Educational Entertainment

Last weekend, after the sports meet, it was time for another countryside adventure. During our travels around Christmas time, I had met a Chinese girl, Candy, whose home is in Dazu in the Chongqing area. She had been asking me for quite some time to visit the school where she found a new job and finally we agreed on last weekend.

So, having otten just a couple of hours of sleep after staying up for the Eurovision extravaganza, Fabio and I headed to the bus station on Sunday morning to catch the rusty, smelly bus that takes people from Beibei to Dazu, a trip that takes a few hours as the bus successfully manages to avoid ever getting on the highway.

When finally in Dazu, we were treated to a fantastic dinner in the small flat of Candy's family. Both of the parents had been busy preparing all sort of vegetarian treats, and of course were very generous with the home-made herb liquor.

These people are again that sort of people who completely overwhelm you with their hospitality. I know I've written about the same type of Chinese people many times again, but meeting them always manages to get me all warm and fuzzy inside. :)

(Candy and another teacher's daughter ---------->)

But the main reason for the trip was to make a laowai appearance at the school. And this school was not just like any other school. First of all, it's located truly in the middle of nowhere. Another couple of hours of bumpy busride from the already small town of Dazu. And there, in the middle of the fields, is this grey concrete building, with the usual flagpole in the middle of the courtyard and the big, red characters proclaiming empty big meanings.

Candy had been telling me about the school on the way there. With that, she had managed to already scare me a little, what with the stories of totally unmotivated, rude and irrespectful students who spent their time sleeping in class and shouting death threats at the teachers if woken up. Quite a long way away from the culture of respecting teachers and valuing education. Candy herself got her job after the previous English teacher got into a big fight with her students and was fired.


But I guess our appearance managed to keep most of the student awake for at least half a day. The whole school was brought to an assembly in the courtyard and we had to give them speeches about the importance of learning English. And then, doing the entertaining foreign monkey... I mean teacher.... for a few classes each. The way I dealt with the sleeping students was to tiptoe quietly right next to them and then shout "GOOD MORNING!" straight into their ear ...Which was pretty much how much English these middle school students did understand. Among the giggles there were a lot of blank stares clearly saying "What?!?!" to whatever I said, no matter how simple. But in the end we managed to all entertain each other, by singing and jokes and little questions. And by learning to say "I love you" in 8 different languages.

By the end of it all, we were taken out for lunch by the headmaster. That is to say, we sat around the same table. He hardly said two words to us during the whole time, he had some of his own friends along, who were never even introduced to us, and they were quite happy to talk among themselves. Although, the headmaster did not even know how to speak Mandarin, which already limited the possibilities of communication to a minimum. I suppose he himself never went to school?!?

To top it all, Candy managed to get us some extra money. We had agreed beforehand that the school will pay for our bus tickets and our accommodation in Dazu. But the cunning Candy said that we should claim to have paid a couple of hundred more for the hotel than we actually did, just to get some extra money out of it ...Which I'm sure the headmaster assumed we would do anyway! :)