Middle of Nowhere

Besides being surrounded by no civilization and farmlands, what would signal that I am in the middle of nowhere? Well, let me tell you. I knew coming here that I would see more bugs than what I’m used to back home in the city. I even brought American-strength mosquito repellent, and sure enough, when I first moved into my room, I killed 2 mosquitoes. But after the heat and humidity started to wade away into the Fall, mosquitoes were not a major issue. But little did I know I would encounter something so terrifyingly different last night.

So there I was, sitting in my room watching a movie on my computer. I had just taken a shower a moment ago after our usual Manual Skills class. As I was sitting peacefully on my chair, I felt a little itch near my left ear and went to scratch it. Suddenly, a pain so sharp brought me out of my chair and made me shout as if someone severed my ear off. I quickly took my shirt off and bent over to brush my head. And guess what fell down right in front of me. Nope, not a spider, but a squirming, 3 inch centipede! I was in panic mode and could not believe something so creepy had just been crawling near my ear. I quickly got a napkin and smashed it, but the little *$@* kept on squirming. My kill/revenge mode instinct turned on and with a mighty grunt, I raised my arm and hammered it with all the strength I had. I pounded on it again and again just to make sure. It was dead, but I was still in shock, scared, and in a lot of pain. It felt like someone branded the back of my ear. I was scared that maybe more bugs were on me as I checked frantically, but even more scared that my life suddenly turned into a horror movie. It took awhile to get back down to earth, and if I didn’t realize before that I was no longer in civilization anymore, that centipede definitely reminded me. All part of the experience I guess, right?

One Month in Rural China

It's been about a month since I first got here and life here is pretty much what I expected it would be. Since our school is located off a main country road, a lot of farmers pass through. I've seen everything on this road from water buffaloes, to live chickens on buses, to multiple pigs jammed into a back of a truck. Lots of mopeds pass through as well with the father, mother, and 2 kids on the same one. Driving here is a sport in its own right. Cars will pass a slower car on the left, even if another car is coming from the opposite direction, forcing that car to move all the way to the shoulder just to accommodate the passing car. Taking the private mini-buses are also pretty fun. I’ve once counted 19 people including myself in what we call in America a minivan, with the interior seating adjusted of course. Sardines!

Also as expected, I'm honing my farming skills. Besides the rice harvest, everyday with the students I work in the fields tending different crops we grow here. We grow chili peppers, winter melon, pumpkins, chives, garlic, radishes, green onions, cabbage, and other various Chinese green leaf veggies. It's a very "green" school here. Everything is fresh and nothing is wasted. We even use all natural fertilizer from our very own bathroom waste. All of it is piped down into a big tank where it collects and ferments for a few days. After adding some water, the solids and liquids turn into a greenish sludge that the students directly add on top of the crops using a bucket and long handle scooping ladles. Although not the most sanitary method or pretty to watch, this seems to be the common agricultural practice in this province and probably all the villages in China. But you can’t complain about the results. All the vegetables grow very colorful, healthy, and big. Plus it’s 100% organic and all natural!

All 3 meals of the day are prepared in the cafeteria by the friendly school cooks, who we call 大妈 (eldest auntie). For breakfast, we have rice porridge, hard boiled eggs, and stewed radish. Lunch and dinner we have rice and a couple stir fried dishes including different green veggies, radish, bamboo shoots, different types of tofu, peppers, potatoes, etc... Usually there is some meat too that is stir fried with the veggies and sometimes there's fish. All the food is really good and fresh tasting (all locally bought or grown). I noticed they really like spicy here too, and the kids often bring bottles of homemade chili sauce to eat. Before eating, the 1st-2nd graders have to wash their hands, line up outside the cafeteria, and then in a single file line get their food. The 3rd graders also eat in the cafeteria but appoint a few classmates to serve the class. But the 4th-6th graders, because there is no more room in the cafeteria, have to bring the pots of food to their respective classroom and serve themselves. I eat all 3 meals in the cafeteria because it's fun watching the smaller kids eat - and they can eat a lot! Maybe it's because they don't have a lot of food to eat at home, but when they're here they have very healthy appetites. Their small little hands can hold chopsticks pretty well but they still resort to directly shoveling rice into their mouths. After eating all the students wash their dishes themselves while another student inspects to see if it's well clean or not.
















I teach grades 4-6 and it has gone pretty well I think. Although I don't have a lot of teaching experience, there is another English teacher, Wang Lingling, who is my age, and she's been helping me plan lessons. The kids are very excited to have a foreigner teach them English but can also lose interest very quickly. Basically what I figured out is the more games we play in class, the better! It’s been fun teaching so far although they can be a little rowdy sometimes. The most rewarding part of teaching is seeing noticeable improvement. You’ll also have a few kids who are naturally very sharp, so it’s exciting to know how bright their future can be.

Of course, being so isolated is also hard to get used to. I knew that my social life would pretty much be nonexistent compared to Beijing or back home, but there are some teachers my age that I hang out with sometimes, and I've been able to go out to climb a mountain and visit other popular local sites around here. This area called Huizhou (徽州) has a lot of deep history and culture, and you can see it from the different architecture they have as well as the food. I also have a bicycle now and have played basketball a couple of times in the next biggest town of Xiuning (although it takes 25 minutes and lots of guts to bike on that road).

Mid Autumn Festival and Chinese Hospitals

The Mid-Autumn Festival is a celebration of the big full moon in September and also signals that Fall has arrived. Today we had a celebration during the day, and then at night on the sports field. All the students brought their stools and gathered into 6 circles for their respective class. However, the sky was overcast and unfortunately couldn’t enjoy the beauty of the full moon. After listening to some teacher’s poems and songs about this festival, we had moon cake and soda and all the students were very happy and energetic. At the end, I also performed and read the famous American children’s book, “Good Night Moon,” although I’m not sure how much they understood!

Strangely enough, the weather also changed dramatically. Right before the Mid-Autumn Festival, it was really hot and muggy, and air conditioning was used regularly in my room. The night of Mid-Autumn Festival and subsequently after, it became really cold and brisk. The temperature drop was big and came very suddenly. Because of this and the large amounts of moon cake consumed, a few days afterwards a lot of the students had upset stomachs and fevers. My stomach too was not feeling well and 50 or more students and I all went to the hospital in the closest town of Xiuning. It was my first time in a Chinese hospital and hopefully my last. The difference between Chinese hospitals and American hospitals is like night and day. The beds were dirty, the walls were dirty, the ceiling was full of spider webs, the bathroom had really foul odors and was not at all sanitary. Not only was the environment different, but also the treatment. When I first arrived at the hospital, I thought something was seriously wrong with me because all of the sudden they had me lie on my bed and inserted IV into me! I was scared and a little panicked but the teachers accompanied me and reassured me. It turns out that this is the standard Chinese practice of treating colds/flus, and all the kids had IV inserted into their hands. They even treat babies this way, but they put it through their forehead! After a day and night and going through 4 bottles of IV, I was feeling better and could leave the hospital. But the other 50 plus students were not better yet and the doctors wanted them to stay another couple days/nights. I ended up staying in the hospital the whole day and changed shifts with other teachers taking care of them (not much nursing assistance in China). If their IV was running out, we had to tell the nurse to change a new one. If they had to go to the bathroom, we had to carry their IV and elevate it above them. If they had to take medicine, we had to pour them hot water. If they were bored and restless, we had to comfort them and keep their spirits up. And since Chinese hospitals don’t provide food, we had to bring our own rice porridge and give each student a bowl. All in all, it was very tiring and hopefully my last experience in a Chinese prison, I mean hospital.

But once again the real story are these kids. They come from really poor families in small villages anywhere from 2-5 hours from the school. Some kids have only a mom or a dad, some kid's parents are both working far away in big cities to make money to send back home, and some kids don't have any parents at all. But they are all full of life, strong, and obedient. To give an example, one time I was looking after a 7 year old girl (1st grade) at the hospital. She was there for 3 days and 2 nights with nothing to do but sit on her bed. There was no TV or anything but she never complained and always had a smile on her face. I asked her when she was getting better when her birthday was and to my surprise she had no idea. I then asked her then how she knew she was seven and she said her mom told her. Can you imagine that? This little girl has never celebrated her birthday her whole life, no birthday cake or any gifts, but you would never know that from looking at her big smile. =)

National Day Vacation and Liukou Village

A few days ago was one of China’s major holiday known as National Day. It celebrates the anniversary of the creation of the People’s Republic of China. Equally important, during this time everybody takes a week off, including our school. Since Pingmin Elementary is a boarding school, kids don’t usually go home, but because of the longer vacation, their guardians came to pick them up and go back home for a week. All the kids were super excited to go back home and waited eagerly outside for their guardians to come. Some kids got really anxious and waited and waited thinking that no one would pick them up. But sure enough in the end, all the guardians came and all the kids were able to go back home. It was interesting to see who these kid’s guardians were, a lot of them being grandmothers or grandfathers. Some parents were handicapped and some kids just had older siblings or relatives to pick them up.


During this break, Principal Zhang took me to a village about an hour away because she had to talk to someone. The village is called Liukou and is home to one of the 5th grade students. This was the first time I went to a local village. It was a good distance away and only connected by rough windy roads leading up into a small mountainous region. Lush, green bamboo filled the whole mountain side as we ascended up and up, each healthy and drooping, resembling a mountain full of big, green, dust mops. The village was medium sized, maybe around 200-300 people. We arrived midday, with middle-age and old villagers staring at us as we passed by. Besides a big antenna on the top of the mountain, everything else had a very village type feel. Older men and women, wrinkled and hump backed, sat in groups lounging, eating pumpkin seeds, talking, and smoking. Younger woman were washing vegetables and clothes in a small river that flowed under a small bridge and separated into smaller creeks. Houses were very rustic and crude, obviously weathered over time. Building materials like bamboo, rocks, and cement blocks lined the street. Clothes hanged on bamboo poles. Pig pens were numerous and chickens roamed freely. There were even ingenious crafted fish ponds with beautiful big fish that harnessed the flowing creeks to refresh the water continuously. There were also dried ham hanging, pumpkins and winter melon piled up on balconies, and various vegetables drying out in the open air. Behind the village was a vast garden with fields, each villager knowing which section was theirs even though each lot was unmarked. And of course, lush, green mountains surrounded us echoing the sounds of birds and the flowing water beneath. Unfortunately, there was also a lot of trash carelessly littered and dumped on the ground and in the river, more than I expected in such a natural environment. After a super fresh lunch consisting of home-grown Chinese spinach, home-made cured pork, home-made pickled chili peppers, and other fresh stir fried dishes, I walked around the village with the 5th grade student and a couple of his village friends. They were very quiet and well-behaved but also very curious like any small child. I noticed there were no teenager or young adults and later found out that this is very common in villages because they all are in college or working in bigger cities to make better money. This leaves only the parents, grandparents, babies, and adolescents here. When I was here, a couple of things caught my eye. One were houses made with long wood planks vertically assembled together and surrounding the outside of the house. Wood is probably cheaper and more abundant than brick, but still it must get cold during winter! The other thing that caught my eye was watching a 70+ year old coming back from the field shouldering a large knapsack with one hand and a handful of veggies in the other. I guess retiring is not an option here as even the old continue to work until they physically can’t anymore.


During the last day before school started again, the guardians and kids slowly came pouring back. Some had new clothes, toys, and even some candy and snacks as a parting gift. The teachers and Principal try to discourage the guardians from leaving food with the kids, as other kid’s guardians cannot afford these extras. So to prevent the left-out kids from feeling sad, we have to tell the guardians to bring enough to share with the whole class. There were also a few younger kids who cried and held on to the guardians when it was time for them to leave. Being away from home and family is obviously such a tough thing to do for these children as young as seven. One child, the quietest, smallest of the 1st graders and without any parents, cried the longest and loudest as we had to hold her back while her grandmother took the bus back to her village. After a few minutes, we let her go and she ran past the school gates and out onto the streets only to find that her grandma already left. Still screaming and crying, she yelled she would find the bus herself to take her back. We eventually had to carry her back to the school. It’s hard for the guardians to see their children crying and wanting to go back home but they also know that an educational opportunity like this deserves some sacrifices, however hard it might be.