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A different perspective
Written by Seraphine, Monday, 30 November 2009 16:00
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I arrived in Guangzhou by train from HK. A good friend had smartly written out the hotel's name in Chinese so all I did was to show it to the cabbie without having to speak a word of Mandarin. Then the driver blurted something. Oh oh... I say: “Dui bu qi, wo bu hui shuo han yu”. He replies “Ni shi na guo ren? Ri Ben de ma? Han guo de ma?” Thank goodness that was all covered in Module 1 of my Chinese course.
10 minutes later I checked into Springdale Serviced Residence where we will be staying for one night. Wendy conducted our Group Orientation, and introduced us to the full team of 14 colleagues – 5 gentlemen and 9 ladies. About half of them were from our China business unit based in Guangzhou or Shenzhen. The rest were mostly from Singapore, except for Anthony who came all the way from Bahrain. We went through the logistics and task distribution for the coming week. Everybody in the room was excited to be at the school and meet the kids the following day, but we realized there was a lot of work to be done. We had a nice dinner hosted by the Deputy GM of the Guangzhou office. During the dinner, our China colleagues recounted their experiences of doing business in China: dining habits, business etiquette, entertaining business partners, etc. What a far stretch from Singapore!
The weather turned quickly and unexpectedly cold in the last couple of days, and the forecast predicted it is about to get worse. I regretted not bringing my ski gear! My roommate Hui Ling introduced us to these Kobayashi heating patches. She was like a very convincing Kobayashi brand ambassador. So after dinner, we headed to the stores to buy some winter clothes and heating patches. I was very excited that I had a chance to use recently-learnt Mandarin sentences to buy a pair of gloves, a wool scarf, and Long Johns. We went back to Springdale for an early night of rest, excited to embark on this journey the following day.
We left the hotel at 8:15 am in a minivan headed to Shitan village about 2.5 hours drive from Guangzhou. Although we were going to a rural area, everything looked pretty urban for the first hour. The road, which was by Singaporean standards "very bumpy and winding " is to me a very smooth highway which beats Indonesian standards. It was almost - dare I say - a pleasant drive, as there was no traffic. The last stretch of the drive was pretty green and one can see silhouettes of large rock formations and mountains in the horizon. As we entered the village's main street, the only things that distinguished it from a city were the lack of vehicles and the numerous duck merchants by the roadside. Somehow they managed to get these ducks to sit quietly in one spot. Maybe they glued them down, I wouldn't be surprised knowing how creative the Chinese can get.
We checked into the only hotel in town. It was a 2 or 3-star (but probably a 4-star in Shitan standards) and the building is definitely the most modern one around. Hui Ling and I were allocated a large room on the 4th floor. It had a separate living room with a mahjong table as a centrepiece. It was straight out of a Wong Kar Wai movie, but without the glamorous Tai Tai's or Tony Leung. The hotel had some surprisingly modern touches to it, like an electronic key card system, a heating aircon unit and the mahjong table which is electronic! So although Wendy had lowered our expectations, we were perfectly fine in this basic room.
Lunch awaited us at the restaurant downstairs where we would be eating every meal for the next few days. In front of me, there were 2 bowls, a small plate, a cup of tea and chopsticks. I followed my colleagues for the dishwashing ceremony on the dining table which took a good 5 minutes. We washed everything with our cup of tea. The plate is meant for bones and trash, one bowl is for rice, the other is for meats and veggies. Being vegetarian, I’m not sure what to expect. They brought out 9 different dishes, a full banquet. It was really tasty and being in a rural area meant the vegetables are fresh and pesticide-free. We (or the ladies at least) all started to worry that we will go back to Singapore looking like we went on a 1-week gourmet holiday, not a hardworking volunteer trip.
We headed to Lianjiao School, a 15-minute drive from the hotel. It was built in 1933 and nothing much has changed ever since, except for the new wing being constructed next to it donated by the CapitaLand Hope Foundation. The courtyard is massive: all the classrooms surround the courtyard on the ground and first floors. We did a quick tour of the premises. There are about 500 kids in 9 classes. The kids were not around - they were having a lunch break from 11am to 2pm because they had to walk home, have lunch, and walk back. It can be quite a trek for most of them. We measured the 2 rooms on the 1st floor that we were meant to transform into a library and reading room over the next few days. We did the distribution of tasks. I opted myself out of the "book categorization" team for obvious reasons, I also could not really contribute in the team that is going to source for materials in a nearby town... so instead I joined the carpenters to assemble Ikea shelves and tables.
Around sunset the kids were released from class so I went out to the courtyard, excited to meet with them. They all seem a bit older than their bodies suggest. To my surprise, the language barrier was not a problem at all. They all had an unbelievable energy and I connected with them instantly. I took millions of shots and showed them the photos. It amused them greatly, as did my touch screen Canon. By the time we left the school it was around 7pm and pitch black. Some of the teachers lived at the school and they were cooking around a bonfire in the courtyard.
Dinner at the hotel's restaurant was delicious, or I was just starving. Straight after dinner, a brainstorming session takes place in our living room around the electronic mahjong table. We needed to prepare a 5 minute show of some sort for the kids on Saturday before we leave, because they have been arduously rehearsing a thank you dance for us.I'm exhausted from my long day fighting the cold and deciphering Ikea's not-so-dummy-proof instruction booklets…
For breakfast we trekked down to the village. It was 7:30am on a very cold and grey winter morning... Kids start their long walk to school, vendors in the street fry breakfast delicacies: corn fritters, glutinous rice balls, radish cakes, etc. We headed to a noodle house.
We reached the school before 9am and we spent the morning finishing yesterday's work i.e. assembling tables and shelves, cleaning dust from the books, mopping the floor, scrubbing the walls.
We went back to the hotel for lunch and we arrived back in school before the kids did. We found out that they weren't allowed back in too early. They must wait at the gate until 1:30pm and class resumes at 2pm. The gate becomes the centre of attention. I'm not sure if it’s because we were around or if it’s like this everyday but they were very excited to get back in. I don't remember ever being so excited about going back inside the classroom! As the gates broke loose, they ran in and started jumping around the courtyard. The kids now know us better so are less shy. Again, I'm really glad I managed to entertain them despite my lack of proficiency in the language. We had a really good time entertaining them.
Everyday in the afternoon break, a loud message is broadcast and the kids massage their eyeballs and the back of their necks to the rhythm of "yi, er, san, si, wu...". Apparently this is a nationwide practice. Pretty interesting to watch and definitely a source of entertainment... but I must say that although it takes a communist government to implement such a thing, I do see the benefits. How many times was I in a classroom, tensed up from trying to solve an equation, head hurting, eyes tired from making notes And never did I think of taking a 3-minute break just to rub my eyes and neck.
After the mopping, assembling and cleaning, I felt my nose and eyes filling with dust. So I was happy to discover that the next task was... pencil sharpening, for the pencils we provided in the reading room. Out of pure coincidence the same 3 from the morning group (myself, Anthony and Ah Qi) who were screwing table legs found ourselves performing the same clockwise movement with our right wrist to sharpen pencils. We had a good laugh although our wrists could really use some rest!
We were told we had to leave a little earlier today because our driver had a wedding dinner to attend. On my way out some little girls tell me they want to write to me and ask me for my address. So cute! Then one held my hand and asked for my name. I think - this is the one time in my life when I can put my Chinese name to use! I returned the question and she told me: Cheung Wei Ping. Before I left, her hopeful eyes looked at me and she said: Jie jie, ming tian jian? My heart just melted.
On the way home there was a song on repeat in the minivan which had become the trip’s theme song. It’s a very catchy dance song which starts with "huanying huanying" (colleagues, you know which one I’m talking about!)… And the chorus goes "it’s an ordinary life"... How appropriate. The song was sadly cut short, I guess because the driver really wanted to get to his wedding dinner.
After another fulfilling dinner we started rehearsing for our Saturday show in the mahjong room. We were singing a song in Mandarin (I'm lip-synching) and in English we settled for... Michael Jackson's Heal the World. I was a bit worried on what to say to the kids when they ask who Michael is. He is male but not really... He thinks it doesn't matter if you're black or white... We added some hand gestures and we faced a problem: how does one mimic "there are people dying"? Melvin managed to find a neutral solution, but we still laughed every time that line comes on.
After breakfast at the same place as yesterday, we walked around the village a little. Shops were well open and doing absolutely no business from 8am onwards. There is a decent looking bakery, some video game arcades, many eating houses and a whole lot of shops selling trinkets. They are all empty and stay pretty much so throughout the day.
Today was a special day for the kids because we had arranged for the local "caterer" (ie the only restaurant) to provide lunch boxes so that they didn’t have to walk all the way home for lunch. Some of them are about a third of my size but they finished their lunch box full of rice, veggie and pork in less than 10 minutes. Eating meat is a huge treat for them, including for the teachers. We ate with them in the classroom too. They were laughing at us non-stop obviously. I was happy to see that Wei Ping and a mischievous boy who always smiles are both in the class I'm assigned to. She kept on waving to me and the boy winked at me every 30 seconds. He's starting early, very cute.
After lunch was the chance to play with the kids. There was a group of girls who loved holding my hand, so I had to share two hands with 5 girls. They dragged me to the courtyard – it’s sunny today, and that made a whole world of difference. Wei Ping said she wanted to "shou la shou" which is basically holding hands. So the 6 of us just ran around in circles holding hands, and they were ecstatic.
Wei Ping is quite a lively one. She wouldn't stop asking me questions and I couldn’t answer most of them although I understood some of them. It’s frustrating. She was frustrated too, I can tell. Can you sing? No... Can you tell us a story? No... Can you do anything, useless jie jie? No... Oh well, back to "shou la shou". So I decided that from now on, whenever she asks me a question which ends in "hao bu hao"? I would answer an affirmative "Haooo!". This change in strategy earned me a hike to the rocks behind the school, a walk to the farm, and an orange-picking session (the oranges are really sweet!) - all in "shou la shou", of course. I might have also promised to invite them to Singapore and adopt them for all I know... But I thought I was doing OK considering my laughable Mandarin. As I played with my new mei-mei I notice that their little hands and fingers were so dirty and their faces so dry from the winter. One girl was braving the cold with a pair of slippers. And yet they carried with them the most natural happiness, just being in this only place they knew. I bet most of them wouldn't even consider themselves poor. It is probably only by comparison to us "foreigners" that they find out.
After the lunch break and the excursions it’s time to go back to class, and today we got to sit in for one class. "My kids" were in English class. Lesson of the day: colours of the rainbow. I sat at the back of the class. There was a draft because the back door is open. We couldn't close it because the mountain behind the school blocks off all natural light and there are very few windows so the back door pretty much becomes the only source of light. It is so dark that when the teacher asks "what colour is this?", it's like one of those tricky optical illusions. Either her rainbow is monochrome or I'm going colour-blind. So I made my own class with the back row kids, teaching them colours from my clothes (a lot of the answers were "purple"). Good thing I had also covered colours in my Chinese class.
After the class I had to go back to the library to finish our work. A few hours later we were still busy at the library and I had no time to play with the girls. I was told they were looking for me: "jie jie zai nar?"... Which jie jie? "Bu hui shuo han yu de jie jie!!!". Great, what a title! My family will be proud of me.
I have not yet mentioned the toilets in school. They aren't even squatting pans. It is literally a long sewer with a few 30cm-high walls separating each unprivate booth. The odour is definitely unpleasant but not shockingly so. Seeing this definitely makes me appreciate the simple things in life such as a clean toilet!
Our final task was to decorate the reading room. I considered myself to be physically fit, so I am surprised to see that I did not manage to blow a balloon! Even little Hui Leng seems to be a pro… So unfortunately I could not partake in this activity and instead I concentrated on the artistic decorations for the walls of the reading room. Once we were done beautifying the room we went back for dinner. Tonight's dinner was really average - so our table decided to go for yum cha in a street stall. It’s empty. The restaurant owners said they can make it just for us. We had some baos, siew mai, etc. It’s decent. I learnt that our breakfast stall was also open just for us. I guess our contribution to the local economy was pretty significant.
We woke up at the crack of dawn today. We headed to school to ensure everything was presentable for our China CEO Jason Leow and representatives from the Ministry of Education who would be coming to grace the opening ceremony. They had put up colourful flags all around school and it felt like a parade. Some of the kids were dressed for their performance and there were balloons and flowers everywhere.
The kids lined up really nicely to welcome the VIPs. The school principal, the representative from the Ministry of Education, Mr. Leow and Ron (on behalf of the volunteers) each made a speech, after which students and volunteers took turns performing and the library was declared open. The kids rushed in, it was probably the cleanest and happiest room they had ever seen in their short lives.
Saying goodbye to the kids was emotional. The girls made me promise that I will write. I think it should replace my Mandarin homework.
I don’t know if I had made any difference to their lives in such a short period of time. I don't know if they will remember me in a week, in a month, in a year. I don't know if the library will be put to good use. But the whole experience has been a real eye-opener for me and I definitely won't be forgetting them anytime soon. This was my first volunteer trip and it won't be my last. In fact our group is already talking about the next trip, potentially back to the same school – in order to build on the relationships we have started during this trip. These types of experiences, no matter how short, give you a whole different perspective of life. I would like to encourage all of you to consider giving time to volunteer – whether through CHF or other channels. This trip has made my year and I believe that all of us have come back with a deep sense of gratitude for the blessed lives that we have.
Seraphine Iskandar| Comments |
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