Chinese woman's search for American tutor rallies hundreds of his former students

A Shanghai woman looking for the American teacher who tutored her free of charge two decades ago has found hundreds of his former students, but not him.

Wang Yu, a community worker in Shanghai, graduated from East China Normal University in 2005 with a degree in tourism management, she told the South China Morning Post. The teacher, an American she knew only as Evans, taught an elective English course and spent three years coaching her outside class hours without pay.

Days before China's Teachers' Day on Sept. 10, Wang brought a letter she had never been able to send to the media center in Shanghai's Jiading District and asked for help finding him, Shanghai Television's "Xinwenfang" program reported.

She had already posted an appeal on the social platform RedNote, and said she had been looking for nearly 20 years and had almost given up before it caught on.

The post carried no photograph, only a line describing an ECNU foreign teacher named Evans.

Hundreds of alumni answered it with the same memories of a man in a suit and tie who carried a thick English dictionary everywhere and was funnier than his severe appearance suggested, according to the "Xinwenfang" report carried by the U.S.-based Chinese-language daily World Journal.

In his elective, every student took a turn at the lectern with a speech on a subject of their choosing, and the oral exam was to sing an English song.

He told them repeatedly to wear a helmet when cycling.

Using AI search tools, Wang found that Evans had also taught at Zhejiang Gongshang University and Shanghai International Studies University.

ECNU and SISU both said he had left years ago and his contact details no longer worked. Zhejiang Gongshang produced an email address and a phone number that have drawn no reply.

'Think of him as family'

In his classroom the desks and chairs formed a circle, with the middle left to the students for singing, dancing, speeches and magic tricks, Wang told "Xinwenfang".

"Your question?" was his refrain. He would walk up to a student and ask it without warning, until she understood he wanted them thinking for themselves.

In 2019, working on child-friendly community programs, Wang rebuilt the circle and put children in the middle to draw and talk, she told the SCMP.

She also keeps a thick album of photographs from her student years, nearly all of them taken by Evans.

He did not teach photography, the Xinwenfang report said, but he paid out of his own pocket to rig up a makeshift studio, shot his students, developed the prints and handed them over, staying behind the camera nearly every time.

He spoke fluent Mandarin with a trace of a Beijing accent and had a head of graying curls, she said.

He also gave her the English name Grace, after his grandmother's middle name.

He talked about a daughter living abroad who was about the age of the students in front of him, and often thanked them for the company.

Wang said she had come to think of him as family but never told him so.

In her letter she described a snowy Lunar New Year when vinegar and half the seasonings were unavailable in the shops, and the students crowded around him to eat the dumplings he wrapped himself.

She has never had dumplings that hot since, she wrote.

Former students told the SCMP they remembered singing "Scarborough Fair" and "You Are My Sunshine" in his class.

Commenters in the RedNote thread offered his full name as Curtis Roy Evans and a birth year of 1953, which would make him 73. A user in the U.S. said he may once have lived in Hawaii before moving away. None of those details has been confirmed.