Teaching in China

Long post?

This last weekend was teaching in Zengcheng, China - they are famous for a certain kind of vegetable that grows only there, one of the highest waterfalls ever, the largest square/park in China, and unusually persistent mosquitoes. Zengcheng is about 3 hours (from where we left) away from CUHK, so it was a nice chance to listen to some music and zone out.

Transit - Getting there and back was honestly kind of dumb. We took the bus from the Sham Shui Po MTR stop, rode for an hour to the HK/China border, then two more hours into Zengcheng. What would have made more sense would have been to take the MTR to the HK/China border (cheaper and faster ((25 minutes vs an hour))) and just gone from there, but hey, we got in and out alright.

The school - Zengcheng is a rural sort of town. Or village. Whatever. Regardless, no big buildings, lots of motorbikes, and a couple of chickens running around the streets. As I'm coming to realize, rural villages in China tend to look alike. The school (Paitan Middle School represent) was gated off, but seems decent enough. It's a large school as it caters middle schoolers up to the equivalent of high school seniors, so ~1500 people, some of the students even living on campus as their houses are far away in the countryside. The buildings were multi-story (to maximize space I'd assume) with three basketball hoops, a jogging track, many ping pong tables, and a badminton net.

Me and the kids - We worked with 13-16 year olds, guys and girls, and I'll admit it - the kids loved me. Right off the bat is the oddity of my height - the comment I heard the most over the weekend was "so tall" or "ho gao." Some kids even took the liberty of telling me "you're taller than Yao Ming."

The guys took a liking to me because on the first day in the afternoon, one of the other guys in our tutor group and I played basketball with some of the guys. It was 4v4, so we picked up a young'un as well as another tutor and we played. Life was easier because well, we were playing against 14 year olds, so we all put up decent numbers. On an evil sidenote - I completely blocked this kid's jumper and after the other guys had finished going "ohhhhh" (they do that at everything though) one kid yelled "you got packed!" Good times.

The girls liked me, because apparently I am considered "very handsome" in some parts of rural China. It was like being a celebrity - when I would smile and wave, girls would cover their mouths, giggle, and turn to their friends. I had girls following me around, other girls saying that I was handsome, and other girls saying "so tall." It even got to the point where two girls gave me their picture (the kind of pictures you take in the photobooth in the mall arcade) with their names on the back.

But beyond gender differences, all of us exchange tutors were very warmly received by the students. I asked the guys in my small group what they thought of the girls that were in the group, and the unanimous response was "very pretty" and "so beautiful." Kids were grabbing at tutors to take pictures - the shy ones used their friends and the always effective "will you take a picture with my friend?" It was interesting though; once other students saw you taking a picture with other students, they would all rush over to get into the picture - you'd begin by taking a picture with three guys, and wind up ten seconds later taking a picture with 25 students. The students asked me if I had a Chinese name, so I sat down to write it for them. Seconds later I was completely surrounded by students (15 at least) who read off each character as I wrote it.

My favorite moment dealing with the students though probably occured during the tutor's introductions during the evening session of the first day. Us tutors were all going down a line and just introducing ourselves, where we were from, and what we're studying. When it got to my turn and I stood up to begin speaking nearly every student in the room (40+) went "ohhhhhhhhh" with some "so tall" thrown in for good measure. I suppose it's an easy in with the kids

The Teaching - Honestly it wasn't really teaching, it was more just trying to get them to practice speaking English. It was fairly rough going at first, most of the students being shy and lacking confidence in their English skills. Some of the students were excited to talk despite their level of fluency which made things easier. For that same evening session, I had an 18 year old senior student in my small discussion group (when we broke into small groups for each tutor, all the guys came and sat with me) who translated pretty much everything. As it turns out, all the guys wanted to talk about was basketball - the most common phrases are "Kobe Bryant MVP," "Yao Ming," and "Rockets."

The Sunday morning session started off interestingly - in splitting up all the guys again came with me, but as I was conducting a slightly awkward Q&A session, one kid had a camcorder and was just recording the whole thing. Despite our initial instructions of not speaking any Chinese, I had to throw some phrases in just to maintain my own sanity (such as translating "breakfast" for them). It bogged down, so it just got to the point where it was time to play basketball (it was clearly what they were all waiting for).

So we played for about a half hour when one of the teachers, "Churchill," told me, in essence, to knock it off with the basketball and that we should be practicing English (one of my reservations about just getting right into basketball). But then as I sat back down with the group of guys who I was with (just to watch the last game finish), the damndest thing happened - they all suddenly became willing to talk. It was still basketball talk, but guys who had never talked were suddenly full of questions - they asked me how long I had been playing, if I could teach them, and that sort of thing. Not only was that in the teacher's face - but it reinforced for me the potential of sports: before we played basketball I was just a tall guy from America speaking a lot of English. After playing basketball it was like I was just another guy who likes playing baksetball - that common experience was enough to spur the students to overcome their shyness/self-doubt in speaking English. I feel like them seeing that I shared something that they are so passionate about (they apparently play after school everyday) reduced the feeling of foreigner/local and teacher/student to the point where they were comfortable speaking. Plus:

1 - Putting a ball into a net doesn't need language
2 - Being teammates creates an instant bond and familiarity, especially for team sports
3 - I clearly put a lot of value on sports/athletics

Misc - Gave out my email address plenty of times, had millions of pictures taken of me/us, made the peace sign many, many, many times. It was an immensely rewarding trip, if not a sleepless one.

More details if I remember more, pictures and video to come!