7--Teaching in September

Being that the first was Sunday, we spent the day at home, in some small way
hoping to have a meeting with the school, but not really expecting one. We
figured on just going to the school on Monday morning and hopefully getting
some more information.

So at 8:00 a.m. we arrived at our office to find that it was locked and
there wasn't anyone to meet us. We walked over to Mr. Liu's office, which
is down the end of the hallway, and we knocked on the door. Another man,
non-English speaking, answered the door and gestured that Mr. Liu was in his
office (adjacent to the room we were now in) and that he was on the phone.
We waited and when he got off the phone, Mr. Liu came out to say hello to
us.

He got on the phone to track down Mr. Zhang, who showed up a few minutes
later. They led us to our office and gave us each a key for the little
padlock on the door. Then we had a brief conversation with Mr. Liu after
which he left. We showed our teaching plan to Mr. Zhang, and he liked it a
lot. Now he was able to give us a timetable. We had decided that Dick
would teach the younger kids, primary and Middle School grade 1, and I would
take the older kids, Middle School grades 2 and 3 and the Seniors, of which
there is only one grade.

We waited in our office and checked out the new computer that had been
installed. Eventually, we were told, there would be computers in all the
teachers' offices and they would be networked, but that was for some time in
the future. At this point we really don't know what we could use this
computer for, it has no office package on it, but we'll see.

In our office there was a wash stand with a mirror and two towels. A
plastic basin sits on the stand, and water is hauled from the taps at the
end of the hall. These are in sort of a janitor's sink and the kids use it
to wet the mops when they wash the floors. There was also a plant of the
bamboo variety, which Mr. Zhang had watered for me. Apparently this office
had been empty for some time and no one had bothered to look after the
plants. A small bonsai type pot on the window sill had a very dead fern in
it, and we moved it to the desk saying we would find a new plant for it.

After having gone home to get something, I came back to the office to find
that my timetable had arrived, but nothing yet for Dick. It looked like I
was teaching 10 classes a week, each of 45 minutes in duration. Most of the
slots were in the afternoon, with the earliest being at 10:10. I think I
can handle these hours. My first class was this afternoon at 2:00, and it
was a grade 2 class.

Since the grade 2 books referred to the choosing of English names, I decided
that this was a good thing to work on. So I brought the big red Oxford
dictionary and had them look at the section in the back that lists common
names. They chose names that are mostly traditional, they don't judge names
the same way we do. We ended up with Borises and Hugo's, Henry's and
Basils, Enids and Dora's, Edna's and Edith's. We didn't get through the
entire class since there were 39 students in this one. Classes tend to vary
from about 28 to 41 students. This is not at all considered large in China.
Apparently there are some schools that cater to 70 and 90 kids in a class.
And that's primary school!

So, having accomplished something I decided to go home for the rest of the
afternoon. Dick stayed at the office because he still didn't have his
timetable. He finally came home at around five. He told me that Alisa had
to do the timetable herself, after having asked three different people to do
it for him. It appeared that he had nine classes, but later in the week
that grew to eleven.

Dick went through about 3 timetable changes, and ended up late in some
classes, or even missing the odd one, due to the confusion. But nobody
thought it was a big deal. It turns out that the biggest problem was that
the primary school has a different time schedule, shorter classes, than the
middle school and that is what created the problem. By about the third day,
he figured he was on track.

We taught the first week with great enthusiasm, although the students were
not all that enthusiastic towards us. We realized that it is difficult for
them to understand us after having been used to learning English from a
book, with Chinese translation at their fingertips, and by Chinese teachers
who can explain things to them. They were not used to hearing our speech
patterns, and showed complete confusion and a lot of blank faces were
staring back at us. This was true more for me than for Dick, but we talked
about it, and decided this was the language barrier we had to break through.

On Sunday, since we didn't have any classes (or so we thought at the time!),
we decided to go out. From some photocopied maps of the County, Dick had
discovered that the old city wall that Hanson had mentioned to us was shown
on the map in the north west corner of city. The section of the wall that
we had looked at earlier to the east is smaller than this particular
section, at least according to the map. We got on our bikes and headed in
the direction Dick had planned out for us.

We got to the street we thought we needed to take, but the entrance to it
was being repaired. We managed to walk our bikes past the piles of sand and
lime, as well as all the workers, and headed north. We rode through a large
gate, indicating that we were in another compound of some sort. The laneway
was probably the prettiest area we have seen, lined with roses and climbing
flowers all along the buildings, and trees and yards in beautiful, neat,
well cared for condition. The fragrance was absolutely incredible. We rode
to the end of the lane to find that there really wasn't a way out, but
stopped to take some shots of all the flowers.

The local people gathered around to see what we were doing, and tried to
start a conversation with us. We started to head back, and stopped to take
some pictures of the old couples in front of their gardens. Then one of
them asked if we ate, I'm recognizing that now ("chi fan le ma?", meaning
"did you eat?", is used here instead of conversation about the weather). I
motioned that we were riding our bikes and then pointed to where we thought
the wall would be. The old woman told us that we had to take another path
to get outside this compound and then we would find the wall. I understood
this, even though I didn't know any of the words. Then they pointed where
we should go, and pretty soon two young boys decided they would show us the
way. We ended up on a small path by one of the houses and soon arrived at a
door in the brick wall. A woman, probably one of the boys' mother, asked
them what they were doing. They told her, and after we took their picture
by the door in the wall, we followed them down the path, which was alongside
a canal. We figured we were definitely on the right track.

The boys led us around the bushes and the canal, and then we turned right
(north). Soon we could see the ruins of the old wall and Dick was quite
excited. Dick and our two guides scrambled up a "goat trail" to the top and
proceeded northward. I followed along on a lower, more comfortable trail.

It seemed the foundation is made of stone cut footings, each one about a
half cubic meter. These appear to form the base which is about 3 or 4
meters above the ground level. The remainder of the wall above the stone is
probably packed soil and is about 8 or 9 meters high. There are some
stretches where the top of the wall is less than half a meter wide, just
wide enough for a trail that boys of all ages would find easy to navigate.
Erosion appears to have been at a minimum due to the dry climate and is
limited to areas that are subject to travel, men and beasts.
A note of interest, the Great Wall is not considered to be of tamped earth
construction, but rather of cut stones, however, the tamped soil method of
construction was probably used in some sections. These were probably
sections of a pre-existing wall which had most likely been constructed
BEFORE the Great Wall of China was built.

Earlier roads or walls may also have been a means to mark a route through
the wastelands on the the great East-West trail know as the the Silk Road.
The Silk Road was the route from China to Europe that was used to provide
silk material and garments
to the lucrative markets of Europe. The Canadian segment of this route was
the Canadian Pacific Railway where the trains carrying the silk were given
priority over all other trains.

So far we have been unable to get any more information, either locally or on
the internet,
about the Huimin walls but we will talk to Hanson when we can reach him and
local sources of more information. Hopefully there will be more to follow
on this landmark.

The surrounding area is used for grazing and growing crops - mostly corn and
cotton. There is a large lagoon in the shape of the letter "C" located
inside the northwest corner of the wall and could have been the water supply
for the city during a siege. It was interesting to see the old people
fishing and washing clothes on the banks just like they would have hundreds
of years ago.

There are two major sections of the wall still standing, the northwest and
northeast corners, both about a kilometer in length. It is interesting to
note that the orginal canal, or moat, still exsists around most of what was
probably the old city, with sections quite visible and others grown over
with reeds. Dick will be doing some more research on the walls and hopes to
find out more history of the city and area. We're told the wall is about
500 years old, so it has held up amazingly well.

We stopped for a few minutes; the boys had climbed to the top, but it looked
a little too difficult for us old folks to manoevre. There was cotton
growing at the bottom of the wall, and the boys came back down bringing us a
small fruit, a berry or very small apple of some sort. Tasted OK,
especially after chewing it for a while. We continued north, and came to a
small break in the wall. Dick followed the boys up and I stayed with the
bikes (being chicken). Behind the wall I had now noticed the lagoon where
there was an old woman beating clothes with a club and, next to her, an old
man fishing. I wish I had the camera, but, it turns out that Dick had a
much better shot of them. So I waited until he came back down.

Then we continued on, further north yet. The corner of the wall didn't have
a building on it like it might have had in its original state. It would
have been a pagoda type of structure, but we can't determine if it would
have been a military type of lookout, or what. We went around the corner
and then parked the bikes under some trees. We followed the boys up the
path, this time a little easier to manage, and were met at the top by a
group of kids. They said "hello" and laughed and giggled. We wanted to
take their pictures, but they wouldn't pose. So Dick showed them a picture
of their backs. Then they realized it's probably better to look at the
camera. Dick got in the picture with them, and then they were more willing.

We took numerous other pictures, and looked around for a while. We could
see the highway and some cornfields as well as a small village to the
northwest of us. It was really quite astonishing to be on a wall, a piece
of history, that was hundreds of years old.

On the way down we decided that we could probably head on to the east, keep
following the wall, and it should take us back to town. All the kids
followed us this time, and we came to a place where the path bent a little.
There was a mule tied up, just minding his own business. A little bit on
from there, a goat was lying basking in the sun. The boys had no trouble
with this, of course, but when the girls had to pass the mule, the typical
fears came out that we see in our kids. One of the girls led the mule away
from the path a little, and the rest of them ran down, screaming at the top
of their lungs, to get past the mule. I'm surprised the mule wasn't scared
by their noise. Kids are kids everywhere, I always say.

When it came to the nannygoat, the story was much different. They fed her
leaves that they picked from beside the path, and the goat gladly obliged by
chewing everything they handed her. We had to take pics of that, of course.

It was a delightful morning, and now we were ready to head back home. We
followed the path, and soon ended up back on a street. We rode until we saw
a little freezer in front of an open door, and I asked the people for "shui"
(water). They went inside and came out with a couple of bottles of iced
tea, a couple of bottles of water, and also with juice. We gave the boys
the iced tea and took the water ourselves. After paying for the
refreshments, we went on our way.

Dick decided that we needed to get the names of our little guides, so we
asked them to write in Pinyin. They gave us Chinese characters as well as
Pinyin: Zhu Xin Hui and Ji Peng Fei. We thanked them and went on our way.

Once we got back to the main street, we decided to head towards home. We
came to one of the, now all too familiar, store openings. These are
identified by a large arch made from a nylon cloth, which is pumped full of
air, and also by fire works.

The first time we were invited to a store opening was back in July. It was
Carl's sister who was opening a food or convenience store. They had the red
carpet outside and the airfilled archway. Then we noticed that a small
crane had driven up and parked in front of the store. They used this to
lift the strings of firecrackers up and then proceeded to light them. We
must have stood there for a good 20 minutes with our hands over our ears
waiting for all the firecrackers to be used up.

The opening of the store we had now come to wasn't quite so elaborate, but
they did have the obligatory fireworks. This time they were in a sort of
canon device so that they could be shot up into the air like rockets.

We hear fireworks almost on a daily basis, signifying the opening of yet
another store or business. The one we are desperately waiting for is the
restaurant that we used to walk to right on the corner. It is now closed
and we were told by Alisa that they are moving somewhere upstairs from the
grocery store. But we haven't quite figured out exactly where.

It is nice to know that these people are moving up in the world. They
worked hard at their little restaurant, and the place was quite small and
obviously old. We think the town is getting ready to tear down this
building as well. We see that happening all over town. We are not sure
where the money for all of this construction is coming from, but the town
seems to be rebuilding a lot of old buildings as well as constructing new
ones. The labour is obviously cheap, but the materials may be another
story.

Having had a lovely morning, we headed home and rested for the afternoon.
By supper time we called Alisa to invite her out with us. She came over and
then proceeded to tell us that we actually should have been in class today.
Dick had missed two classes and I had missed one. It turns out that the
Middle school schedule is for a six day rotation for a duration of two
weeks, after which there is an actual weekend. Well, did we feel bad! But
they really didn't mind because they said they hadn't told us. I think they
had tried to tell us, but we didn't clue in.

Anyway, now we knew that we had to try to get our schedules on some sort of
spreadsheet in English so that we could both see when we were to be in
class, as well as when the other was busy. That way we could plan other
activities around this as well. We finally managed to do this by the second
week, since the computer program was a little hard to follow. Dick finally
had Alisa show us how to get the tables feature to work. Another language
barrier overcome.

But now we realized that Dick had one more problem, in the second rotation
of the Middle school schedule he now had a class doubled with the Grade 4
class. So we had Alisa deal with it, and it was quickly changed.

So we continued teaching for the remainder of the week; it was much easier
now. Then, on Tuesday, we took delivery of a brand new mattress made of
foam (yeah!), and then we were given two more pieces of news by Alisa.
First of all she handed me the provincial newspaper from September 1st. Mr.
Liu had wanted us to see this. It had our picture in it, on page one, yet.
We're famous!

The second bit of news was that the next day would be Teacher's Day, and
there would be a production in the dining hall. Some of the students and
teachers would be performing and we were going to be receiving flowers. Of
course we were looking forward to that.

The next day Mr. Zhang met us on the playground after supper and again told
us about the performance. Then he reached into his back pocket and told us
that in honour of Teacher's Day all the teachers were getting 100 Yuan
bonus, and then gave us each 100 Yuan. That would come in handy.

Dick had gone home before me, and when I arrived at the apartment, he and
Mr. Zhang (the elder) were busy on the couch composing a short speech. Dick
was to make this speech after we receive the flowers and then Mr. Zhang
would translate. Once they had the words down, I typed them out and printed
it for them. Then we headed to the school together. We took lots of disks
with us to take pictures, because a school show is something neither one of
us have been to since, well, since our kids were in school.

The performance was really entertaining. First the head table on the stage
made some speeches and then we were introduced. We were met with a roaring
applause - I think they like us. Then the teachers all received some sort
of certificate in a small red booklet.

After that the entertainment started. Some of the kids and teachers were
really quite talented, and there had obviously been a lot of work put into
this production. The kids were dressed up in costumes and had their makeup
done. Very theatrical.

Once the new Middle school headmaster, Mr. Liu (it's a really common name)
started giving instructions as to how the kids should exit the dining hall,
Alisa came to us and said, let's hurry up and get out of here. She was
making sure we didn't get caught in the mob. We got outside and managed to
divert most of the crowd. Of course, all the way home we still got the now
too familiar "hello's" and we always reply with a smile and some comment.
If we say too much, we get puzzled faces, but most of the time the kids
really enjoy the contact.

The little ones love to touch Dick's arms. They are not used to hairy men,
and they laugh at his bald head. They pull his chest hairs. The staff are
all concerned that the kids shouldn't be doing this, but we think it is
quite endearing. One little one in particular, a teacher's daughter, always
comes up to him in the dining hall when we have lunch there. She is in his
grade 1 class, and she clings to him in class as well. Dick commented that
this was his little clinging vine, so I said we should name her Ivy. It
took a couple of days for her mother to realize that we had given her an
English name, but we hope it sticks.

We have also given an English name to our little visitor, Hai Ying. She is
really learning English quite quickly and is in Dick's grade 3 class. I
decided on Kim for her, it's short and easy and I think it suits her.

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