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!!

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!

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!

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.

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!

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!

beggars

After living near the UVa ‘corner’ last year, I am familiar with passing by beggars on my way to class. It was usually the same one or two guys, whom I would always see later in the day drinking 40s.

I realize that Shanghai, Kunming, Xi’an—or every other city I’ve been to in China—is bigger than Charlottesville, but I was still not quite prepared for beggars in Chinese cities. The most troublesome kind is child beggars. I was first exposed to these beggars outside clubs or bars in Shanghai. Most of the time there would be a mother holding an infant, and then also a small child of about 4 or 5 years old. As soon as we would step toward the taxi-stop, the mother would come up and grab my shoulder; the child would grab my leg. Even after I had closed the door, the mother’s arm was still reaching into the taxi through the window.

I had been warned that these set-ups were all fake and that the children with the mother are usually not even of the same blood. Apparently there are “communities” of beggars in large cities that rotate children and location.

When I arrived in Kunming, I noticed two new “types” of beggars in large volume, though of course in addition to the other “types” I have grown accustomed to seeing (women dressed in “minority”-style clothing, very elderly men and women, and the child beggars). The first is severely crippled individuals—lots of people missing hands or feet, deformed limbs, etc. In fact, in some places around the city I saw healthy, “normal” looking women essentially show-casing what appeared to be their deformed children. One woman even had her “child,” who seemed to be suffering from some sort of enlarged skull, on a leash in front of her.

The second peculiar group of beggars I have encountered in Kunming is one, sometimes two, people sitting on the ground in front of their “story” written out either on a piece of cardboard or in chalk on the sidewalk. The individual(s) is usually staring at his/her feet, allowing people to stop and read the written words. Local Chinese crowd around these types of people, but only to read—I have yet to see money be given to this type of beggar.

I usually walk by as fast as I can, but at the beginning I was intrigued by the large crowds, so I, too, read the “story” of two or three different beggars. One claimed that he was a college graduate that was unable to find work in Kunming and now just wanted to return home. He asked for a specific price—30 kuai—to buy a train ticket to get back to see his parents. Most all of these written pleas ask for a specific amount of money, and I’ve even seen some close to the train station written in English (an area where many foreigners pass through).

At first I thought this was just so humiliating for the beggar—staring at his/her feet, I really felt sorry for the tragedy written out before me. But then I saw a child beggar sitting in front of a piece of cardboard with a “story” written on it. The young girl was probably 5 or 6 years old, and at the time I saw her, she was coloring in a coloring book. Then I realized, this small child probably can’t even write the story in front of her, let alone read it. The large, bold characters were very clearly written, and I definitely did not recognize all of them.

I talked to a taxi cab driver about this child beggar phenomenon once, and he told me that although it really is a pity, he believes they are all fake. Most Chinese youth I have spoken with say it is especially awkward when the beggar is a peer—like that college graduate—however, most still maintain that they should not give beggars money.

I am really not familiar enough with Chinese culture and society to be able to point to any of the social forces that cause such a diverse group of people to exist (and I would probably do a clumsy job guessing at the social forces that cause it in America). So what happens? We all just keep walking.