தனி வளை

Here is a third report on your kids’ activities in China. They continue to be a wonderful bunch, and we are very lucky to have them with us. Attached to this email, you will find a calligraphy picture that Sophie did.

Wednesday, July 23

A class day. This was the second full day of Chinese instruction (3 sessions in the AM; 2 in the PM). The classes are now balanced, the teachers are now used to working with American kids, and we have made a switch or two upon request so that individual kids are placed the right levels. (Note: whenever this is done, we are careful to make sure that the teachers understand that it has nothing to do with the quality of their instruction, but rather with the nature of the students’ prior language background or the initial placement decision.) One key topic of the day was food, so there were many amusing dialogues where the kids modeled ordering food in restaurants. Particular standouts were Surya Sundararajan and Keith Sibal (in Level 2), who delivered an energetic and clever restaurant dialogue, as did Alex Renn and Ryan Fang (in Level 4). Students learned a range of food terms, including words for fast foods (hamburgers, French fries, drumsticks, etc.). Cultural/business note: we learned that there is a local fast food chain in Hunan called “Shuai Ge Shao Bing” (帅哥烧饼) (handsome dude sesame seed cakes) that sells made to order yummy sesame seed cakes filled with meat, eggs, sauce, lettuce, etc. The entrepreneur who developed it is a Hunan University graduate and a local hero. Look for it soon in the Bay Area (or not).

In the evening there were two classes: one on Chinese folk paper cutting, the other on calligraphy. Both were relatively well presented and the kids were engaged in developing their skills in both of them. The classes will be flipped the next evening so that the kids will have the opportunity to learn the skill they didn’t study the first night. A particular standout was Sophie Kelley in the calligraphy class, who did a wonderful dragon drawing, with the simplified character for dragon (long 龙) in the middle. Sophie has allowed me to share her calligraphy piece as an attachment to this message.

Thursday, July 24

Visit to a Chinese school, and “funny sports” day (as written on the schedule). In the morning we walked across the Hunan University campus to the middle school (zhong xue 中学) (same as a US high school) that is affiliated with Hunan University. There we were greeted in an assembly by the school principal and head teacher. I responded in kind with some simple remarks of gratitude in Chinese and gave the school a pennant from SF State (always a crowd pleaser). After opening ceremonies, our kids were asked to mix, mingle, and chat with groups of Chinese students from the school for the next hour or so. It was slow going at first, but our kids were quite willing to reach out, and there were numerous groupings that eventually formed. Later an impromptu basketball game broke out down on the basketball court before we left for lunch. It soon became soberingly evident to our kids that the young Chinese ball players were rather good.

After a lunch break we were led to the campus gymnasium for the “funny sports.” Organized events included several sorts of cleverly designed, enjoyable relays in the gym, followed by a basketball game between our kids and a rather good team from the local Chinese middle (high) school. It turned out to be a real game with a referee, a whistle, a scorer, and all. Our team consisted of Maiya Shoemaker (yay for Maiya!), Apollo Mettler, Laith Labban, Alex Renn, Ryan Fang, Stuart Harvey, William Bogdan, Princeton Liu, and a couple of volunteer Chinese chaperones. None of the other two cohorts from San Diego or Seattle volunteered to play, so the US team solely consisted of the SF group. Our team faced a well-practiced Chinese team who played together regularly. Despite this, our students gave a strong account of themselves. They led at multiple points throughout the game, keeping the score close, though they ultimately lost by a few points. I was really, really proud of these young people as they powered enthusiastically up and down the court. You would have been proud, too. The soccer players of the group, led by Hannela Jane, went outside to play a brief pickup game of soccer on the field next to the gym. Ardent soccer enthusiasts included Scott Ng, Carson Armstrong, Jarod Heng, Rebecca Gillespy, Rafaela Altman-Allen, Carmen Zhang, and several others. Ever creative, our students decided to move the soccer goals closer together, bfriefly inciting the ire of a Chinese soccer coach who did not appear to appreciate American youth ingenuity in soccer field redesign.

In the evening we had a second set of classes in Chinese paper cutting and calligraphy, where everyone had a chance to work on the artistic skill they had not learned the night before.

Friday, July 25

Family visit day. All the kids assembled in the lobby at 8:15 AM to be picked up by local Chinese families who had volunteered to host from one to three kids apiece for the day. Most family hosts showed up on time, and by around 8:45 all of our group had found a host family and been sent off for a day of sightseeing, eating, shopping, cooking, talking, and experiencing Chinese culture and language from an entirely different perspective. The chaperones and I checked with the kids in the evening on their return from their host family experience, and reports were uniformly positive and filled with excitement about their experience. Experiences ranged from home jiao zi making to eating out (one kid happily reported eating steak and macaroni). Another family took kids to an amusement park. Several were taken shopping. Others said they ate hot pot for the first time, and still others had the chance to sample delicacies such as snake for the first time (hats off for their willingness to rise to the challenge—it is a local specialty but not my favorite). All whom I talked to were bubbling with enthusiasm about their home visit experience, and past trips have shown that this facet of the agenda is the highlight of the itinerary.

As for the chaperones, we were taken to Shaoshan, the birthplace of Mao Zedong, who led the revolution that resulted in the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Shaoshan is in a lovely area, with nice wooded hills and valleys. It's about an hour drive SW from Changsha, so we got to see some countryside. We went to the Mao museum, which was quite nice. It had lots of his personal memorabilia, poetry, and political writings, reverently displayed. This was followed by a visit to Mao's home birthplace. It was a pretty and spacious farmhouse surrounded by lush green fields, so clearly his dad was a wealthy landowner. But what crowds. They actually had lines like in Disneyland, with people wrapping around several times before you could get in the house. It was about a 30-minute wait. After that we saw the Mao family temple. As we drove through the town, it was interesting to juxtapose revolutionary themes used to advertise business names (“Mao Family Restaurant”, “East Is Red Auto Repair”, etc.). These kinds of contradictions are what make contemporary China so interesting.

Best wishes from Changsha,