The Town of Qingyuan
Qingyuan is a small town located in Zhejiang China. Contrary to the suffocating climate in Zhejiang, Qingyuan was, in fact, cooler than I had expected. As a former resident in Harbin(aka. 'Ice City' in China), I felt little difference as for the temperature of the two places, part of which is thanks to the surrounding high mountains. The town is also 'The Town of Environmental Protection in China'.
Qingyuan High School
Although Qingyuan is said to be the most undeveloped region in Zhejiang, the facilities in Qingyuan High School was not old-fashioned at all. This so-called 'The most undeveloped high school in Zhejiang' has three teaching buildings which can accomodate up to 45 classes of 50 students, a huge auditorium, a playground with a running track, and a tall stadium...gimme a break!
Students are also clever than I had supposed. Among the 7 classes we had lessons with, the school puts the best students in 2 classes, and they are very interested in learning English. The remaining classes are still motivated. One student even asked me calculus after class!
The Courses
The courses contains many subjects: Bertie's topic on love and sleep, Richard's interesting math magic tricks, and Phil's singing classes. We teach our own topics during the day, and in the afternoon we return to our 'home base class' to play games with them. Bertie and I were in a team, and we tried games like tongue twisters, Simon says, 7-up, Hangman...It feels great to see these kids' happy faces when they were playing the games they had never tried before.
Singing is also a huge part of our teaching. To enhance their oral English, we practiced many English songs: Love Story, We Will Rock You, You Raise Me Up, Firework...(Bertie: This song(Love Story) is literally banging in my head!)In the end, we held a singing competition and it was really terrific. I will talk about that later.
Before the activity, I intended to teach them simple game theory stuff: prisoners' dilemma, Nash equilibrium, etc., but it turned out these students are more interested in playing & looking at pictures & Chinese courses(of course, they are not university students!), so I changed to different topics after the first two days. I had some trouble in the classes at first, but I modified my teaching style after every class, and finally it turned out fine.
Interesting People
Bertie is my teammate in teaching. She's a...what can I say, a typical Chinese American? She is nerdy(according to herself), she doesn't(and doesn't intend to) look white, and she can speak English literally as fluent as native speakers. But speaking English too well has setbacks, namely she could only use very limited Chinese(in an accent mixed by American, Xian, Beijing and Northeast accents, according to others' comments). However, I think that she has learned pretty much Chinese during the trip.
Phil is the type of handsome guy that girls would be crazy about. He is white, he is tall, and he is always carrying a huge smile on his face. He likes singing very much, and he even composed his own song!
Richard is studying math in Princeton, and he is really adorable! He likes solving problems, playing cards, jogging, and playing computer games. I think that he is the type that resembles me the most.
Cultural Differences
Here I am going to list some interesting things about different cultures(not chronologically).
StruggleBus!
Among all the words I learned during the trip, strgglebus has to be the best. According to Bertie, it is a word used by students by Yale(but Phil from Yale doesn't think so...) to describe something struggling. Like: I had a 6-hour bus ride, and it was a strgglebus.
This word has many derivations: during lunch and supper time, we tend to argue about some topic, and the we all get really excited, so we call our table the struggletable. There is also other stuff like struggletrain(when the strugglebus gets bigger), strugglebugs(cockroaches that went into Alex's suitcase....Eww), and struggleroom(the dorm with cockroaches in it), and...
What a struggling world!
Asian Flush
A sort of phenomenon that happens to Asians who are allergic to alcohol, like me.
Cute vs Adorable
Richard told me that in America cute is indicating 'hot, sexy', and the word for lovely is adorable...but Bertie thinks that a baby can be cute and adorable.
Wierd China!
1. A conversation between Richard and me.
I(Myself): I play badminton.
R(Richard): I play badminton too, but I don't want to play with you, you are too strong.
I: Why?
R: Because you are CHINESE!
(I: How is that a reason! You can't just reach a conclusion like that!)
2. 'You don't need to know what you are eating in China. Just eat it.' ---Bertie
3. River Snails:
River Snails(aka. 田螺) is a sort of dish that we had during supper one day. This time Richard and Bertie knew that it was a sort of snail, but they had trouble eating it.
Richard tried to break the shell with his teeth, but unfortunately the shell was too hard. A Qingyuan native picked one, and in 5 seconds he managed to eat it.
R: How did you do that!
N(Native): Just pick the meat with a toothpick and suck it.
(Richard sucked, but he only had salty water in his mouth)
R: Why could I only suck salty water! And it was disgusting!
N: You have to empty the water before sucking...
(Meanwhile Bertie was trying to pick out the meat with the toothpick)
R: I give up, it's too hard! B(Bertie): I won't! Never say never!
P(Phil): Yeah he(JB) says 'Never say never', but he just said 'never' two times.
(After a long struggling, covering her hands with salty water, Bertie finally picked out the meat)
B: Yeah, I made it!(And happily ate the tiny piece of meat)That was not delicious at all...
R: 为什么(How come)田螺(River Snails)不是(not)甜的(sweet)?
(Explaination: the Chinese 田 and 甜 sounds the same, and Richard just mistook the right character.)
4.
B: Chinese students just don't know how to dance. They don't have dancing classes, do they?
I: No, but they have to dance together stupidly, listening to a stupid music...(Chinese will know what I mean...)
5. The Singing Competition
In the competition, students are so excited that they shout loudly for someone to perform on stage. As former victims of 'military training', we were used to this kind of craziness, but Bertie was totally shocked to hear so many people shouting her name, so she asked me a dozen times: 'What is GOING ON?' Sadly I have no explanation to such maniac behavior, so I could only tell her to perform something so that the students can get quiet...
