ancestors and ancedotes

After finishing up a very satisfying March session, we pulled on our traveling shoes and headed to Shanxi province, several hundred kilometers southwest of Beijing, where we spent time with a half-dozen students in two cities, visited three schools and took advantage of some awe-inspiring sightseeing opportunities.

We took the 3-hour bullet train to Taiyuan, where we hopped a country bus for the remaining three-hours to Pingyao city. We stayed in an out-of-the way Chinese-only guesthouse within the walls of the well-preserved ancient city, where people still live and work. There are thousands of buildings from the Ming and Qing dynasties, mid-14th to the early 20th centuries, including China’s first bank.

Our former student, Betty, and her husband, family and friends took great care of us, lending us bicycles to ride, introducing us to many delicious local foods and helping us find lodging during what turned out to be a busy tourist weekend (Qing Ming Jie). It also turned out to be a bit colder – as a cold front brought in some snow for our enjoyment. Thankfully the kang bed kept us very toasty.

We spent a morning at Betty’s rural school, where we led a class of about 50 high-spirited middle schoolers in English songs, chants and other activities. After class we strolled the unpaved school grounds and visited the outdoor latrines while other classes continued to belt out the lyrics to the song we’d taught earlier: “…if you are crazy, turn around.” Very surreal.

Later we visited the middle school where Betty’s husband teaches physics and took a tour of the school museum, where one of the English teachers gave a blow-by-blow recap of the school’s 80-plus-year history. During dinner, school leaders impressed upon us their desire for more English teacher training and suggested we do a program for students the next day. Why not?

The following day, we lunched with two students, one of whom invited us back to her home where we visited with her 3-year-old son and her in-laws prior to the agreed-upon event at the school. Standing at the door of the auditorium, we greeted over 400 students wildly excited to find that their school day (Sunday) suddenly included two crazy foreigners. We led songs, discussions and presented ideas on ways to make English fun. Mostly, we encouraged the students and English faculty to think outside the box.

Many students and faculty said they came away re-energized about English. Betty’s husband, who knows English but refused to speak before, uttered his first sentence and declared that he was going to speak English at home from now on. God is good.

The next day we traveled south to the city of Jiexiu, where we met up with Spring 2. We visited the town she grew up in, Zhang Bi, which features an underground fortress of tunnels below an ancient village where people still live and work. During the Cultural Revolution, many of the village temples where decommissioned and/or defaced. One of the main attractions was a temple that had been used as a school when Spring 2 was growing up. As we toured the town, members of her family invited us into their house for special snacks made for Qing Ming Jie (a holiday honoring ancestors).

That night another student, Amy, and her family prepared us a fantastic dumpling dinner at their apartment. We were happy when she asked to give thanks for the food before we ate. PTL!

The next day we walked for miles as we visited Mian Shan (mountain) and the many beautiful temples built into the cliff walls. There were thousands of steps and thousands of people as the mountain is the birthplace of the Qing Ming holiday. We saw no other foreigners and we posed patiently for pictures with strangers more than a times than we can count.

We spent the morning of our last day at our friend’s school. In an astonishing act of kindness, the random taxi driver we hailed took us to the school refused to let us pay (a God thing). We later learned that his daughter was a student there. With an audience of more than 40 6th graders and several English teachers, we again led a rousing session of singing and activities. The students were really wound up and we could see by the reaction of the teachers on hand that we had perhaps generated a bit too much enthusiasm for English.

We arrived back in Beijing just before midnight (the guard was still awake!) after an unexpectedly easy day of travel that featured the discovery of the automatic ticket machine at the Taiyuan train station that allowed us to bypass the 50-person lines at the ticket windows.

Back on campus there are about 120 students on hand for the April session, however we will have little contact, as we are full speed ahead on continuing our work on producing training videos, helping the Chinese staff with a translation project and working on plans for ESEC’s 30th anniversary in June. We are assured that He will direct us and motivate us as in the work at hand over the next few weeks.

Photos to be posted as soon as we can!