Yunnan Stories 云南故事

One oddest thing here in my current school is that almost no students  wear glasses! (Have a look in person here in Honghe No.1 High school and you’ll see what I am talking) I still remember my initial double take at such odd scene during my first class here. But I didn’t take a serious notice until the recent experience of hunting through the only two main streets for a pair of new glasses only to be told there were no optician’s at all. I even had searched some back alleies door to door before I suddenly found myself in an almost eyeglassless world. I was taken back,  cause it’s just too sureal. How come of that you can’t find an eyeglass store in a town as a county-government seat with population of over 20′000 ? Maybe I had asked the wrong person or missed the the right location .So one day it would be very likely for me to ask some radom student who happened to wear glasses where he/she bought them. Luckily,my frame-loosened spectacles have nothing serious and I could make do for a couple of months.As a guy who is heavily short-sighted ,I have been always vigilent keeping my baby from any possible inextricable losses such as being crushed under the pillow before I purchace new ones back home in winter holidays .

So questions arise apart from my minor complaints.Why do these kids have brighter eyes? (Actualy, the adults here have got the equally enviable eyesight ) Do they have more scientific eye-employing habit? I know shanghai students have way too much exposure to computer’s radiation. Yet the same problem of excesssive eye-employing also does exist here and the case is even worse based on my spot observation.It is not unsual that students here show far more enthusiasm in study and even sacrifice eye-excercising time with aquiecense from techers and sometimes they have to read in dim light.  Thus they are more like bookworms in the eye of some peers from so-called developed coastal regions. Another possible answer could be seeked from the following fact.  Here in Yunnan, people are bestowed the better natural enviroment with greeneries everywhere and more visual space especially in rural areas , which is good for eyesight beyond any doubt. Meanwhile, I suspect whether the unique Yunnan diet has something to do with their better eyesight. I am gonna ask a local in the know for the truth since my curiosity is picqued.

Time flies! Half semester has unnoticably slipped away before I realize that it’s now high time to blog some stuff for future’s memories. The past 2 months is , after all, way too busy and eventful to me,who had been dreaming of stepping onto this magic soil of Yunnan one day. 

Now I am in a classsroom, watching the students sitting their first full-scale exams of their senior high school stage. They, aged around 16, are mostly from poverty-stricken areas, which could be easily told from their plain clothes, swarthy compexion and especially how they value the  tests.  Basically,these good-as-gold kids would all sit out every 2-hour-long exam,wasting no time and trying their best to achieve every single possible score. They wanna live up to their hard-earned tuition fee and opportunity of further study.

Seeing this, I, as a volunteer from the relatively-developed coastal cosmopolitan city , cannot help but recalling my Shanghai students and sharing some views here. you’ll never know what a spoiled and previleged life you are living .However, it is saddening that many of you ,addicted to net games, are not in the slightest awarenese of the fact there are still considerable number of your peers here in Yunnan who don’t even know how to use computers. Ironically, you spare no effort indulging yourselves in the other extreme– virtual cyber space. In actuality,I like to "monitor“(or "acompany", more actually) these Yunnan kids during their exams, for there is almost no bother worring if they copy or cheat .Cheating here is still a rarity and regarded as a shame rather than a "pride" somewhere else.

So what i am doing during the two hour is nothing but handing out papers on time and then  awaiting them to hand in on time. In between is just my apprieciation of their hard work and accasionally the outwindow’s beautiful seneries ,which are mainly made up by the lavishly green rolling mountains. Therefore,invigilation here is no longer a gut-wrenching close watch but simply one of my alternative relaxations .