We've been to their house a few times now, seen the school and helped them advertising for the school by visiting a local primary school. This was quite a fascinating experience actually, bearing in mind we were a good 45 minutes outside the main centre of Shanghai, so in quite a rural district, with obviously less westerners and barely no tourism. We arrived at the school and were split into two smaller groups to flyer by the playground gates. This was not at all like giving out flyers in England, every single person took my leaflets off me, and they were just staring at us the whole time. The Chinese girl who I was walking around with, Sasha, literally kept passing me half of her pile as nobody would take them off her. When the Children came out of school, they would walk past us, stare and smile, and the occasional one would mutter Hello, as they could obviously tell I was English. It was so cool to see the little Chinese children just so dumbfounded at the fact we were there, looking all western. One thing I noticed was this one little girl staring at my arms, it was a hot day so I only had a Tshirt on, but I think they fact they were just so white and obviously hairier than chinese peoples arms (I was blessed with ape arms haha) was quite a shock to them.
Another thing I noticed whilst we were there, was the general manner of the school. All of the parents weren't allowed in the playground like an English school, but all waited behind high gates. Children were marched out by their teacher and a child from each class lead the pack of students with a big sign saying which class they were in. A very clever way of doing it, but it was all so formal and strict in comparison to when we would finish school when we were younger, run around the playground like animals for 5 minutes looking for our parents! The child at the front gave the sign to the security guard at the gate, who announced the class number over a microphone and then the children were let out of the gates. It very surreal to witness how such small things can be so different.
But, thanks to us, I genuinely feel our presence during the afternoon flyering helped a lot, and for the 15 minutes we did, we got equivalent of £10 each, which really isn't bad. We are going to do some more with them next week hopefully!
On Saturday, we then were picked up again for a day with them, witnessing a demo class, run by another girl from Estonia who studies here. We all kind of chipped in with the teaching of the class, helping these little Chinese children from the age of 3 years old start to learn English. Some of them were absolutely adorable. One little girl came running up to us at first, stroked Charlee's blonde hair and simply said, 'My name is Dora, pleased to meet you'. I loved her. And in fact, I loved all of them. All of their choices of names were so traditional too, choices such as John, Peter and Eric. Except the one little boy who was nine years old, he told us his name was happy. How can you tell the cutest little kid that that isn't a real name? We just smiled at him instead, and got on with teaching the class. During the class hour, there was a little boy sat on the corner of the table, he wasn't making a single noise or facial expression other than fear, he just sat there looking terrified. I know I am quite a 'children person', but I genuinely loved going and sitting with him for the remainder of the class, I made him smile and feel at ease with being there. I even managed to get him to whisper the word puppy, and even if it wasn't very loud it was such a cute moment and I really loved how much he started to enjoy the class by the time it was the end, all from the encouragement I was giving him that he was doing a great job. I didn't even know his name he was that scared to speak at the start, I just wanted to give him a big hug!
After the children had left, the people who run the school insisted on us staying for lunch. We had a mini class on how to make Chinese dumplings and then they were sent off into the kitchen to be cooked. When they were done, they came out with some other things, including a strange date and mushroom soup and a type of Chinese potato which you dip in sugar. In these instances you really have to throw away the fear of trying things, half out of politeness and half out of the knowledge that opportunities like this are pretty rare. They may not be my type of food, but they certainly weren't unpleasant.
After lunch, we sat around their Chinese tea bench and had numerous cups of Chinese tea which were made freshly in front of us. The tea table was beautiful, made out of a tree trunk, and the tea set was a really nice turquiose green colour. The tea also was great I suppose, I am loving the weird tea here, and think I will certainly be a herbal tea fan when I am back in the UK.
The neighbours of the school had a wedding coincidentally on the same afternoon, and in Chinese culture the wedding party travel from the hotel to the brides house and then to the grooms house and at each stage, when their arrival is nearing they set off firecrackers down the street. So, the groom's house was nextdoor and when the firecrackers started, we all gathered on the front step to witness the wedding party going by. The bride looked like one of those perfectly made up Asian models you see in advertisements, and the groom was wearing a particularly shiny silver suit. But either way, it was really nice to witness something so cultural and coincidentally it happened whilst we were there!
The next door neighbours from the other side also had the cutest kitten in their garden that was recently born, and I was pretty happy that I got to play with it. I felt bad at first, all I did was say how cute it looked from afar and one of the Chinese ladies Vivian insisted on going next door and getting it. I didn't want her to take the kitten away from its mother, but she came back a minute later holding the cute little ginger. I didn't feel as bad when I saw how the family next door treated it though, I know mother cats pick their litter up by their scruff, but humans in general have the ability to be a little more caring, so I think I gave the little man more love in 10 minutes than they do everyday!
Tonight , we have been for dinner with our Chinese buddies that Fudan assigned us. It was a great night and we went to a Chinese restaurant with food from a particular part of China, very spicy and garlicky but great. The boys were lovely as well, and they paid for the majority of our food. It was quite nice just conversing about different ways of life here and in the UK, and what we are all used to. Like for instance the fact they are only allowed to shower between 3pm and 10pm in the public showers which they have to walk to, and I can shower as many times of the day I want and just roll out of bed into my en-suite to do so. Its crazy though, the accommodation here is around £1000 for a semester, already a lot cheaper than home (Mason especially!), but yet to them that's still expensive. They pay 1500 RMB for the year I think they said, so £150. And on top of that, 5000 RMB for their tuition fees for the year, £500. How crazy is that?! I genuinely have no clue how international students financially survive in the UK. But nonetheless, the conversations we had were really interesting, and it was good to see the different perspectives a different culture can give youths. I am already looking forward to the next time, as it was actually really fun - and even got to practice a little chinese over dinner!
Yet again another essay of a post, but overall I feel I have had a wonderfully cultural weekend, may not have been as productive as it could have been on the studying front, but it has been pretty interesting and full of great experiences that for once don't involve drunken stories or clubbing!
That's all for now. Love from the other side of the world xxx
I know I've heard most of this before but I love your weekly recap! Love you xxxx
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