Well, unfortunately I've been without reflective thoughts over the past 11 or so weeks since reaching Ha'erbin. Applying to jobs and writing personal statements has forced me to do so, however!
Below are three pieces I wrote recently about my experiences over the summer, recently in Ha'erbin, and during my stay in Malaysia.
I promise to make an actual update on my life sometime... but for the time being, everything is going well! Only 3 more weeks of classes before I go back to Beijing and meet my family members!
Love, and hope you enjoy:
1) article in UVA's Arts and Sciences Magazine Online: http://aands.virginia.edu/x14159.xml
2) I was standing against the wall in the dimly-lit basement of the student center at Harbin Institute of Technology, trying to position myself so that I could see the student performers “dance-off” at the other side of the room. I scratched my head in amazement—when I passed the registration table in the cafeteria the week before, I had no idea there would be meticulously choreographed ten minute performances, audience members toting signs of encouragement for their friends, or a panel of three grumpy-looking judges (strangely similar to So You Think You Can Dance). Maybe all those things were mentioned on the information sheet, but nine semesters of Chinese still wasn’t enough to read it all.
Before I had the opportunity to majorly diulian (“lose face”—basically, embarrass myself horribly), I had a tough time figuring out what those grumpy judges wanted to see. They had so much to choose from: a group of three girls wearing tank tops and army pants dancing to “Genie in a Bottle,” a couple who danced Merengue, an excellent rendition of the robot, three or four traditional Chinese and ethnic-minority dances, to name a few. And of course, the one and only foreigner, yours truly, who wiggled to silly indie-pop for less than a minute before scurrying off the stage.
I look back to that time of intense competition, the anticipation for the result of comparing apples and oranges, and I think it truly underscores my fascination with Chinese culture and society. History books always point to the Cultural Revolution as the time when China wanted to throw off its old culture and make progress for the new, but I see that tension still existing in China today, especially among youth. As a country with nearly three thousand years of written history, China now faces the pressures of modernization and catching up with the world. This pressure manifests itself in interesting ways—the Yi fan-dancer with her elaborate folk-garb clearing the stage for a sexy group of Christina fans made this clash of old and new more than obvious.
Living in China has provided me with a space to learn about the fascinating changes that have marked the past century, and particularly the last thirty years, of China’s development. For the past five months, I have been researching the impact of these changes on the rural family, working closely with marginalized, migration-affected children. Compiling these experiences and observations into a senior thesis will be challenging, but will also offer me an opportunity to achieve a deeper understanding of an important social unit in Chinese society: the family.
The more I learn, the more curious I become. Returning to China for post-graduate work at an NGO, a law firm, or a foreign affairs publication will allow me to use my skills to work closely with Chinese people to achieve common goals. I would be lying if I said I didn’t sometimes crave the comfort and security of speaking English in America, where I blend-in perfectly and, on a day-to-day basis, rarely face overt, tangible discrimination. But the insights I’ve gained from being a laowai (foreigner) in China have been valuable to my understanding of cross-cultural communication, American culture, and myself. I’m willing to risk comfort, willing to embarrass myself a thousand more times, for deeper insight into these topics; moving to the workplace in China is best way to accomplish that goal.
3)This August I had the opportunity to travel in Thailand, Singapore, and Malaysia before participating in the Harvard Project for Asian and International Relations Academic Conference, which was hosted in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I was astonished by the diversity of these three Southeast Asian countries, and in particular Malaysia.
While I was walking around the city center in downtown Kuala Lumpur with my Conference roommate, an ethnic Chinese and Malaysian citizen, I was amazed by the different types of people I saw: break-dancing teenagers, Erhu playing Chinese men, Sari-wearing women. Kuala Lumpur is also a popular tourist location for many Arabs, coming from nations like Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan. This was the first time I saw a woman wearing a burqa, or even a niqab covering all but the eyes. Certainly, I had seen reports on television or in the newspaper that included photographs of this clothing, but what surprised me was the extravagance and seeming materialism of the men and children with the burqa-wearing women. The typical man accompanying a burqa-wearing woman was exceptionally well-dressed, sporting designer jeans and a fashionable name-brand shirt. The stark visual contrast between modesty and showiness in dress surprised me.
Coming from my background as an American with a shallow understanding of Muslim clothing and culture, I was challenged at first to understand this phenomenon. My initial, inward thought was, “Wow, those belabored critiques of Muslim culture as being unfair to women are right.” Prior to this experience, perhaps I was unaware that I even harbored these opinions; I knew I needed to explore the topic further.
I explained to my roommate that I would have expected more modesty from the male partner in a relationship that comes from a community in which modesty is “required” of women. My roommate pointed out that I did not see what these women were wearing under the burqa. In reality, he told me, they are most likely dressed in the same name brands and designer clothing, but these clothes are only for the husband to see. “Wearing a burqa doesn’t have anything to do with conservatism, it’s what they believe.”
After thinking more about this observation and conversing with other friends whom I met at the Conference and afterward, I began to understand that an assumption of “being forced” or even coercive passivity on the part of burqa-wearing woman is unfair. Furthermore, I realized that trying to glean meaning and insight solely from outward appearance is an incomplete and flawed approach to understanding culture.
This experience has made clear to me that open-mindedness and a willingness for self-reflection is critical to understanding how I react in new situations. This perspective has motivated me to be more sensitive to my limitations in understanding different cultures without asking others, sharing experiences, and starting dialogue.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Sunday, August 24, 2008
pix website
Check out my flickr account--website is to the right!! I put up my pictures from Bangkok a couple days ago, and I'll be adding more pictures as soon as I get better internet
Today is the last day of the Harvard Project for Asia and International Relations (HPAIR) conference. Monday night I'm flying back to Beijing--and I'm so excited to go back "home"
I'll make a post about SINGAPORE soon. Hope everyone is well!
Today is the last day of the Harvard Project for Asia and International Relations (HPAIR) conference. Monday night I'm flying back to Beijing--and I'm so excited to go back "home"
I'll make a post about SINGAPORE soon. Hope everyone is well!
Monday, August 18, 2008
Stories from Bangkok
ahhh even in Singapore I can't add pictures :( So sorry guys. If you can, check out my facebook albums, for now, I'll have to look into creating a photo website for those of you who don't have FB. Hope it's an interesting entry anyway!
I spent last weekend in Bangkok, Thailand, and the greater part of the week at a beach in Krabi Province, Thailand. I’m now in Singapore and will be going back to Malaysia on Monday.
Bangkok was a fascinating experience for me, as it presented a completely different atmosphere, culture, and feel that was distinct from China in many ways. Of course, I shouldn’t have assumed the two nations would be similar, but I was still taken aback by all the differences I noticed. Thailand is the second (first being China) foreign nation/culture that I have been lucky enough to experience, and I’m just blown away by the diversity of life over here in Southeast Asia—Malaysia (for the one night that I experienced it) was also new and unique to me.
The population of Thailand is near 62 million, and the capital is located in central Thailand at Bangkok. Bangkok is a “tourist name” that is only used internationally. Thai people call the city Krung Thep, which is short for the unbelievably long full name: krung thep mahanakhon amon rattanakosin mahinthara yuthaya mahadilok phop noppharat ratchathani burirom udomratchaniwet mahasathan amon piman awatan sathit sakkathattiya witsanukam prasit.
Wow.
The language was perhaps one of the most interesting, and for me, most frustrating parts of my experience in Thailand. The script of Thai is beautiful, involving over 40 consonants and over 30 vowels, combined with 5 tones that are marked over consonants to create a pretty complicated language. I would say the majority of people I interacted with had a basic handling of English, but they often would slip back into Thai at random intervals, or their English was very heavily accented so I didn’t quite understand. I remember once when I was trying to bargain for a shirt, I could have sworn the saleswomen was speaking Chinese to me because she kept saying [what I heard as] “ni kan ni kan” (which in Chinese means, “you look you look”). After I heard that I excited replied in Chinese to her, because I just wanted to be able to use my—if I do say so myself—rather good Chinese bargaining skills, but then she just gave me a confused look. Either she was using Thai that sounded similar, or she was saying “can” as in “can you buy it for this price?” I tell ya, not being able to communicate, especially during bargaining/making purchases was very very frustrating, and I felt more like a foreigner than I ever have in China.
Another funny thing about the Thai language was the way Thai people answer their cell phones. They often say “Huhlllloooooooo”, with the first part (“heh”) dipping down and then the “low” part rising up from the bottom pitch. Strange to hear something so familiar but then not quite the same.
My classmate from UVA, Oh, picked me up from the airport and we went to Siam shopping center, which is apparently one of the largest or the largest shopping centers in East Asia. It was an enormous complex with multiple buildings and name brands I’d never heard of and food court after food court after food court. Just paying for parking was interesting, because the service person put her hands together at her chest (as if in Christian prayer, with the fingers straight) and then leaned her head downward, almost touching her nose to her fingers. This is called wai and is a way of showing respect in Thailand. Usually service people/sales people will do a wai and the customer can either wai in response or just nod the head. Also, whenever a younger person is introduced or says hello to someone older, he or she should definitely wai.
After Oh and I had chosen a restaurant in the Siam Shopping center, I encountered another difference that I wasn’t accustomed to. We ordered a curry and a salad, and I was surprised that we were each given a fork and a spoon—no chopsticks and no knife. I started using the spoon as a knife with my left hand, and then used the fork how I would in America. Oh laughed at me and told me I had it the opposite way around—the spoon should go in the right hand and the fork should be used to scoop food onto the spoon before eating it. I suppose it shows my ignorance, but I had no idea people ate with spoons and forks in such a way!
I arrived on Friday, and the following Tuesday was the Queen of Thailand’s birthday, so pictures of her (and the King, and other members of the Royal Family) were all around the city. Neat Fact that Oh told me: the King is said to always have a camera, pencil, and map with him whenever he goes out.
I had read about the seriousness of respecting the royal family in my guidebook, apparently stepping on a dollar bill (which has the king’s face) is a serious offense and punishable. Oh told me that people do take it seriously, but that he has rarely heard of these types of occurrences.
On Friday night, we went to a bar in the gay district in Bangkok. We were lucky to arrive right at the beginning of a Cabaret show, which was quite an amazing sight. The stage had about six or so performers at a time, dancing precisely choreographed numbers behind a diva singing her heart out. Before I had heard about the “ladyboys” of Thailand—men who either cross dress, had a full sex change, or somewhere in between—but wow I was stunned to this performance in real life. Some of the performers were GORGEOUS—I would really never imagine that they once before, or even at the time, were men. Perfectly formed bodies, too! Even thought the club was packed and we only had a half-view, it was really exciting, and also punctuated by some comic relief when an extremely large ladyboy (she was probably near 300 pounds) would come onto the stage and sing very romantic songs in her long, elegant dress. Quite an experience.
As we were weaving in and out of the night market stands (EVERYTHING was being sold at bargain prices—shirts, jeans, DVDs, souvenirs, socks) on the way back to my hostel, we came across an elephant on a leash. Earlier in the day I saw a man riding an elephant on the busy streets of Thailand, and Oh told me that keeping elephants in the city is actually illegal according to Thai law, falling under cruelty to animals. So, I felt bad when I encouraged the whole situation by paying 10 baht to the “owner” so that I could feel the elephant. Well, the elephant must have been starving because it ate the food out of my hand as soon as I took it out of the bag. Hahha, what a tourist moment.
The next day Oh and I went to the Grand Palace, the (very) old home of the King and Queen. As we were walking to get a taxi (Oh was not a fan of the very touristy “tuk-tuks”—motocycle taxis, and in fact I’m glad we didn’t ride them, because I met not a few other westerners like myself who said tuk-tuk drivers “took-took” (hah) them to random places to buy stuff, rather then going to the actual location asked for by the passenger), but so we were walking and all the sudden we heard the screams of several teenage girls. We looked to our right and saw several girls running together—toward the entrance of a hotel. Naturally, Oh and I started running as well, even though we didn’t have the posters in our hands that many of these probably middle-school or high-school aged girls had. We soon saw the fronts of the posters, and it looked like some sort of Korean celebrity… maybe he was staying in the hotel or something. But by the time we got closer, the girls seemed to have given up and then walked back to the shade—waiting, waiting for the next time when he might come down to the first floor. Another funny experience.
It is only used for special ceremonies now though. In the palace compound is Wat Phra Kaew, one of the most beautiful places I’ve been to yet. Pictures do all the talking here.
We also went to another very very old Buddhist temple, Wat Arun. Buddhism is the State Religion in Thailand.
It was particularly interesting seeing these temples to me, because in Thailand and many other South and Southeast Asian countries they practice Theravada Buddhism, which is different from Mahayana Buddhism which is practiced in China, Korea, and Japan (and other regions). (And of course both of these are different than Variyana Buddhism, which is practiced in Tibet.) The main difference, if I’m remembering correctly, is that Theravada Buddhism focuses mainly on the actual teachings of the Buddha himself and thus encourages individual salvation and enlightenment, whereas Mahayana Buddhism posits that there are several Bodhisattvas who are also very influential to believers. A Bodhisattva is an individual who has almost reached Enlightenment but then decided not to fully renounce the world and in fact stay on in the world to help others achieve Enlightenment. Any of my Buddhist friends, or anyone else in-the-know, please feel free to comment to correct/supplement this brief description!
In general, though, I would say that these two temples I saw in Thailand were much more ornate than those I’ve seen in China. The details and amount of ornamentation surpasses many Chinese temples in splendor and, well, shiny-ness.
Saturday evening I went with my other UVa classmate, Napatra, to Siam Shopping Center again just to walk around and buy some street clothes (all of which I’m very proud of because they’re so hip!). We saw a really neat photo exhibit about the importance of environmental protection for a sustainable future. We also came across a very strange event taking place in a public space outside of the shopping mall: a Japanese Anime Dress-up Competition?! Look at some of the crazzzy costumes people were wearing:
The next day Oh took me to the Old Parliament building to see an exhibit about some artisan creations for the King and Queen. On the way to the exhibit, we had to take a detour because there was a protest… perhaps against the Parliament, my friend thought. There are many complaints against corruption and manipulation of rural peoples during election time. The exhibit itself was amazing, some really beautiful pieces of work—unfortunately no cameras were allowed inside, but I took these from the outside. Very interesting to architecture, too, eh?
One thing that left me confused about Thailand was the seemingly contradictory ideas about gender. While one night I was able to see the thriving ladyboy culture, the next day I was witness to the strictly genderized requirements of temples and buildings like the Old Parliament Building. Men had to cover their legs, so they could wear pants or, if they forgot to wear pants (like I did at the Old Parliament building), he could buy a piece of cloth to tie around the waste. However, women had to be wearing skirts at these locations—even if she was wearing pants. Seems kind of gender reinforcing, doesn’t it?
I wish I had had more time to spend in Bangkok—I know I still only scratched the surface of a very unique culture very rooted in history. The stories Oh told me about past Kings of Thailand were pretty amazing, and it was very eye opening for me to see such a large, distinctly different city in another part of the world other than the States or China.
I spent last weekend in Bangkok, Thailand, and the greater part of the week at a beach in Krabi Province, Thailand. I’m now in Singapore and will be going back to Malaysia on Monday.
Bangkok was a fascinating experience for me, as it presented a completely different atmosphere, culture, and feel that was distinct from China in many ways. Of course, I shouldn’t have assumed the two nations would be similar, but I was still taken aback by all the differences I noticed. Thailand is the second (first being China) foreign nation/culture that I have been lucky enough to experience, and I’m just blown away by the diversity of life over here in Southeast Asia—Malaysia (for the one night that I experienced it) was also new and unique to me.
The population of Thailand is near 62 million, and the capital is located in central Thailand at Bangkok. Bangkok is a “tourist name” that is only used internationally. Thai people call the city Krung Thep, which is short for the unbelievably long full name: krung thep mahanakhon amon rattanakosin mahinthara yuthaya mahadilok phop noppharat ratchathani burirom udomratchaniwet mahasathan amon piman awatan sathit sakkathattiya witsanukam prasit.
Wow.
The language was perhaps one of the most interesting, and for me, most frustrating parts of my experience in Thailand. The script of Thai is beautiful, involving over 40 consonants and over 30 vowels, combined with 5 tones that are marked over consonants to create a pretty complicated language. I would say the majority of people I interacted with had a basic handling of English, but they often would slip back into Thai at random intervals, or their English was very heavily accented so I didn’t quite understand. I remember once when I was trying to bargain for a shirt, I could have sworn the saleswomen was speaking Chinese to me because she kept saying [what I heard as] “ni kan ni kan” (which in Chinese means, “you look you look”). After I heard that I excited replied in Chinese to her, because I just wanted to be able to use my—if I do say so myself—rather good Chinese bargaining skills, but then she just gave me a confused look. Either she was using Thai that sounded similar, or she was saying “can” as in “can you buy it for this price?” I tell ya, not being able to communicate, especially during bargaining/making purchases was very very frustrating, and I felt more like a foreigner than I ever have in China.
Another funny thing about the Thai language was the way Thai people answer their cell phones. They often say “Huhlllloooooooo”, with the first part (“heh”) dipping down and then the “low” part rising up from the bottom pitch. Strange to hear something so familiar but then not quite the same.
My classmate from UVA, Oh, picked me up from the airport and we went to Siam shopping center, which is apparently one of the largest or the largest shopping centers in East Asia. It was an enormous complex with multiple buildings and name brands I’d never heard of and food court after food court after food court. Just paying for parking was interesting, because the service person put her hands together at her chest (as if in Christian prayer, with the fingers straight) and then leaned her head downward, almost touching her nose to her fingers. This is called wai and is a way of showing respect in Thailand. Usually service people/sales people will do a wai and the customer can either wai in response or just nod the head. Also, whenever a younger person is introduced or says hello to someone older, he or she should definitely wai.
After Oh and I had chosen a restaurant in the Siam Shopping center, I encountered another difference that I wasn’t accustomed to. We ordered a curry and a salad, and I was surprised that we were each given a fork and a spoon—no chopsticks and no knife. I started using the spoon as a knife with my left hand, and then used the fork how I would in America. Oh laughed at me and told me I had it the opposite way around—the spoon should go in the right hand and the fork should be used to scoop food onto the spoon before eating it. I suppose it shows my ignorance, but I had no idea people ate with spoons and forks in such a way!
I arrived on Friday, and the following Tuesday was the Queen of Thailand’s birthday, so pictures of her (and the King, and other members of the Royal Family) were all around the city. Neat Fact that Oh told me: the King is said to always have a camera, pencil, and map with him whenever he goes out.
I had read about the seriousness of respecting the royal family in my guidebook, apparently stepping on a dollar bill (which has the king’s face) is a serious offense and punishable. Oh told me that people do take it seriously, but that he has rarely heard of these types of occurrences.
On Friday night, we went to a bar in the gay district in Bangkok. We were lucky to arrive right at the beginning of a Cabaret show, which was quite an amazing sight. The stage had about six or so performers at a time, dancing precisely choreographed numbers behind a diva singing her heart out. Before I had heard about the “ladyboys” of Thailand—men who either cross dress, had a full sex change, or somewhere in between—but wow I was stunned to this performance in real life. Some of the performers were GORGEOUS—I would really never imagine that they once before, or even at the time, were men. Perfectly formed bodies, too! Even thought the club was packed and we only had a half-view, it was really exciting, and also punctuated by some comic relief when an extremely large ladyboy (she was probably near 300 pounds) would come onto the stage and sing very romantic songs in her long, elegant dress. Quite an experience.
As we were weaving in and out of the night market stands (EVERYTHING was being sold at bargain prices—shirts, jeans, DVDs, souvenirs, socks) on the way back to my hostel, we came across an elephant on a leash. Earlier in the day I saw a man riding an elephant on the busy streets of Thailand, and Oh told me that keeping elephants in the city is actually illegal according to Thai law, falling under cruelty to animals. So, I felt bad when I encouraged the whole situation by paying 10 baht to the “owner” so that I could feel the elephant. Well, the elephant must have been starving because it ate the food out of my hand as soon as I took it out of the bag. Hahha, what a tourist moment.
The next day Oh and I went to the Grand Palace, the (very) old home of the King and Queen. As we were walking to get a taxi (Oh was not a fan of the very touristy “tuk-tuks”—motocycle taxis, and in fact I’m glad we didn’t ride them, because I met not a few other westerners like myself who said tuk-tuk drivers “took-took” (hah) them to random places to buy stuff, rather then going to the actual location asked for by the passenger), but so we were walking and all the sudden we heard the screams of several teenage girls. We looked to our right and saw several girls running together—toward the entrance of a hotel. Naturally, Oh and I started running as well, even though we didn’t have the posters in our hands that many of these probably middle-school or high-school aged girls had. We soon saw the fronts of the posters, and it looked like some sort of Korean celebrity… maybe he was staying in the hotel or something. But by the time we got closer, the girls seemed to have given up and then walked back to the shade—waiting, waiting for the next time when he might come down to the first floor. Another funny experience.
It is only used for special ceremonies now though. In the palace compound is Wat Phra Kaew, one of the most beautiful places I’ve been to yet. Pictures do all the talking here.
We also went to another very very old Buddhist temple, Wat Arun. Buddhism is the State Religion in Thailand.
It was particularly interesting seeing these temples to me, because in Thailand and many other South and Southeast Asian countries they practice Theravada Buddhism, which is different from Mahayana Buddhism which is practiced in China, Korea, and Japan (and other regions). (And of course both of these are different than Variyana Buddhism, which is practiced in Tibet.) The main difference, if I’m remembering correctly, is that Theravada Buddhism focuses mainly on the actual teachings of the Buddha himself and thus encourages individual salvation and enlightenment, whereas Mahayana Buddhism posits that there are several Bodhisattvas who are also very influential to believers. A Bodhisattva is an individual who has almost reached Enlightenment but then decided not to fully renounce the world and in fact stay on in the world to help others achieve Enlightenment. Any of my Buddhist friends, or anyone else in-the-know, please feel free to comment to correct/supplement this brief description!
In general, though, I would say that these two temples I saw in Thailand were much more ornate than those I’ve seen in China. The details and amount of ornamentation surpasses many Chinese temples in splendor and, well, shiny-ness.
Saturday evening I went with my other UVa classmate, Napatra, to Siam Shopping Center again just to walk around and buy some street clothes (all of which I’m very proud of because they’re so hip!). We saw a really neat photo exhibit about the importance of environmental protection for a sustainable future. We also came across a very strange event taking place in a public space outside of the shopping mall: a Japanese Anime Dress-up Competition?! Look at some of the crazzzy costumes people were wearing:
The next day Oh took me to the Old Parliament building to see an exhibit about some artisan creations for the King and Queen. On the way to the exhibit, we had to take a detour because there was a protest… perhaps against the Parliament, my friend thought. There are many complaints against corruption and manipulation of rural peoples during election time. The exhibit itself was amazing, some really beautiful pieces of work—unfortunately no cameras were allowed inside, but I took these from the outside. Very interesting to architecture, too, eh?
One thing that left me confused about Thailand was the seemingly contradictory ideas about gender. While one night I was able to see the thriving ladyboy culture, the next day I was witness to the strictly genderized requirements of temples and buildings like the Old Parliament Building. Men had to cover their legs, so they could wear pants or, if they forgot to wear pants (like I did at the Old Parliament building), he could buy a piece of cloth to tie around the waste. However, women had to be wearing skirts at these locations—even if she was wearing pants. Seems kind of gender reinforcing, doesn’t it?
I wish I had had more time to spend in Bangkok—I know I still only scratched the surface of a very unique culture very rooted in history. The stories Oh told me about past Kings of Thailand were pretty amazing, and it was very eye opening for me to see such a large, distinctly different city in another part of the world other than the States or China.
Saturday, August 9, 2008
HUBEI conference and summer camp !
Ok, unfortunately this hostel computer in Bangkok is not allowing me to add pictures. Maybe I'll try again in a second, but if it doesn't go through, you'll just have to read the book and use your imagination!
We arrived to Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province in central China, on the 23rd of July. The next day we would participate in another four-day education conference hosted by the American NGO, Education and Science Society (ESS), and make the same presentations to rural educators, principles, and members of the Hubei Education Bureau. I felt much more comfortable with my speech and powerpoint after having survived the first take in Haikou, so I was excited (and also relieved) to be presenting on the 3rd day of the conference.
Four of the ESS members that also came to participate in the conference were from Washington State and spoke nothing more than “thank you” and “one bottle of beer” in Chinese. Therefore, all the ACC FS students in my program were expected to serve as their translators at least once. On the first day of the conference, I was assigned to be the translator of an elementary school educator who had over 20 years of experience teaching in Seattle.
A picture of the four educators from the Washington.
The opening remarks of the conference were fairly easy to translate to him, mostly because everyone was just saying the same thing over and over again: “We are so honored to have this opportunity blah blah blah, we would like to thank blah blah blah, China has modernized so quickly and improved so much but can still get better blah blah blah.” This is my first experience translating on the spot, however, so it was tough getting used to the Need For Speed. I never realized how hard it can be to explain exactly what is being said in another language—very frustrating because I felt like I understood about 98%, but then I found I couldn’t share that information! Haha, it was a challenge, but very interesting.
After the opening remarks were made, a journalist tapped me on the shoulder asking if she could ask the “foreigner teacher” some questions and have me translate for her. I couldn’t really say no, so I did my best to help the journalist understand how American elementary schoolers are evaluated by teachers, the curriculum requirements and accompanying standardized tests, and teachers’ methods of disciplining children in the classroom. This was a crazy experience because both the journalist and the American teacher were looking at me so intently, even when I wasn’t speaking a language they understood. I sweat a lot, but I –hope- I did a fair job! Either way, as the middle man, my name wasn’t taken down so I’m off the hook right?
The next speaker was a very famous neuroscience/psychology professor from Taiwan, Professor Hong Lan. She was to be the main focus of this conference, providing insight into the way the mind works and effective ways of fostering healthy learning environments for children. In total she gave 5 different talks, topics ranging from sleep/dreams to language acquisition to male-female brain-size differences. The speech that I was forced to translate was about understanding the world from a child’s perspective and the importance of encouraging children to explain their answers, rather than scolding them if they do not answer correctly or ideally, etc. Translating this speech was reallllly rough because not only did this professor speak very quickly, she also had a slight Taiwanese accent and her powerpoint used all traditional characters, many of which I could not identify. When she started talking about different regions of the brain and the showing slides of different brain scans, I had to apologize to my American teacher because I had no better idea than he had.
In Hubei many of the Chinese participants in the conference were very excited to interact with us American students and took every opportunity they could for “cultural exchange.” For example, after the first night of our presentations (the topics that day were The Importance of Art/Pictures in the Classroom, Supplementary Arts Education in America, Health Education in American Public Schools, and How Teachers Use Games to Educate), one Chinese principal asked the four students who had just presented, “So, what’s your opinion on the American War for Oil?” Someone also asked, “Are there a lot of gay people in America? How are they received?” So, although totally unrelated to education or the powerpoints that we students had spent so much time preparing, this experience showed the curiosity and interest of many of the Chinese participants. Of course, we are hardly qualified to represent the views of all Americans (especially in our clumsy Chinese), so some of my classmates were frustrated that the topics strayed as they did. Personally I think it was a good and interesting opportunity for everyone.
Huijun and Bingbing answering questions written by the audience after they had finished presenting.
My presentation this time went quite well—no bug swallowing or anything. I think I spoke a little faster and didn’t sound quite as nervous. Two people also told me that it was a suiting and interesting topic for Chinese education. In addition to this, several other questions about American education system and teaching styles were asked, for example, “Do American schools include ‘Patriotism’ or ‘Morality’ classes?” The guy that asked this question actually found me after we had finished the entire session and asked for my email. He wanted to discuss with me the situation in Tibet and American understandings of Mao Zedong and modern China. Pretty awesome opportunity, I think!
Here are some pictures from our presentation session:
Another question posed was, “Many Chinese students currently lack the ability complete tasks by themselves and always need the help and/or approval of teachers. Can you give any suggestions as to ways that teachers can encourage students to develop this ability?” This was kind of odd for us to answer, given that we are not teachers, and even our 3 day experience teaching at a summer camp in Lingao couldn’t really shed much insight. We did our best though—I said that fundamentally this issue is related to students’ self-esteem, because if they are confident in their own answers and other abilities, they won’t feel the need to seek ask the teacher as many questions. My suggestion was to always encourage kids by saying things like “great!” or “fantastic,” because such comments would always elicit a huge smile from the kids in Lingao, and sometimes they would even whisper to each other, “Teacher just said we are fantastic!”
After the conference ended, we went to Xiaochang, an impoverished and relatively new county about an hour and a half from Wuhan. We had another 3 day summer camp, teaching the same classes (Geography and Art for me) to 5th and 6th graders. The kids in Xiaochang were interesting, but unfortunately, when compared with Lingao, less surprised and enthused about some of my activities. I was also somewhat startled when, in 5th grade class 4, a student’s cell phone went off and he excused himself to talk with whoever it was. Especially in Art class, I would offer to give the students some markers/colored pencils that I had bought in Beijing, but the kids would say, “Oh, um, well, I have my own, thanks.” In geography class, there were also some big time Wiz Kids, who knew where everything was on the Chinese AND American map; when I asked them how they were so smart, they said, “We have our own maps at home.”
Some of the students were really creative though, and really got excited about presenting their completed maps to their classmates. For example, one group who was presenting about tourist attraction in Hubei really took on the role of a tourguide, offering supplementary information and really selling the locations! Also, quite a few kids really got into being ‘meteorologists’ and telling us the weather of some of the major cities in Hubei.
Once again, though, there was always the bad occasional bad class. Always seemed to happen in Art for some reason… the creative energies that I was trying to unleash were just too much sometimes, I guess, hahah. One class in particular, when playing the “art pass” game, turned into a big fight. The gender boundaries are pretty divided in Xiaochang, and the boys and girls are rarely willing to work together or even sit together. So when the activity started, all the girls were drawing pretty young ladies wearing dresses and big houses with trees and birdies… but then five minutes later when the piece of art arrived to the guys, one student thought it would be funny to draw poop all over the house and trees, and even made it look as if the little princess had pooped her dress. Of course, once this happened the idea spread like wildfire and suddenly I had seven 11 year old boys drawing large piles of shit everywhere. Soon enough a girl stood up and ripped her original art piece out of the hands of her classmate and started hitting him over the head and everyone started screaming. I put a quick end to it by telling them 如果你们会是这样子的，你们就可以离开！我没想到你们这么缺乏合作的精神！把所有的画画还给老师！ “If you’re going to be like this, then just leave! I had no idea you guys lacked such an ability to work together! Give all the art pieces back to me!” At that point we still had 15 minutes left of class because the activity was cut short, so I had to think quickly about what we could do. Then I remembered a favorite game from elementary school, Heads Up 7 Up. Luckily they understood the directions that I spat out without thinking, and they had a fun time playing that for the last couple minutes before the bell.
The students all gave us lots of gifts and held a final performance for us before we left their county. It was pretty wild—lots of crazy, but well-rehearsed, dancing performances.
Well, those are some of the most memorable experiences with the ACC teaching class and giving the large presentation. After we finished the 2nd day camp, we went to the 3 gorges dam and Mulan mountain lake (yes, Mulan like the Disney movie)! Honestly though, both of those places weren’t all that interesting, and I’ve already written a novel here.
I arrived to Thailand yesterday, which has been really fascinating so far. I will make a post soon about some of my experiences here before going over to Malaysia next week!
We arrived to Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province in central China, on the 23rd of July. The next day we would participate in another four-day education conference hosted by the American NGO, Education and Science Society (ESS), and make the same presentations to rural educators, principles, and members of the Hubei Education Bureau. I felt much more comfortable with my speech and powerpoint after having survived the first take in Haikou, so I was excited (and also relieved) to be presenting on the 3rd day of the conference.
Four of the ESS members that also came to participate in the conference were from Washington State and spoke nothing more than “thank you” and “one bottle of beer” in Chinese. Therefore, all the ACC FS students in my program were expected to serve as their translators at least once. On the first day of the conference, I was assigned to be the translator of an elementary school educator who had over 20 years of experience teaching in Seattle.
A picture of the four educators from the Washington.
The opening remarks of the conference were fairly easy to translate to him, mostly because everyone was just saying the same thing over and over again: “We are so honored to have this opportunity blah blah blah, we would like to thank blah blah blah, China has modernized so quickly and improved so much but can still get better blah blah blah.” This is my first experience translating on the spot, however, so it was tough getting used to the Need For Speed. I never realized how hard it can be to explain exactly what is being said in another language—very frustrating because I felt like I understood about 98%, but then I found I couldn’t share that information! Haha, it was a challenge, but very interesting.
After the opening remarks were made, a journalist tapped me on the shoulder asking if she could ask the “foreigner teacher” some questions and have me translate for her. I couldn’t really say no, so I did my best to help the journalist understand how American elementary schoolers are evaluated by teachers, the curriculum requirements and accompanying standardized tests, and teachers’ methods of disciplining children in the classroom. This was a crazy experience because both the journalist and the American teacher were looking at me so intently, even when I wasn’t speaking a language they understood. I sweat a lot, but I –hope- I did a fair job! Either way, as the middle man, my name wasn’t taken down so I’m off the hook right?
The next speaker was a very famous neuroscience/psychology professor from Taiwan, Professor Hong Lan. She was to be the main focus of this conference, providing insight into the way the mind works and effective ways of fostering healthy learning environments for children. In total she gave 5 different talks, topics ranging from sleep/dreams to language acquisition to male-female brain-size differences. The speech that I was forced to translate was about understanding the world from a child’s perspective and the importance of encouraging children to explain their answers, rather than scolding them if they do not answer correctly or ideally, etc. Translating this speech was reallllly rough because not only did this professor speak very quickly, she also had a slight Taiwanese accent and her powerpoint used all traditional characters, many of which I could not identify. When she started talking about different regions of the brain and the showing slides of different brain scans, I had to apologize to my American teacher because I had no better idea than he had.
In Hubei many of the Chinese participants in the conference were very excited to interact with us American students and took every opportunity they could for “cultural exchange.” For example, after the first night of our presentations (the topics that day were The Importance of Art/Pictures in the Classroom, Supplementary Arts Education in America, Health Education in American Public Schools, and How Teachers Use Games to Educate), one Chinese principal asked the four students who had just presented, “So, what’s your opinion on the American War for Oil?” Someone also asked, “Are there a lot of gay people in America? How are they received?” So, although totally unrelated to education or the powerpoints that we students had spent so much time preparing, this experience showed the curiosity and interest of many of the Chinese participants. Of course, we are hardly qualified to represent the views of all Americans (especially in our clumsy Chinese), so some of my classmates were frustrated that the topics strayed as they did. Personally I think it was a good and interesting opportunity for everyone.
Huijun and Bingbing answering questions written by the audience after they had finished presenting.
My presentation this time went quite well—no bug swallowing or anything. I think I spoke a little faster and didn’t sound quite as nervous. Two people also told me that it was a suiting and interesting topic for Chinese education. In addition to this, several other questions about American education system and teaching styles were asked, for example, “Do American schools include ‘Patriotism’ or ‘Morality’ classes?” The guy that asked this question actually found me after we had finished the entire session and asked for my email. He wanted to discuss with me the situation in Tibet and American understandings of Mao Zedong and modern China. Pretty awesome opportunity, I think!
Here are some pictures from our presentation session:
Another question posed was, “Many Chinese students currently lack the ability complete tasks by themselves and always need the help and/or approval of teachers. Can you give any suggestions as to ways that teachers can encourage students to develop this ability?” This was kind of odd for us to answer, given that we are not teachers, and even our 3 day experience teaching at a summer camp in Lingao couldn’t really shed much insight. We did our best though—I said that fundamentally this issue is related to students’ self-esteem, because if they are confident in their own answers and other abilities, they won’t feel the need to seek ask the teacher as many questions. My suggestion was to always encourage kids by saying things like “great!” or “fantastic,” because such comments would always elicit a huge smile from the kids in Lingao, and sometimes they would even whisper to each other, “Teacher just said we are fantastic!”
After the conference ended, we went to Xiaochang, an impoverished and relatively new county about an hour and a half from Wuhan. We had another 3 day summer camp, teaching the same classes (Geography and Art for me) to 5th and 6th graders. The kids in Xiaochang were interesting, but unfortunately, when compared with Lingao, less surprised and enthused about some of my activities. I was also somewhat startled when, in 5th grade class 4, a student’s cell phone went off and he excused himself to talk with whoever it was. Especially in Art class, I would offer to give the students some markers/colored pencils that I had bought in Beijing, but the kids would say, “Oh, um, well, I have my own, thanks.” In geography class, there were also some big time Wiz Kids, who knew where everything was on the Chinese AND American map; when I asked them how they were so smart, they said, “We have our own maps at home.”
Some of the students were really creative though, and really got excited about presenting their completed maps to their classmates. For example, one group who was presenting about tourist attraction in Hubei really took on the role of a tourguide, offering supplementary information and really selling the locations! Also, quite a few kids really got into being ‘meteorologists’ and telling us the weather of some of the major cities in Hubei.
Once again, though, there was always the bad occasional bad class. Always seemed to happen in Art for some reason… the creative energies that I was trying to unleash were just too much sometimes, I guess, hahah. One class in particular, when playing the “art pass” game, turned into a big fight. The gender boundaries are pretty divided in Xiaochang, and the boys and girls are rarely willing to work together or even sit together. So when the activity started, all the girls were drawing pretty young ladies wearing dresses and big houses with trees and birdies… but then five minutes later when the piece of art arrived to the guys, one student thought it would be funny to draw poop all over the house and trees, and even made it look as if the little princess had pooped her dress. Of course, once this happened the idea spread like wildfire and suddenly I had seven 11 year old boys drawing large piles of shit everywhere. Soon enough a girl stood up and ripped her original art piece out of the hands of her classmate and started hitting him over the head and everyone started screaming. I put a quick end to it by telling them 如果你们会是这样子的，你们就可以离开！我没想到你们这么缺乏合作的精神！把所有的画画还给老师！ “If you’re going to be like this, then just leave! I had no idea you guys lacked such an ability to work together! Give all the art pieces back to me!” At that point we still had 15 minutes left of class because the activity was cut short, so I had to think quickly about what we could do. Then I remembered a favorite game from elementary school, Heads Up 7 Up. Luckily they understood the directions that I spat out without thinking, and they had a fun time playing that for the last couple minutes before the bell.
The students all gave us lots of gifts and held a final performance for us before we left their county. It was pretty wild—lots of crazy, but well-rehearsed, dancing performances.
Well, those are some of the most memorable experiences with the ACC teaching class and giving the large presentation. After we finished the 2nd day camp, we went to the 3 gorges dam and Mulan mountain lake (yes, Mulan like the Disney movie)! Honestly though, both of those places weren’t all that interesting, and I’ve already written a novel here.
I arrived to Thailand yesterday, which has been really fascinating so far. I will make a post soon about some of my experiences here before going over to Malaysia next week!
Thursday, July 31, 2008
HAINAN EVENTS
Aiya, sorry I haven't made a post in a long long time... we have not had internet in our room in forever! I've been able to go to local 网吧 wangba (internet cafes) to check email and so on and so forth, but I was advised against bringing pictures on a external harddrive there because I might get a virus. Anyway, we're currently in 宜昌 Yichang, which is a city in the west of Hubei province. We will be seeing the 3 gorges dam tomorrow, and then returning to 武汉, the captial of Hubei. We're going back to Beijing on the 4th, and then the program ends on the 8th!
This post, however, is about our time in 海南 Hainan, the island south of China (not Taiwan, which is on the east coast of China). The first part of our stay there was in the capital of the province, 海口 Haikou. I made a presentation there about Mentorship programs in America and how they impact children, the volunteers (big brothers/big sisters) themselves, and the entire community-- ending with a quotation from Mao Zedong (whose name made a lot of people wake up and perk up).
This is me before I made the presentation. This is my teacher, Fan Laoshi, making sure our powerpoints are all set up.
3 of my fellow students and I all presented on the first day of the four day conference, but our presentation was held in the large main auditorium. Here is a picture of the auditorium:
Even though it's really blurry, you can get the idea of the size... I would say probably around 400 or so school principals, teachers, and education specialists were there listening.
This is a picture of me before I presented. That's my name in Chinese on the pink piece of paper. Can you see my nervousness? My hands kept shaking during the presentation, until I finally sat on them and calmed down a bit. Also, probably somewhere on the 3rd slide of my ppt, I somehow managed to swallow a bug. Haikou is a very buggy city, being in the very warm South China Sea, so I embarrassingly coughed for a while. Overall, though, it went pretty well, I think, and I felt very relieved to have completed it.
Because our four presentations went pretty long, there was only time for three questions for all of us, and only one was directed toward my presentation. It was a question that was also asked to everyone, thouguh: "思谛同学，你说你只学了两年中文，那，你们怎么说这么棒呢？! Fellow Student Sidi (a polite address), you say you've only studied Chinese for two years, How do you all speak so well?!" Oh those polite Chinese....
After the conference was over, we went to 临高 Lingao county, a more rural and quite poor region about an hour and a half from Haikou.
A picture of farming lands in Lingao.
We taught for 3 days at a "summer camp" for Lingao 4th and 5th graders-- who were selected from their classes. Usually each homeroom class has over 70 students; we taught classes of 12. When we arrived to the school on the first day, all the children were lined up to greet us, and they were waving plastic flowers and chanting 热烈欢迎、欢迎欢迎 WELCOME!!
You can see the kids lined up before the main hall in the school.
On the first day I taught 2 geography classes, then 2 art classes. The next day, 3 geography classes and 2 art classes. The final day, 1 geography class and 2 art classes. We never taught the same class twice. Needless to say, I was exhausted every single day, and we pretty much fell asleep each night at 9:30pm.
The heat in Lingao was really ridiculous. For example, outside of our hotel I bought a type of cracker that I always like eating. It has two crackers and a sweet type of filling in the middle-- kind of like a Ritz or Oreo. When I opened the package that I just purchased from the street vendor, I found that the filling had all evaporated-- It was a bag full of crackers and nothing else! I thought of complaining, but it was 2 kuai so I just dealt with it.
Here is a picture of one of my geography classes. The activity I had planned for them was to break the 12 students into 4 groups, and have each group create a map of Hainan province and then present to their class mates (about the major cities/bordering waters, weather, population distribution, and tourist locations). In this picture the groups are following the directions I typed out and gave to each group. I was trying to emphasize working together and communication, and sometimes it was very very successful. It was great to see kids sharing responsibilities-- one student cutting out circles for the major cities, one student writing the city name on top of the circle, and the third student gluing it on the map. Other times, though, one student would take over and not share markers, etc etc.
Here are the students presenting. You can see the three kids standing next to their small map, which is hanging next to a larger map of Hainan province in the center.
I also added some new parts to the course as I got the hang of what they students understood and what they didn't. I started requiring each group to write on their group's map where they thought Lingao county (where they lived) was on Hainan island. This was really fun, because students really didn't want to be wrong. They would plead with me to tell them where it was, and my usual response would be, "How would I know?? I'm just an American!"
Here is a picture of one of my favorite classes-- you can see their four maps on the blackboard hanging next to the map of China in the center.
Sometimes it was really difficult to communicate with the kids. Lingao has their own dialect that is a combination of Cantonese, Thai, and Vietnamese. So even when the students spoke standard Mandarin (which is what we've been studying), their tones were often inaccurate or difficult for me to understand. I thought this would work to my advantage becasue then I could speak sloppy Chinese and they'd get it, but NO I was wrong.
It was amazing that saying 西边 West as xi1bian4 instead of xi1bian1 (a minor tone difference) could leave me only with confused faces and students mumbling to each other in their local dialect, probably asking "What is the guy saying to us??" I think this was the first time I really realized just how important it is to speak really clearly ALL the time-- I often get tired and/or lazy and revert back to my monotone American voice. This definitely did not fly with the kids, and they were often quick to tell me, "Teacher, you're not making any sense!!!"
Art class was also interesting. To be honest, I wasn't as excited to teach it because I knew it would depend a lot on the kids using their creativity, which is often hard because the kids are pretty shy (especially when there is a weird foreigner talking to them!). So my art class was really hit or miss-- sometimes the kids LOVED it and thought it was really fun, other times they were not about it and very bad.
The two main activities I planned for the kids in Hainan were making collages and playing an art/drawing game. The collage was interesting... sometimes kids would really use their imagination-- cutting the heads from one person and sticking it on the body of an animal or another person's body, really quite funny. Other times, though, the collages were just squares next to each other... perhaps this was my fault for not really explaining all that well, but for the most part they enjoyed it. Once again I was hoping they'd be able to work together-- each group of 6 students only had 3 scissors and 2 glue sticks. So sometimes this caused kids to yell at each other, which made me really nervous. Once a dissatisfied student said to me, "Teacher, don't you think this is wasteful? We're cutting up all these magazines!"
The second activity is a game I've played before in America, and to be honest, it's pretty challenging. Each student is given a piece of a paper and can draw whatever he/she would like for 1 minute. After one minute, though, the piece of paper is passed to the next student. So after receiving the new piece of paper with another student's drawing, you have to add to it, and then ultimately after you receive your first paper, you can see what it's turned into.
Once again, some classes really liked this activity, others did not. After students had received their initial paper, I always asked each student to come to the front and explain to us what his/her picture was about. Once again, the language barrier kinda was a problem here. I often didn't know what vocabulary they were using to explain their art... but that didn't stop me from just saying, "OH! WONDERFUL!!" after just about every sentence.
Sometimes, however, students got very possessive of their original art work and started yelling at each other when they felt that other students were "ruining" it. I tried my best to explain that it's a group piece of art, but sometimes I think there was more going on than I knew about. One class, in particular, seemed to have some built up tensions and anger, and I unfortunately walked in with them on the last class of the day. I'm really not sure what exactly happened, mostly because (I think) they were speaking in their Lingao dialect, but one male student ended up crying. I really didn't know what to do, but I knew that the guy sitting next to him (and handing him the new pieces of paper) was just scribbling all over the art-- not really "adding" anything. But so then all the kids started yelling at each other and no one was drawing. In an angry moment, I shouted, "OK, NEW RULE! NO TALKING DURING THIS ACTIVITY!!!!" Who would have thought that Stephen would have it in him to shout such a thing in Chinese at a classroom full of 5th graders in rural Lingao, China?
But I don't want to focus on the negative. Here is one of my better art classes:
They were really great-- each time I would say, "OK, Time's up! Give your art work to your friend sitting to the right of you!" They would wail and then pass the piece of paper, and then look at the new piece of paper and scream out, "Oh my gosh!!! What is this!!!!" It was a lot of fun.
My experiences in Hubei were really interesting as well. I'll write a post about that when I get back to Beijing, hopefully comparing the two locations. Hard to believe the program is almost over!!
This post, however, is about our time in 海南 Hainan, the island south of China (not Taiwan, which is on the east coast of China). The first part of our stay there was in the capital of the province, 海口 Haikou. I made a presentation there about Mentorship programs in America and how they impact children, the volunteers (big brothers/big sisters) themselves, and the entire community-- ending with a quotation from Mao Zedong (whose name made a lot of people wake up and perk up).
This is me before I made the presentation. This is my teacher, Fan Laoshi, making sure our powerpoints are all set up.3 of my fellow students and I all presented on the first day of the four day conference, but our presentation was held in the large main auditorium. Here is a picture of the auditorium:
Even though it's really blurry, you can get the idea of the size... I would say probably around 400 or so school principals, teachers, and education specialists were there listening.
This is a picture of me before I presented. That's my name in Chinese on the pink piece of paper. Can you see my nervousness? My hands kept shaking during the presentation, until I finally sat on them and calmed down a bit. Also, probably somewhere on the 3rd slide of my ppt, I somehow managed to swallow a bug. Haikou is a very buggy city, being in the very warm South China Sea, so I embarrassingly coughed for a while. Overall, though, it went pretty well, I think, and I felt very relieved to have completed it.
Because our four presentations went pretty long, there was only time for three questions for all of us, and only one was directed toward my presentation. It was a question that was also asked to everyone, thouguh: "思谛同学，你说你只学了两年中文，那，你们怎么说这么棒呢？! Fellow Student Sidi (a polite address), you say you've only studied Chinese for two years, How do you all speak so well?!" Oh those polite Chinese....
After the conference was over, we went to 临高 Lingao county, a more rural and quite poor region about an hour and a half from Haikou.
A picture of farming lands in Lingao.We taught for 3 days at a "summer camp" for Lingao 4th and 5th graders-- who were selected from their classes. Usually each homeroom class has over 70 students; we taught classes of 12. When we arrived to the school on the first day, all the children were lined up to greet us, and they were waving plastic flowers and chanting 热烈欢迎、欢迎欢迎 WELCOME!!
You can see the kids lined up before the main hall in the school.On the first day I taught 2 geography classes, then 2 art classes. The next day, 3 geography classes and 2 art classes. The final day, 1 geography class and 2 art classes. We never taught the same class twice. Needless to say, I was exhausted every single day, and we pretty much fell asleep each night at 9:30pm.
The heat in Lingao was really ridiculous. For example, outside of our hotel I bought a type of cracker that I always like eating. It has two crackers and a sweet type of filling in the middle-- kind of like a Ritz or Oreo. When I opened the package that I just purchased from the street vendor, I found that the filling had all evaporated-- It was a bag full of crackers and nothing else! I thought of complaining, but it was 2 kuai so I just dealt with it.
Here is a picture of one of my geography classes. The activity I had planned for them was to break the 12 students into 4 groups, and have each group create a map of Hainan province and then present to their class mates (about the major cities/bordering waters, weather, population distribution, and tourist locations). In this picture the groups are following the directions I typed out and gave to each group. I was trying to emphasize working together and communication, and sometimes it was very very successful. It was great to see kids sharing responsibilities-- one student cutting out circles for the major cities, one student writing the city name on top of the circle, and the third student gluing it on the map. Other times, though, one student would take over and not share markers, etc etc.
Here are the students presenting. You can see the three kids standing next to their small map, which is hanging next to a larger map of Hainan province in the center.I also added some new parts to the course as I got the hang of what they students understood and what they didn't. I started requiring each group to write on their group's map where they thought Lingao county (where they lived) was on Hainan island. This was really fun, because students really didn't want to be wrong. They would plead with me to tell them where it was, and my usual response would be, "How would I know?? I'm just an American!"
Here is a picture of one of my favorite classes-- you can see their four maps on the blackboard hanging next to the map of China in the center.
Sometimes it was really difficult to communicate with the kids. Lingao has their own dialect that is a combination of Cantonese, Thai, and Vietnamese. So even when the students spoke standard Mandarin (which is what we've been studying), their tones were often inaccurate or difficult for me to understand. I thought this would work to my advantage becasue then I could speak sloppy Chinese and they'd get it, but NO I was wrong.
It was amazing that saying 西边 West as xi1bian4 instead of xi1bian1 (a minor tone difference) could leave me only with confused faces and students mumbling to each other in their local dialect, probably asking "What is the guy saying to us??" I think this was the first time I really realized just how important it is to speak really clearly ALL the time-- I often get tired and/or lazy and revert back to my monotone American voice. This definitely did not fly with the kids, and they were often quick to tell me, "Teacher, you're not making any sense!!!"
Art class was also interesting. To be honest, I wasn't as excited to teach it because I knew it would depend a lot on the kids using their creativity, which is often hard because the kids are pretty shy (especially when there is a weird foreigner talking to them!). So my art class was really hit or miss-- sometimes the kids LOVED it and thought it was really fun, other times they were not about it and very bad.
The two main activities I planned for the kids in Hainan were making collages and playing an art/drawing game. The collage was interesting... sometimes kids would really use their imagination-- cutting the heads from one person and sticking it on the body of an animal or another person's body, really quite funny. Other times, though, the collages were just squares next to each other... perhaps this was my fault for not really explaining all that well, but for the most part they enjoyed it. Once again I was hoping they'd be able to work together-- each group of 6 students only had 3 scissors and 2 glue sticks. So sometimes this caused kids to yell at each other, which made me really nervous. Once a dissatisfied student said to me, "Teacher, don't you think this is wasteful? We're cutting up all these magazines!"
The second activity is a game I've played before in America, and to be honest, it's pretty challenging. Each student is given a piece of a paper and can draw whatever he/she would like for 1 minute. After one minute, though, the piece of paper is passed to the next student. So after receiving the new piece of paper with another student's drawing, you have to add to it, and then ultimately after you receive your first paper, you can see what it's turned into.
Once again, some classes really liked this activity, others did not. After students had received their initial paper, I always asked each student to come to the front and explain to us what his/her picture was about. Once again, the language barrier kinda was a problem here. I often didn't know what vocabulary they were using to explain their art... but that didn't stop me from just saying, "OH! WONDERFUL!!" after just about every sentence. Sometimes, however, students got very possessive of their original art work and started yelling at each other when they felt that other students were "ruining" it. I tried my best to explain that it's a group piece of art, but sometimes I think there was more going on than I knew about. One class, in particular, seemed to have some built up tensions and anger, and I unfortunately walked in with them on the last class of the day. I'm really not sure what exactly happened, mostly because (I think) they were speaking in their Lingao dialect, but one male student ended up crying. I really didn't know what to do, but I knew that the guy sitting next to him (and handing him the new pieces of paper) was just scribbling all over the art-- not really "adding" anything. But so then all the kids started yelling at each other and no one was drawing. In an angry moment, I shouted, "OK, NEW RULE! NO TALKING DURING THIS ACTIVITY!!!!" Who would have thought that Stephen would have it in him to shout such a thing in Chinese at a classroom full of 5th graders in rural Lingao, China?
But I don't want to focus on the negative. Here is one of my better art classes:
They were really great-- each time I would say, "OK, Time's up! Give your art work to your friend sitting to the right of you!" They would wail and then pass the piece of paper, and then look at the new piece of paper and scream out, "Oh my gosh!!! What is this!!!!" It was a lot of fun.
My experiences in Hubei were really interesting as well. I'll write a post about that when I get back to Beijing, hopefully comparing the two locations. Hard to believe the program is almost over!!
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Sacred Buddhist Mountain #2
So, my last week in Beijing was a blur-- lots of late nights working on my class and perfecting my speech for the big presentation. So unfortunately I didn't have a chance to go out and take pictures of some of the things I wanted to put on here.... We return to the Capital on August 4th, and I'll be there for 4 days for what the teachers are calling "Debriefing," so hopefully I'll have more free time then to write about the changes I saw in Beijing from last year/this. Also comment on the Olympic Fervor that I could already feel in July-- I can't imagine what it'll feel like 4 days before the games begin!
We rode the train to Xinzhou, Shanxi Province on Friday night. We arrived early Friday morning and then took a 4 hour bus to 五台山 Mt. Taishan, one of the 4 most important mountains to believers of Chinese Buddhism. Last year I went to 峨眉山 Mt Emei (one of the other 3) with my friend Steven Pong, but unfortunately it was rainy and we didn't get to see the big Buddha at the top of the summit. Today the weather was gorgeous though, and we climbed one of the 5 peaks.
This is a view of the summit we climbed from across the valley.
There are 5 main peaks-- one in each direction and one in the center. The climb was pretty steep-- steps all the way. Still nothing compared to Mt Emei, but very intense. There were a couple interesting things I noticed on this journey up to the top, though. First, there were a lot of very devoted people who were knocking their heads to the ground every step or every three steps. I've tried full body prostrations before and believe me it's not easy on level ground. I couldn't even imagine prostrating every step up a mountain!! Some of the monks that were doing this had large bruises on their foreheads from where they hit the ground each step.
You can see the girl prostrating, and the monk further behind the standing man also prostrating.
As we started on the climb up the mountain, there were a lot of beggars. Probably about every 10 steps we would have to weave left or right to avoid them. The interesting thing was, there were two distinct categories. One category, and actually they shouldn't technically be called beggars, was Monks-- they often had a hat or a bowl turned up and greeted everyone with "Amitaba"--the name of the Buddha of Compassion-- instead of Hello. The second ground of beggars were physically deformed. They would often wag their severed limbs at everyone breathing heavily from the climb, or sometimes they would just lay down right in the middle of the steps and repeat "Amitaba" over and over.
Also as we got higher, we had to start avoiding piles of vomit where visitors couldn't handle the altitude + exercise. Not so pleasant.
However, the top of the summit was great! And the temple was very pretty:
My friend Huijun and I at the top.
My fellow students and a friendly Monk at one of the temples
One of various ornate obelisks near the temple.
An incense burner and various devotees.
A very funny thing happened while we were at the temple atop the mountain. Our teacher wanted to get a picture of all the ACC students in front of a gateway, and we were starting to get impatient with how long everyone was taking in front of us. So, in a very Chinese manner, we just stormed to the front and shoved our way in front of the guy who was about to have his picture taken. But when he saw that there were 16 Americans now behind him, he shouted "QUICK, TAKE A PICTURE!"
Perhaps it's the diversity of our group that amazes people-- we have 3 black students, as well as several mixed students, a student of Indian heritage... plus, of course the 6 white kids. So we're quite a sight to see, apparently. After this one gentlemen discovered that he could get a free picture with us, everyone started rushing toward us! For about 6 minutes we couldn't get the tourists to leave us alone! Our teacher kept saying, "HEY, we want to take a picture of just us now!" But they wouldn't listen... they kept running up to us and telling their travel buddy, "Qucik! Take the picture!!" It was pretty ridiculous, but really funny
A picture of the decent-- this route had no stairs, and in fact you could pay extra to ride a horse down if you so desired!
We are spending tomorrow in Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi, and then we will fly to Haikou, the capital of Hainan Province and island early Tuesday morning. The first conference is on Wednesday, and I am one of the lucky 4 students who will be presenting on that day...! Please wish me luck-- I have 25 minutes to introduce Mentorship Programs in America, and then a 10 minute question/answer session. I'm still working on ironing out all the fine points of my speech... so hopefully I'll get to it before Wednesday!
We rode the train to Xinzhou, Shanxi Province on Friday night. We arrived early Friday morning and then took a 4 hour bus to 五台山 Mt. Taishan, one of the 4 most important mountains to believers of Chinese Buddhism. Last year I went to 峨眉山 Mt Emei (one of the other 3) with my friend Steven Pong, but unfortunately it was rainy and we didn't get to see the big Buddha at the top of the summit. Today the weather was gorgeous though, and we climbed one of the 5 peaks.
This is a view of the summit we climbed from across the valley.There are 5 main peaks-- one in each direction and one in the center. The climb was pretty steep-- steps all the way. Still nothing compared to Mt Emei, but very intense. There were a couple interesting things I noticed on this journey up to the top, though. First, there were a lot of very devoted people who were knocking their heads to the ground every step or every three steps. I've tried full body prostrations before and believe me it's not easy on level ground. I couldn't even imagine prostrating every step up a mountain!! Some of the monks that were doing this had large bruises on their foreheads from where they hit the ground each step.
You can see the girl prostrating, and the monk further behind the standing man also prostrating.As we started on the climb up the mountain, there were a lot of beggars. Probably about every 10 steps we would have to weave left or right to avoid them. The interesting thing was, there were two distinct categories. One category, and actually they shouldn't technically be called beggars, was Monks-- they often had a hat or a bowl turned up and greeted everyone with "Amitaba"--the name of the Buddha of Compassion-- instead of Hello. The second ground of beggars were physically deformed. They would often wag their severed limbs at everyone breathing heavily from the climb, or sometimes they would just lay down right in the middle of the steps and repeat "Amitaba" over and over.
Also as we got higher, we had to start avoiding piles of vomit where visitors couldn't handle the altitude + exercise. Not so pleasant.
However, the top of the summit was great! And the temple was very pretty:
My friend Huijun and I at the top.
My fellow students and a friendly Monk at one of the temples
One of various ornate obelisks near the temple.
An incense burner and various devotees. A very funny thing happened while we were at the temple atop the mountain. Our teacher wanted to get a picture of all the ACC students in front of a gateway, and we were starting to get impatient with how long everyone was taking in front of us. So, in a very Chinese manner, we just stormed to the front and shoved our way in front of the guy who was about to have his picture taken. But when he saw that there were 16 Americans now behind him, he shouted "QUICK, TAKE A PICTURE!"
Perhaps it's the diversity of our group that amazes people-- we have 3 black students, as well as several mixed students, a student of Indian heritage... plus, of course the 6 white kids. So we're quite a sight to see, apparently. After this one gentlemen discovered that he could get a free picture with us, everyone started rushing toward us! For about 6 minutes we couldn't get the tourists to leave us alone! Our teacher kept saying, "HEY, we want to take a picture of just us now!" But they wouldn't listen... they kept running up to us and telling their travel buddy, "Qucik! Take the picture!!" It was pretty ridiculous, but really funny
A picture of the decent-- this route had no stairs, and in fact you could pay extra to ride a horse down if you so desired!We are spending tomorrow in Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi, and then we will fly to Haikou, the capital of Hainan Province and island early Tuesday morning. The first conference is on Wednesday, and I am one of the lucky 4 students who will be presenting on that day...! Please wish me luck-- I have 25 minutes to introduce Mentorship Programs in America, and then a 10 minute question/answer session. I'm still working on ironing out all the fine points of my speech... so hopefully I'll get to it before Wednesday!
Friday, July 4, 2008
Practica
So I've been in Beijing for two weeks, and I've left campus a total of three times. Classes are pretty intense: 1) preparing our powerpoint presentations about programs in America that help students succeed (I'm talking about Mentorship Programs like Big Brother Big Sister); 2) preparing teaching classes to 4th - 7th graders (I'm teaching Chinese Geography and Art, both of which we have to use Chinese to teach); 3) Translation Class-- which is a biggg pain-- we translate English to Chinese as a means to improve our Chinese thinking ability and takes a long, long time; 4) DVD/News class-- we watch news reports in Chinese and then report back and discuss-- this is also difficult because any news report in any language is tough to follow sometimes; and finally, 5) our Chinese language class, called Issues in Chinese Rural Education, for which we have a new article from newspapers/blogs each night to prepare.
So balancing all of these things has been very difficult, especially on nights like last night when we had our first teaching practicum at a local (about 40 minutes outside of Beijing) migrant-children's school, in addition to writing an essay for our weekly Friday test and then preparing for the oral portion of the test-- which lasted an hour and a half.
Last Friday, I had my first test run at giving the presentation. The teachers at 月河学校 Yuehe School were forced to go listen to four student presentations. This wasn't very welcoming, becuase it was obvious they didn't want to be there. I was the third in our group to present, and by that point the room had pretty much turned to chaos with teachers openly carrying conversations with one another, playing games/writing notes, or just flat out sleeping.
You can see Winnie the Pooh on the blackboard behind us. This blackboard is talking about how to prevent Foot Mouth & Hand disease by being clean/washing frequently. Don't know why Pooh bear was selected as the visual
So while all this was happening, I clumsily stumbled through my 15 minute presentation about Mentorship programs and tried my best to convince them that it would be useful in China. By the end of my presentation I was speaking a mile a minute and my 4th tone was in "a mess", according to one of my teachers that was there to listen. The teachers asked me two questions: 1) are you a "big brother" here in China/ what are you doing here? and 2) how exactly will this program have a positive impact on the big brothers themselves?
So, I made some changes and tried to clarify/calm down a bit. Yesterday we presented again, this time some teachers in Beijing city came to our school and listened. The two teachers who were in our room were much much interested and attentive this time, and I myself felt more comfortable and confident. One of the teachers told me that it sounded like a very helpful program but I need to spend more explaining how it can apply/work to China.
Our first "real" presentation is July 16 - 19 in Haikou City, the provincial capital of Hainan province/island (south of China and near Hong Kong and Vietnam). They are expecting 400- 500 teachers to attend this, so the pressure is on. We were told something about how every student will be wearing a nametag that has his/her university, and we certainly wouldn't want to 丢面子 ("lose face", which essentially means embarrass yourself). We're departing from Beijing a week from today, so I've really gotta pull it together in a week!!!
The second main component of the program is teaching at small 3-day daycamps in rural Hainan and Hubei provinces. Below are some pictures of the school where we taught today:
Our teachers tell us that the conditions here are actually quite good, and that in fact the schools we visit in Hainan/Hubei will be much worse. The floor is just concrete and everything is very, very worn and not very clean. Each room has an outlet, but there are no computers in the rooms nor is there any higher technology. Teachers write on the blackboard with chalk. Most of the rooms have at least one ceiling fan that works, but on scorching days like today I soaked through my shirt pretty quickly.
Many of the students live in quarters below the classrooms. This is because this school is specifically for the children of migrant parents, and sometimes parents have to go to other places in Hebei or greater Beijing so they can't be with them.
The halls are decorated with various materials/posters like this, venerating great thinkers--like Einstein! Of course, Mao's sign was first and Deng Xiaoping is further down the hall, but there were a couple other faces I recognized. Many classes also have the best student's homework hanging on the walls and a tally of "red flags" for each student-- when an assignment is done particularly well or you receive your teachers approval, she/he gives you a flag. Very similar to in some teaching methods I remember from elementary school, maybe more intense though. However, my teacher was telling me today that teachers will not give a flag and even take away flags if the student has unclean or unclipped fingernails/untucked shirts. One thing I've noticed is that a lot of the "School/classroom rules" we read involve a moral component-- about how to treat others or respecting/loving parents, caring for the environment. Not the specific procedural rules that I remember from elementary/middle school (e.g., you must have an excuse if you are absent, if you miss homework you must turn it in the next day, if you miss a test blah blah blah). Perhaps I just haven't seen them yet, but we read an article comparing "classroom rules" and it mentioned this phenomenon, too
Last week before we lectured, I had an opportunity to hang out with the pre-schoolers. Their energy was AMAZING. At first, they were really afraid of us and kept shouting "老外" "FOREIGNER!!" Then my friend Kailin and I said we wanted to play a game with them-- the game where one person has his hands on bottom and the other on top, and the person with hands on bottom tries to quickly hit the hands of the person on top. This didn't really work-- the result was little kids started running up to me and hitting me. hahah it was pretty funny though
Finally I convinced a few daring one or two to shake my hand. After they realized that I was human, we got them to all get a long line. This was really fun-- a picture is below:
Next I wanted to have a race. They were full of energy, and I thought it'd be a good idea. So I said, "Alright, everyone listen everyone listen! Now, we are going to have a rac---" but before I could even finish, as soon as their heard "run" (in Chinese race is "running competition") they ran as fast as thehy could to the other end of the courtyard. Crazy little kids! Then we tried to play a variation of "red light green light", which was also lots of fun.
This week was particularly interesting, because I taught my first classes. Last night I was freaking out because I hadn't had time to adequately prepare all my materials for geography. Art was down pack pretty well-- I thought. However, come this morning, i was literally working until the last minute before getting on the bus preparing the direction for the kids, and then to my-- and all of our--surprise, the students were much older than expected. Many were 16 and some even 17... and we had been planning to teach 4th - 7th graders. For my 50 minute art class, I had the misfortune of getting 10 guys, three of whom were 16. Not to be stereotypical, but I think girls might get a bit out of creative art class when the activity is "pick a single color and then draw a picture, and then explain to the class how/why your emotions reflect the color you chose."
Well, they weren't really for it, nor were they for the other activity. I had them do that art game where each student only has 1 minute to draw and then you have to give your drawing to the person sitting next to you-- and it goes around the picture until your original picture returns to you. Our theme was "THE OLYMPICS", which perhaps was too flat. Some of the younger kids seemed to like the idea a lot and laughed a lot when we were sharing our pictures at the end, but in general it wasn't as successful or effective as I would've wanted it to be.
The geography class, on the other h and, turned out to be a great success. I broke the kids up into 3 groups and had each group prepare a different type of map of Hubei province (in the future I'll be teaching this class in Hubei, so my preparation was all for Hubei). One group used the materials /directions I gave them to create a map of the surrounding provinces of Hubei, one group placed some tourist and scenic spots , and hte final group talked about population density (kind of much harder than the other two). They really liekd the activity, especially because all 3 maps were the same outline, so by the time we had all finished presenting, they were happy to make the connection that the large, scenic forest is the least densely populated part of the map. In addition, they were able to place Hubei in larger China and understand which rivers go through Hubei and into other provinces.
I still have to fix some things about that class and the other, but all in all I don't feel like a complete failure. And the students forr the most part understood my Chinese, so that's good! And they are brutally honest-- one girl told my friend, "I don't know what you're saying, how am I suppose to follow these rules!!"
The next week is going to be very hectic preparing for our big 3 week trip to Hainan and Hubei, but I hope to make another post soon about the CHANGES in Beijing-- I was only here for 4 days last year, but I there are a few notable things that hopefully I can get some good pictures of!
We're about to go to TGIFRIDAYS to celebrate the 4th!!! Other than that we're stil trying to figure out what to do tonight to celebrate America's Independence. Have a great day and eat a Hot Dog for me!
So balancing all of these things has been very difficult, especially on nights like last night when we had our first teaching practicum at a local (about 40 minutes outside of Beijing) migrant-children's school, in addition to writing an essay for our weekly Friday test and then preparing for the oral portion of the test-- which lasted an hour and a half.
Last Friday, I had my first test run at giving the presentation. The teachers at 月河学校 Yuehe School were forced to go listen to four student presentations. This wasn't very welcoming, becuase it was obvious they didn't want to be there. I was the third in our group to present, and by that point the room had pretty much turned to chaos with teachers openly carrying conversations with one another, playing games/writing notes, or just flat out sleeping.
You can see Winnie the Pooh on the blackboard behind us. This blackboard is talking about how to prevent Foot Mouth & Hand disease by being clean/washing frequently. Don't know why Pooh bear was selected as the visualSo while all this was happening, I clumsily stumbled through my 15 minute presentation about Mentorship programs and tried my best to convince them that it would be useful in China. By the end of my presentation I was speaking a mile a minute and my 4th tone was in "a mess", according to one of my teachers that was there to listen. The teachers asked me two questions: 1) are you a "big brother" here in China/ what are you doing here? and 2) how exactly will this program have a positive impact on the big brothers themselves?
So, I made some changes and tried to clarify/calm down a bit. Yesterday we presented again, this time some teachers in Beijing city came to our school and listened. The two teachers who were in our room were much much interested and attentive this time, and I myself felt more comfortable and confident. One of the teachers told me that it sounded like a very helpful program but I need to spend more explaining how it can apply/work to China.
Our first "real" presentation is July 16 - 19 in Haikou City, the provincial capital of Hainan province/island (south of China and near Hong Kong and Vietnam). They are expecting 400- 500 teachers to attend this, so the pressure is on. We were told something about how every student will be wearing a nametag that has his/her university, and we certainly wouldn't want to 丢面子 ("lose face", which essentially means embarrass yourself). We're departing from Beijing a week from today, so I've really gotta pull it together in a week!!!
The second main component of the program is teaching at small 3-day daycamps in rural Hainan and Hubei provinces. Below are some pictures of the school where we taught today:
Our teachers tell us that the conditions here are actually quite good, and that in fact the schools we visit in Hainan/Hubei will be much worse. The floor is just concrete and everything is very, very worn and not very clean. Each room has an outlet, but there are no computers in the rooms nor is there any higher technology. Teachers write on the blackboard with chalk. Most of the rooms have at least one ceiling fan that works, but on scorching days like today I soaked through my shirt pretty quickly. 
Many of the students live in quarters below the classrooms. This is because this school is specifically for the children of migrant parents, and sometimes parents have to go to other places in Hebei or greater Beijing so they can't be with them.
The halls are decorated with various materials/posters like this, venerating great thinkers--like Einstein! Of course, Mao's sign was first and Deng Xiaoping is further down the hall, but there were a couple other faces I recognized. Many classes also have the best student's homework hanging on the walls and a tally of "red flags" for each student-- when an assignment is done particularly well or you receive your teachers approval, she/he gives you a flag. Very similar to in some teaching methods I remember from elementary school, maybe more intense though. However, my teacher was telling me today that teachers will not give a flag and even take away flags if the student has unclean or unclipped fingernails/untucked shirts. One thing I've noticed is that a lot of the "School/classroom rules" we read involve a moral component-- about how to treat others or respecting/loving parents, caring for the environment. Not the specific procedural rules that I remember from elementary/middle school (e.g., you must have an excuse if you are absent, if you miss homework you must turn it in the next day, if you miss a test blah blah blah). Perhaps I just haven't seen them yet, but we read an article comparing "classroom rules" and it mentioned this phenomenon, tooLast week before we lectured, I had an opportunity to hang out with the pre-schoolers. Their energy was AMAZING. At first, they were really afraid of us and kept shouting "老外" "FOREIGNER!!" Then my friend Kailin and I said we wanted to play a game with them-- the game where one person has his hands on bottom and the other on top, and the person with hands on bottom tries to quickly hit the hands of the person on top. This didn't really work-- the result was little kids started running up to me and hitting me. hahah it was pretty funny though
Finally I convinced a few daring one or two to shake my hand. After they realized that I was human, we got them to all get a long line. This was really fun-- a picture is below:
Next I wanted to have a race. They were full of energy, and I thought it'd be a good idea. So I said, "Alright, everyone listen everyone listen! Now, we are going to have a rac---" but before I could even finish, as soon as their heard "run" (in Chinese race is "running competition") they ran as fast as thehy could to the other end of the courtyard. Crazy little kids! Then we tried to play a variation of "red light green light", which was also lots of fun.This week was particularly interesting, because I taught my first classes. Last night I was freaking out because I hadn't had time to adequately prepare all my materials for geography. Art was down pack pretty well-- I thought. However, come this morning, i was literally working until the last minute before getting on the bus preparing the direction for the kids, and then to my-- and all of our--surprise, the students were much older than expected. Many were 16 and some even 17... and we had been planning to teach 4th - 7th graders. For my 50 minute art class, I had the misfortune of getting 10 guys, three of whom were 16. Not to be stereotypical, but I think girls might get a bit out of creative art class when the activity is "pick a single color and then draw a picture, and then explain to the class how/why your emotions reflect the color you chose."
Well, they weren't really for it, nor were they for the other activity. I had them do that art game where each student only has 1 minute to draw and then you have to give your drawing to the person sitting next to you-- and it goes around the picture until your original picture returns to you. Our theme was "THE OLYMPICS", which perhaps was too flat. Some of the younger kids seemed to like the idea a lot and laughed a lot when we were sharing our pictures at the end, but in general it wasn't as successful or effective as I would've wanted it to be.
The geography class, on the other h and, turned out to be a great success. I broke the kids up into 3 groups and had each group prepare a different type of map of Hubei province (in the future I'll be teaching this class in Hubei, so my preparation was all for Hubei). One group used the materials /directions I gave them to create a map of the surrounding provinces of Hubei, one group placed some tourist and scenic spots , and hte final group talked about population density (kind of much harder than the other two). They really liekd the activity, especially because all 3 maps were the same outline, so by the time we had all finished presenting, they were happy to make the connection that the large, scenic forest is the least densely populated part of the map. In addition, they were able to place Hubei in larger China and understand which rivers go through Hubei and into other provinces.
I still have to fix some things about that class and the other, but all in all I don't feel like a complete failure. And the students forr the most part understood my Chinese, so that's good! And they are brutally honest-- one girl told my friend, "I don't know what you're saying, how am I suppose to follow these rules!!"
The next week is going to be very hectic preparing for our big 3 week trip to Hainan and Hubei, but I hope to make another post soon about the CHANGES in Beijing-- I was only here for 4 days last year, but I there are a few notable things that hopefully I can get some good pictures of!
We're about to go to TGIFRIDAYS to celebrate the 4th!!! Other than that we're stil trying to figure out what to do tonight to celebrate America's Independence. Have a great day and eat a Hot Dog for me!
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
a traditional hong kong
I arrived to Beijing last Friday night, but we just now got an internet connection in our room. Still only one port works, so my roommate and I share, but we get by just fine. I didn't realize how difficult reading articles in Chinese can be without an electronic dictionary. Kinda pathetic. My roommate is a recent graduate from Bowdoin College; he is hoping to join the foreign service--and in the mean time, trying to improve his Chinese through this crazy summer program.
I wanted to make one more post about Hong Kong, though-- or rather, the backwaters of Hong Kong. 大澳 Tai O is a small fishing village on Lantau Island (one of the islands that constitutes the Hong Kong SAR and is home to the International Airport as well as a small Disney Land-- I wanted to go, but, well, no actually, I didn't want to go). My good friend and native Hong Konger, Vennesa, and I rode a ferry out to Tai O and saw some pretty neat stuff. I really wanted to see the Giant Bronze Buddha, but unfortunately there were very heavy rains the first few days I was in HK so there were mud slides that prevented us from taking a bus up to the summit.
Digging for clams or oysters.
Because the waters around Tai O often change with the rain and of course with the daily tide changes, all of the houses were on stilts:
This was quite an amazing site-- I've never seen a community quite like this. And perhaps the storms of the previous days had scared off all the tourists, but it seemed like we were the only visitors--so we truly got to see some of the daily activities of residents on the island--which included some seriously Mah Jong playing, in addition to playing cards and just sitting around chatting.
One of the things that was also very interesting about this community, and Hong Kong in general, was the overt religiosity as displayed in shrines to local gods, small shrines to Gong Yu and/or Guanyin (universal gods that bring in wealth/money and protect children, respectively), ancestral halls, and (on Hong Kong Island/Kowloon) Christian Churches.
A shrine to local gods. The divine bureaucracy reflects the existing bureaucracy on earth--so each township has a god, and then there is a god for the county, and so on and so forth.
The curator of a local temple let Vennesa and I burn incense and place it in front of the gods. This was a really awesome experience-- a big Thank You to Vennesa for translating everything he said to us. He was really excited to tell us about the history of the temple (it was from the Ming Dynasty, so very old) and some of the features/history of Tai O.
If you look closely, you can see graves on the side of the mountain. According to Geomancy (Taoist-ish), this type of funerary grounds is particularly good because having a mountain behind and water in front is believed to be very auspicious.
It's amazing that this community is only 30 - 40 minutes from the busy, bustling city life of Hong Kong--especially given that pre-economic-boom Hong Kong was probably very similar. The curator (that's not the right word) of the temple said that this type of change is inevitable, that it's not a bad thing. But he still chooses to live on the island in the fishing community--he was extremely proud to be from Tai O. At the same time, he said wouldn't want his nephews and nieces to go to school in this community-- their opportunities would be greater in HK.
Here in Beijing we're learning a lot about education opportunities and some of the obstacles children face both in large cities and in rural communities. It appears that almost everyone believes that an entire education reform needs to take place, but due to various reasons--one of the most common barriers that Chinese teachers/educators point out to us is just the Chinese traditional culture of testing into school-- any change will be a long, long process.
I wanted to make one more post about Hong Kong, though-- or rather, the backwaters of Hong Kong. 大澳 Tai O is a small fishing village on Lantau Island (one of the islands that constitutes the Hong Kong SAR and is home to the International Airport as well as a small Disney Land-- I wanted to go, but, well, no actually, I didn't want to go). My good friend and native Hong Konger, Vennesa, and I rode a ferry out to Tai O and saw some pretty neat stuff. I really wanted to see the Giant Bronze Buddha, but unfortunately there were very heavy rains the first few days I was in HK so there were mud slides that prevented us from taking a bus up to the summit.
Digging for clams or oysters.Because the waters around Tai O often change with the rain and of course with the daily tide changes, all of the houses were on stilts:
This was quite an amazing site-- I've never seen a community quite like this. And perhaps the storms of the previous days had scared off all the tourists, but it seemed like we were the only visitors--so we truly got to see some of the daily activities of residents on the island--which included some seriously Mah Jong playing, in addition to playing cards and just sitting around chatting.
One of the things that was also very interesting about this community, and Hong Kong in general, was the overt religiosity as displayed in shrines to local gods, small shrines to Gong Yu and/or Guanyin (universal gods that bring in wealth/money and protect children, respectively), ancestral halls, and (on Hong Kong Island/Kowloon) Christian Churches.
A shrine to local gods. The divine bureaucracy reflects the existing bureaucracy on earth--so each township has a god, and then there is a god for the county, and so on and so forth. 
The curator of a local temple let Vennesa and I burn incense and place it in front of the gods. This was a really awesome experience-- a big Thank You to Vennesa for translating everything he said to us. He was really excited to tell us about the history of the temple (it was from the Ming Dynasty, so very old) and some of the features/history of Tai O.
If you look closely, you can see graves on the side of the mountain. According to Geomancy (Taoist-ish), this type of funerary grounds is particularly good because having a mountain behind and water in front is believed to be very auspicious.It's amazing that this community is only 30 - 40 minutes from the busy, bustling city life of Hong Kong--especially given that pre-economic-boom Hong Kong was probably very similar. The curator (that's not the right word) of the temple said that this type of change is inevitable, that it's not a bad thing. But he still chooses to live on the island in the fishing community--he was extremely proud to be from Tai O. At the same time, he said wouldn't want his nephews and nieces to go to school in this community-- their opportunities would be greater in HK.
Here in Beijing we're learning a lot about education opportunities and some of the obstacles children face both in large cities and in rural communities. It appears that almost everyone believes that an entire education reform needs to take place, but due to various reasons--one of the most common barriers that Chinese teachers/educators point out to us is just the Chinese traditional culture of testing into school-- any change will be a long, long process.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
glamour shots from HK
Here are some neat pics of HONG KONG ISLAND:
(this one is from across the water on Kowloon Peninsula)
(this is the same shot, but from behind--taken atop Victoria Peak:)
Hong Kong is really beautiful-- I had no idea that almost 80% of what constitutes the Special Administrative Region (SAR) of Hong Kong is actually mountainous greenery:
These three were all taken from Victoria Peak--one of the oldest tourist attractions in HK. A tram has been operating since the 1880s to bring people up to the top of this mountain where one can see the city and the scenery juxtaposed next to each other.
The influence of the British colonial rule from the 1840s - 1997 has had a lasting effect on the culture, cuisine, and architecture of the island, peninsula, and surrounding areas that make up the SAR. In many ways, HK reminds me of Shanghai--especially the business district:
One of the notable differences that I have experienced between Hong Kong and all the many cities I went to in China last year, is that Hong Kong is very CLEAN. I haven't seen anyone spitting (which happens everywhere in the mainland, even inside a Walmart, I remember), people actually take time to put their garbage in trash receptacles, and there are not heaps of rubble/trash just laying around. This truly makes it feel like a different country, because so much of the character of the Chinese cities I visited last year had a grittiness that was articulated by the filth. In a good, interesting way.
Another major difference I've noticed is that there is not a noticeable wealth gap as there is on the main land. One of the most alarming aspects of visiting Shanghai was seeing the massive hotels with bellboys and redcarpets literally right next to slums where houses were made of tin roofs and dirt floors. I realize I haven't been to that many places in Hong Kong yet, but from what I've experienced, the 'slums' are either far removed from the nicer areas, or there just aren't slums that are comparable to China's in the first place. I would say the wealth gap was one of the most depressing things about the cities in China, so Hong Kong has been really enjoyable and pleasant thus far.
Another interesting thing we encountered was the diversity of the city. We went to Kowloon Park on Sunday and were surprised to see many Filipinos, Indians, Southeast Asians (perhaps Malay or Indonesian), and blacks lounging around eating and chatting. There were also large group of Muslim women singing prayers together in Arabic:
We're going to go some temples today, so hopefully I'll have more great pictures for ya. It's been frustrating being here because no one understands Standard Mandarin Chinese... each time I've tried to speak to people in the language that I've been devoting myself to tirelessly for the past two years, they stare at me blankly and reply in Cantonese (they are completely different languages... I can't speak any Cantonese). For the most part salespeople/waitresses can speak sufficient English so I haven't had too much problem, but at one store I asked for directions in English and the cashier didn't know what I was saying-- it's as if he knew how to sell me things, but no more than that!
(this one is from across the water on Kowloon Peninsula)
(this is the same shot, but from behind--taken atop Victoria Peak:)
Hong Kong is really beautiful-- I had no idea that almost 80% of what constitutes the Special Administrative Region (SAR) of Hong Kong is actually mountainous greenery:
These three were all taken from Victoria Peak--one of the oldest tourist attractions in HK. A tram has been operating since the 1880s to bring people up to the top of this mountain where one can see the city and the scenery juxtaposed next to each other.The influence of the British colonial rule from the 1840s - 1997 has had a lasting effect on the culture, cuisine, and architecture of the island, peninsula, and surrounding areas that make up the SAR. In many ways, HK reminds me of Shanghai--especially the business district:
One of the notable differences that I have experienced between Hong Kong and all the many cities I went to in China last year, is that Hong Kong is very CLEAN. I haven't seen anyone spitting (which happens everywhere in the mainland, even inside a Walmart, I remember), people actually take time to put their garbage in trash receptacles, and there are not heaps of rubble/trash just laying around. This truly makes it feel like a different country, because so much of the character of the Chinese cities I visited last year had a grittiness that was articulated by the filth. In a good, interesting way.
Another major difference I've noticed is that there is not a noticeable wealth gap as there is on the main land. One of the most alarming aspects of visiting Shanghai was seeing the massive hotels with bellboys and redcarpets literally right next to slums where houses were made of tin roofs and dirt floors. I realize I haven't been to that many places in Hong Kong yet, but from what I've experienced, the 'slums' are either far removed from the nicer areas, or there just aren't slums that are comparable to China's in the first place. I would say the wealth gap was one of the most depressing things about the cities in China, so Hong Kong has been really enjoyable and pleasant thus far.Another interesting thing we encountered was the diversity of the city. We went to Kowloon Park on Sunday and were surprised to see many Filipinos, Indians, Southeast Asians (perhaps Malay or Indonesian), and blacks lounging around eating and chatting. There were also large group of Muslim women singing prayers together in Arabic:
We're going to go some temples today, so hopefully I'll have more great pictures for ya. It's been frustrating being here because no one understands Standard Mandarin Chinese... each time I've tried to speak to people in the language that I've been devoting myself to tirelessly for the past two years, they stare at me blankly and reply in Cantonese (they are completely different languages... I can't speak any Cantonese). For the most part salespeople/waitresses can speak sufficient English so I haven't had too much problem, but at one store I asked for directions in English and the cashier didn't know what I was saying-- it's as if he knew how to sell me things, but no more than that!
Thursday, June 12, 2008
An Ambitious end to 2008
Boy oh boy, I am about to take off... in fact, I've got about 25 hours before my dad and I will drive into DC for my flight. Plenty of time to start packing, right?
I can't believe I'm going back! 3 months last year just wasn't enough. This summer will be like last year, but on Steroids: class for three weeks in 北京 Beijing, preparing us 1) for teaching at day camps in two rural villages (I will be teaching Geography and Art to 5th - 7th graders in Chinese) and 2) for making at least three large presentations and have several one-on-one meetings with rural educators about American education programs (I will be presenting about the effect of Mentorship programs on individual and communal development)!!!! After three weeks at 首都经贸大学 Capitol University, we will travel to 海南 Hainan (large island south of China), followed by 湖北 (a province in central China). We'll finish up in Beijing, a day before the Opening Ceremonies (the auspicious 08/08/08)!
Currently I am planning on traveling to Thailand and Malaysia from Aug 9 - Aug 25, but we'll have to see where I am with my visa.... I don't think it'd be a good idea to be added to the Chinese 'black list'.
And assuming that doesn't happen, I will be going to 哈尔滨工业大学 Harbin Institute of Technology up in Harbin, China for the fall semester! Harbin is located in Manchuria (in between Russia and North Korea), and is famous for its ice festival. An American study abroad agency has a program at this university, so I will be taking two Chinese language classes in addition to conducting research in Chinese for my undergraduate honors thesis. My research focuses on the ways parents' rural-to-urban migration patterns affects the education of their children. So, basically, I'll be hangin' out with kids and asking them how they feel about the college entrance exam. Any guesses for what the responses will be?
Hopefully I'll be able to update you all on where I am and what I'm doing--perhaps more than last summer, and in smaller doses, hah.
Have a happy Father's day!! In China, Father's day (父亲节) is celebrated on August 8th... sorry Dad, I'm going to miss both of them!
I can't believe I'm going back! 3 months last year just wasn't enough. This summer will be like last year, but on Steroids: class for three weeks in 北京 Beijing, preparing us 1) for teaching at day camps in two rural villages (I will be teaching Geography and Art to 5th - 7th graders in Chinese) and 2) for making at least three large presentations and have several one-on-one meetings with rural educators about American education programs (I will be presenting about the effect of Mentorship programs on individual and communal development)!!!! After three weeks at 首都经贸大学 Capitol University, we will travel to 海南 Hainan (large island south of China), followed by 湖北 (a province in central China). We'll finish up in Beijing, a day before the Opening Ceremonies (the auspicious 08/08/08)!
Currently I am planning on traveling to Thailand and Malaysia from Aug 9 - Aug 25, but we'll have to see where I am with my visa.... I don't think it'd be a good idea to be added to the Chinese 'black list'.
And assuming that doesn't happen, I will be going to 哈尔滨工业大学 Harbin Institute of Technology up in Harbin, China for the fall semester! Harbin is located in Manchuria (in between Russia and North Korea), and is famous for its ice festival. An American study abroad agency has a program at this university, so I will be taking two Chinese language classes in addition to conducting research in Chinese for my undergraduate honors thesis. My research focuses on the ways parents' rural-to-urban migration patterns affects the education of their children. So, basically, I'll be hangin' out with kids and asking them how they feel about the college entrance exam. Any guesses for what the responses will be?
Hopefully I'll be able to update you all on where I am and what I'm doing--perhaps more than last summer, and in smaller doses, hah.
Have a happy Father's day!! In China, Father's day (父亲节) is celebrated on August 8th... sorry Dad, I'm going to miss both of them!
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