on emergencies, including how to escape from a burning cab (use your belt buckle to break the glass) and how to retrieve, bag, and ice a severed finger. When Li began to speak publicly again, Olympic officials told him to skip any signature Crazy English flourishes, like having students hold his books aloft, Mao style. The Olympic organizers were determined to avoid anything that might attract controversy, a hope that now seems quaint amid the clamor of protests abroad over China’s hosting of the Games. Still, Li has mostly held back, and his Olympic campaign continues to thrive.

Among those I met at the Crazy English camp was Zhang Zhiming, a slim, inquisitive twenty-three-year-old with a plume of hair in the front that makes him look like Tintin. He prefers to use the name Michael, and has studied Crazy English for five years. He is the son of a retired coal miner and could never have afforded a ticket to the camp, so last year he got a job as a camp security guard and strained to hear as much as he could from the sidelines. This year, he was promoted to teaching assistant at the camp and received a small stipend.

“Usually when I see Li Yang, I feel a little nervous,” Michael told me one morning, as we sat outside. “He is a superman.” Michael had trouble sitting still. His enthusiasm was infectious, and I liked him instantly. “When I didn’t know about Crazy English, I was a very shy Chinese person,” he said. “I couldn’t say anything. I was very timid. Now I am very confident. I can speak to anyone in public, and I can inspire people to speak together.” Michael first encountered Crazy English through his older brother, who had worked for Li as an assistant. His brother never learned much English, but Michael was mesmerized by it. He began spending as much as eight hours a day on English, listening over and over to a tape of Li’s voice, which sounded, to him, “like music.”

His favorite book was Li Yang’s “American Standard Pronunciation Bible,” which helped him hone his vowels and punch up his consonants. Eventually, he got a job teaching at an English school, with the hope that, someday, he might open a school of his own.

I met scores of Li Yang students this winter, and I always asked them what purpose English has served in their lives. There was a hog farmer who wanted to be able to greet his American buyers. A finance worker, studying during his vacation, wanted to get an edge in the office. Michael had no doubts about what English might do for him. A few years ago, his brother got involved in a direct-sales network, pushing health drinks and potions. Schemes like that, known in Mandarin as “rats’ societies,” have proliferated in China’s era of surging growth, fuelled by get-rich-quick dreams and a population adrift between ideologies. “He always wanted me to be involved in that,” Michael went on, and I tried to picture him extolling the benefits of a health tonic with the same passion that he now expressed about English. “I spent half a year doing this business, and I gained nothing.” Neither did Michael’s brother, who flew to the United States six months ago to try to earn the money to repay his creditors. He now works as a waiter in New York, Michael said, and, until he returns, it’s up to Michael to support their parents.

As Michael talked, the vigor in his voice faded. His brother wants him to go to America, too, to help earn money. “He has big dreams,” he said. “But I don’t really want to go there, because I want to have my own business. If you are a worker, you can’t be a rich man. You can’t buy a house, buy a car, support a family.”

Michael stared at his feet and said, “I have no choice. This is life. I should always keep smiling. But, actually, I feel I’m under a lot of pressure. Sometimes I want to cry. But I’m a man.”

He stopped. The air was silent, except for a warm wind that carried a trace of Li’s voice, booming in the stadium behind us.

A few weeks later, Michael invited me for lunch at the apartment he shares with his parents in Guangzhou. It’s in a cluster of modern high-rises on Gold Panning Road, in the center of the city, formerly known as Canton, where the compradors once chattered in pidgin English.

When Michael met me at the gate, he was in a good mood. (“I got promoted to teaching supervisor,” he said. “I got a raise.”) The family’s apartment consisted of a living room, two small bedrooms, and a kitchen. His parents were cooking, and the air smelled of ginger. Michael and his father shared a bunk bed in one room, and his mother and his older sister occupied the other. Michael’s room was cluttered with English-study books, an overfilled desk, a laptop. English felt tangible, like a third—and messy—roommate.

He rooted around in a box to show me the homemade vocabulary cards that he carries, just as Li once did. He pulled out a card marked “Occupations: Astronomer, Baker, Barber, Barkeeper, Biologist, Blue-Collar Worker, Boss/Superior, Botanist. . . . ” He wanted to play some recordings that he’d been making for his students, as models of pronunciation. He clicked on a recording called “What Is English?,” which he’d cribbed from the Li Yang Crazy English Web site. He had layered the sounds of waves and seagulls into the background and recorded it with a girl named Isabell, trading sentences as they went: “English is a piece of cake. I can totally conquer English. I will use English. I will learn English. I will live in English. I am no longer a slave to English. I am its master. I believe English will become my faithful servant and lifelong friend. . . .”

It went on for another minute, and, while Michael listened intently, my eyes settled on a small handwritten Chinese sign, taped to the wall, at the foot of his bed: “The past does not equal the future. Believe in yourself. Create miracles.”

纽约客中国来信：疯狂英语

随着他的摄影师和个人助理，李阳走进了北京的一间教室，大声喊道：“Hello, everyone！”学生们都大声的回应着。穿着灰毛衣和黑色大衣的李阳是疯狂英语的创办人，校长和总编辑。现在是一月，2008北京奥运会志愿者第一期英语训练营的第五天。这次训练营是有史以来最雄心勃勃的奥组委官方活动的一部分。中国人想在客人们到来之前让自己掌握尽可能多的英语，而李阳被北京奥组委授权来促进这个愿望的实现。他可能是全世界唯一一个能让自己的学生学英语激动到泪流满面的人。他建立了一个英语帝国——这种语言曾被称作野蛮人和资本家的母语。他的理念之一颇具爱国意味：征服英语，让中国更强大！

李阳让学生们聚拢在他的周围，这些学生都是30-40岁之间的医生，由各个医院选拔出来的精英。当来观看奥运会的外国游客和教练身体不适的时候，他们将出现在现场。但是，像中国成千上万从教科书上学习英语的人一样，他们对于英语的面对面交流缺乏自信。李阳的教学手段被中国一家报纸称作“喊的英语”。李阳强调喊出来是展示你“国际实力”的手段，喊可能是能改变你一生的外语学习诀窍。

李阳站在他的学生面前，高举右臂，让大家尽全力跟他喊。他喊道：“I!”，学生们也跟着喊：“I!”

- "Would!”

- "Would!"

- "Like!"

- "Like!"

- "To!"

- "To!"

- "Take!"

- "Take!"

- "Your!"

- "Your!"

- "Tem!Per!Ture!"

- "Tem!Per!Ture!"

然后将所有的发音连起来，医生们大声的喊着：“I would like to take your temperature!（我想测您的体温！）”一个戴着黑框眼镜的女人声嘶力竭的喊着，身旁穿着军装的男人也在尽力大声说。李阳在整个教室走了一圈，学生们的每一次重复都比上一次显得更加自信。

对于李阳的FANS来说，他更多的是一个自信心训练大师而不是英语教师。李阳19岁开始教英语，这20年来，他已经对数百万的成人和孩子进行了面对面授课。他经常在体育馆里讲课，动辄就有上万甚至更多的听众。一些FANS甚至坐车数天来听他的课。所有课程中的最高等级“白金班”是指李阳亲自授课的小班学习，要价大约250美元一天——超过一个普通中国工人一个月的工资。他的学生向他索要签名，有时也给他写情书。

中国有影响的小说家之一王朔在他一篇关于李阳的文章中评价道：“我曾见过这样的狂热，这是一种古老的巫术，聚拢一大帮的人，用言语让他们兴奋，产生一股似乎能排山倒海的力量。”

王朔接着写道，“我相信李阳是爱国的，但这样的行为和你的爱国主义，我担心会演变成某种狗屎种族主义。”

李阳疯狂英语的总部位于中国南方城市广州的一座写字楼中，占据了四层。总部大约有200名员工，另有大约200人工作在全国各地的分校中。但李阳很少在总部，他喜欢旅馆。他在北京拥有一套公寓供他的妻子和两个女儿居住，但即便人在北京，他还是习惯住在旅馆以使自己的工作不受打扰。（他和前妻所生的另一个女儿和她母亲现居加拿大）

这个冬天的一段时间，李阳和他的助手住在广州海洋酒店的顶层总统套房中。套房的装修是现代派的：有一个壁炉，白色真皮沙发，按摩浴缸以及大型古董木雕。新鲜的空气是非常必须的，李阳刚刚结束与全国各地分校校长马拉松式的会议，他打开了窗帘，欣赏着阳光下的城市风光。

他坐在一张沙发上开始跟我说起他的一系列新计划，包括一种可能会实现的连锁式小课堂，用他自己的话说就是“星巴克式的英语教学”。“人们下班去疯狂英语口语训练小课堂待上一段时间然后才回家”，他说，“就像是做健身一样。”

李阳这个名字出现在超过一百种书籍，影像制品和类似《李阳疯狂英语MP3全集》这样的软件包装上。一套这样的MP3售价是66元人民币，李阳的传记《我疯狂，但我成功了》售价则是20元。李阳鼓励企业为雇员批量购买他的传记，一次订购超过1000本以上可获六折优惠。（据说原来的书名是《我是疯子但我成功了》，被出版社拒绝了）大多数的产品上都有他的标准相：精心修饰，无框眼镜和露齿的微笑。李阳说他也不清楚这些年究竟卖出了多少书，他的一位出版商估计这一数目能达到百万。

中国处在一个学习英语的热潮中已经超过十年了，这种热情已将英语提高到不仅是一种语言工具，而更多代表了衡量一个人能力的标准。中国现在存在着各种不同的阶层，机会和力量，但所有这些中少有的几个共同点之一就是英语的掌握能力，这点已在作家，政治人物，知识分子和企业人士中形成普遍认识。每一个大学学生都必须通过一个最低等级的英语能力测试，英语是唯一一门必须测试的外语。英语能力已经成为一种意识形态，有足够的力量为你的简历加分，赢得配偶或者让你从众多人中脱颖而出。语言学家估计目前中国学习英语的人数在2亿到3.5亿之间，差不多相当于美国的总人口。英语培训机构，要价高昂的英语家庭教师在中国市场供不应求，而中国最大的英语培训机构新东方，在纽约证券交易所上市。

李阳已经早把英语教学转化为个人的某种激情。他推崇毛泽东，爱迪生和罗斯福总统的名言。李阳的拿手好戏是活跃气氛，他鄙视中国刻板的课堂秩序，他让学生们把课本举在脸前，面向天空，大声的朗读英语。

李阳的理论就是把英语能力和个人的综合素质紧紧联系起来，然后把人的素质又和国家的实力联系起来。这种紧密的联系几乎能让人疯狂。一个叫做冯涛（音译）的学生告诉我说，有一次他有参加一次李阳授课班的机会，但他的钱不够，“我去卖了血。”他说。李阳的妻子是一位美国教师，在一次来中国的旅行中与李阳结识，她说：“有很多次我得去人群中把我的女儿拉出来，或者叫一个大个子的谁去，但人群是如此的拥挤疯狂，让我都有点害怕。”

李阳不可缺少的资本之一是他的嗓音，类似于声嘶力竭的广告商贩式的男中音，他习惯拉长元音。李阳只在美国和英国呆过一段时间，但他很少犯错误。即便是在专业的演说家中，他也是拥有绝对令人吃惊的精力。在去年秋天在上海的一次和安东尼罗宾斯的同声翻译之后，他告诉我，他通常在同声翻译中每隔一或一个半小时就要休息一次，一天最多能翻译10到12个小时，但李阳能不休息的翻译一整天，罗宾斯补充说，“他真的是非常，非常惊人。”

李阳有时也很谦虚，他经常拿自己偶尔犯的错误开玩笑。他知道这样的偶尔出错有助于塑造他的形象：他是全中国学习英语最努力的人，21世纪中国人的典型。

在宾馆的房间里，我见证了他对他的职员做的一次训话，职员们都围在他的身旁，有的人甚至用摄像机录像。“我们如何才能让疯狂英语更加成功？”他问我，他的音调在提高，“我们知道这些人不会去做总统，我们一个月教他们十个句子，或者一篇文章，当他们彻底掌握的时候，我们为他们举行盛大的庆祝，鼓励他们，然后他们就会再付钱学习，我们就能又挣一笔钱。”

他转向他的雇员们，改用中文说：“成功的诀窍就是让我们的学员不断的付钱，这就是我这些年总结出来的。”然后他又转用英语说，“我们如何才能让他们一次又一次又一次的付钱？”

全年冬天，中国经历了半个世纪以来最强暴风雪的袭击。暴风雪的时间又刚好跟中国的春运时间重合，这次灾害造成的损失是空前的，在广州火车站，成千上万的人露宿在站前广场和街道上。

同时，七百多个成人和孩子还是参加了在中国南方城市从化（音）一所大学校园中举行的李阳疯狂英语冬季训练营。一个十岁的孩子告诉我他为了参加这次培训，和他表哥坐了整整四天的车。有李阳照片和英语短语的海报在校园中随处可见，在自助餐厅的楼梯上方写着“Have you thought about whether you deserve the meal?（你有没有想过你是否应得这一餐？）”在每次上课前列队的广场上挂着：“永远不要让你的国家衰落！”在通向体育馆的门口写着：“在你的一生中，应该至少经历一次彻底的疯狂。”

每个学员都会领到一个装满书的红色书包，和一件印着“2008国际精英训练营”的外套。训练营的第一天早晨九点之前，学员们就开始在没有暖气，寒冷的体育馆中集合（学员的宿舍情况也是一样，之前的一个晚上，我穿着衣服戴着滑雪帽睡了一晚上）。李阳强调学习英语的过程中也要锻炼体能和毅力，并在他自己的博客上贴了一张他在跑步机上的照片。

人群中让开了一个狭窄的通道，铺上了长长的红地毯。跟随着一些“暖场”的老师，李阳出现在体育馆的中心，他戴着一个无线麦克风，坐着的学员们都注视着他等待他开始。

“世界人口的六分之一都说中文，那么我们为什么要学习英语？”他问道。他转过身对身后坐着的一些外籍老师做了个手势，然后接着说，“因为我们怜悯他们不会说中文！”整个场馆沸腾了。

李阳对西方世界没有太多的好感。他的平民形象得益于他在海外学习的时候只是一个穷学生的事实，这使他更成为普通大众的偶像。在李阳的演说和著作中，他常常引用西方大国作为警示的故事。疯狂英语网站上写道，“美国，英国，日本——他们不希望中国变得强大！他们想要的是中国的年轻人都留着长头发，穿奇装异服，喝着苏打水，听西方的音乐，毫无进取心，只会享受安逸。中国的年轻人越堕落，他们就越开心。”最近，李阳在他博客上使用了一篇描述美国人的饮食习惯的教学文章，强调了一个词语“病态肥胖（morbid obesity）”。

李阳的真正动力来自于一个容易鼓动人心的真理，“英国国家和非英国国家之间的鸿沟是如此之大，任何刻苦的努力都是值得的。”他鼓励学生要“放下面子”，在一个给初高中学生的视频课程中，他说：“你们会犯很多错误，你们会被很多人耻笑，但这些都没关系，因为你的未来会跟其他人不同。”

他尽力不给人留下一种“专业人士”的印象。在他的书的封面，他穿着西装打着领带，但是像工人一样把袖口卷起来。在一个演讲中，李阳让人群中的一个学员站起来，这是一个戴着眼镜的中年男子，李阳让他跟大家讲讲他的故事。

这个名叫刘东华（音）的男人用中文回答说他是北京的《中国企业家》杂志前总编。“我刚从瑞士达沃斯世界经济论坛回来，”他说（李阳对着人群补充说“参加这个论坛的好多人都是乘坐他们的私人飞机去的”），“当面对世界各地非常重要的人物演讲时，我是一个愚蠢的傻瓜，因为我的英语实在不好。”

李阳转向学员们，说：“如果他疯狂（英语）了，所有中国的企业都能疯狂！”

在接下来的几个小时中，李阳侃侃而谈，调侃中国的大学文凭。当这次讲演结束的时候，李阳已经没有休息连续讲了四个小时，虽然环境非常寒冷，但所有的学员都听得入迷。接下来的日子里，学员们早晨会集体跑步，高声诵读英语。最后的一个晚上，他们一个个赤脚走过一段铺在地上的热煤炭。

李阳的父母在六十年代的时候响应毛主席号召上山下乡，大学毕业之后来到了偏远的西北省份新疆。这个家庭很幸运的被分到了一间带有独立卫生间的房子。李阳的父亲李天得（音）在广电局工作，母亲是一位高级工程师。四岁之前，小李阳都是居住在离父母几千公里以外的地方，由外婆照顾，因为李阳的父母认为当地的教学条件不够完善。后来，家庭重新团聚在一个地方，而李阳的父亲需要花费大量的时间在路上，大约每2或3个月回家一次。

李天得是位严厉的父亲，有一次李阳和他的伙伴被抓到在农场的水果上挖洞，李阳的父亲非常愤怒，很多年之后他告诉一位中国的记者，“我觉得丢了面子。当我回到家，我打了他。这个事情让大家知道这个看起来挺文静的孩子也有另一面。”李阳的母亲也同样严厉，她让李阳学习书法，如果李阳写得不好，她就会撕掉让他重写。但尽管家教严厉，李阳小的时候仍然不是一个特别出众的孩子。

就在那个时期，李阳变得很内向。比如当电话响起的时候，“我会数，一，二，三，四，”他回忆说，“我会犹豫是否该接它，可能这个电话很重要？是给我的电话吗？我不知道为什么这对我真的很难，即便是现在，我见到父母，还是不能很直接的就叫爸爸妈妈。”

高中时期，李阳留着长到肩膀的头发，并考虑退学。但最终他就读位于中国最贫困的省份之一的兰州大学机械工程系。一位叫做吴建军（音）的老教授回忆说，“他很内向，并不善于表达自己。”

1987年底，李阳即将要有一次重要的英语考试，他和一个朋友决定每天中午在校园的室外诵读英语。李阳发现大声朗读是记忆和掌握英语最好的方式。“我可以集中精力，我觉得自己很勇敢。”他回忆说，“如果不够大声，我就学不进去。”

其实在中国的校园中，让学生朗读是一种很传统的教学手段，而李阳只是简单的提高了朗读的音量。他开始无处不在的背诵英语。“宿舍晚上是十一点熄灯，”吴建军教授说，“灯熄了之后他也会在宿舍走廊里大声朗读，其他同学很不满因为影响了他们的休息。”但最终考试结果出来李阳是第二名，李阳告诉我说，“他当时立刻在学校里变得非常有名。”

毕业之后，李阳在电气研究所找到了一份工作，同时他也开班教英语，每位学生收每月8块钱（当时大约相当于2美元）。生活的转折发生在1989年，他因为父亲的关系去了广州，在电台和电视做英语节目主持人。做主持人的两年期间他变得非常有名，但工作很无聊最终他还是辞职了。他用汉语拼音“疯狂”注册了一家公司，李阳疯狂英语国际培训机构。

他雇了他的姐姐李宁（音），然后租了一个房间，两人同时担任公司的总经理。屋子里有办公桌但没有床，晚上他们睡在一个很大的阳台上。他们张贴英语培训的广告传单，慢慢有了很多学生。他们收到从全国各地的来信询问教学英语的方法。李阳的姐姐负责处理这些信件，开始她每天都要从邮局背一书包的信，很快每天就有两尼龙袋子，再然后就需要另找一人一起拖回来。“然后我们彻夜不睡读这些信。”她告诉我。

（原文超长，还在翻译）