she taught english on the state-run television during the afternoons and she was something of a public personality in a land where cultivating anonymity was an accepted way of life ; after a few months we would meet on saturday or sunday morning and we would walk around the city as she shopped or ran errands , all the while drilling us in the relevant chinese in a hands-on approach that took some of the initial pain out of learning an unfamiliar tonal language , and often she would be approached by people who recognized her from the t.v .