Yunnan Stories 云南故事

Today, I bought 10 ball-point pens. Guess what I would do. You’ll never figure it out, for I gave them to my students who failed in the English examination they took 4 days ago. I think I have done something meaningful, of which I am proud .   

For the last 2-day weekend, we 6 English teachers worked our butts off  over the a large pile of testpapers, grading, counting, and documenting and so forth. What we got repaid was a depressing  result—the whole 10-class grade’s average was only 55 of the full mark150. You can imagine how poor their Enlish are. In fact, I was told early before that English is the worst subject in Honghe No.1 School. A lot of pressure and I must try my best to live up to their expectation.

The average mark for the class I teach was 58.8, ranking the second place with the margin of 0.5. Like all the other 9 classes, some students show little interest in this course and almost give up because they find it very tough to catch up due to their too weak foundation in the junior stage.

Could see the obvious panic written on their faces when handing out the papers yesterday.  Instead of exerting any more presssure , I underplayed the influnce of the marks by directly analizing the papers in a calm and relaxing mode. I still felt something different should be done immediatly though the two sessions went smooth. The following is what I did today.

Put the pens on the teacher’s desk and said I would reward some students. Guess what? The students with the top marks didn’t seem to pretty much care, let alone the rest. Perhaps they were too used to such situations and the prize was no more than a crappy 5-jiao pen, anyway. What’s the big deal? 

But things didn’t stop there when I said: "This is only 5-jiao but it doesn’t matter only if it writes well. Right?"  I got the first yes.

Next is "I will use it as a gift to those who failed in this exam". They began to wonder.

Third sentence : " This gift is to show my sorry to my flunked students because you have since long ingnored by me, therefore it’s my fault that you didn’t pass this time. "  My flunked students became a little moved.

Fourth : " I will lower the benchmark for pass to 40 given that this exam is too tough because only 30 students out of 500 got the mark 90 or more. "   Those "still flunked yesterday" couldn’t get more excited  because they "passed" the exam maybe for the first time.  They lost a pen but they have found confidence!  

Last word is to those all who " have passed" : "Do you mind my rewarding my flunked students?"  I got the happy and the only "NO" with the loudest from those who were still failures yesterday.

The next 1 minute was a brief rewarding ceremony taking place in the aplause.

This works like a charm, at least temporally. I like to see my students’s confidence to be boosted rather than undermined.

This is a park-alike compus, really gorgeous. Eveyone I suppose would suspect they must have entered a senic resort when coming here for the first time. Really fantastic, with big trees, huge mountains all around, exquisite pavolion,and the MOST magic feel–like you are amounting the highest peak.

The first sentence I said to my first class here is " wow, you have got the most jealous seneries " . It was just from my bottom heart. You’ll see my feeling when standing in my classroom. Outside of the windows are huge emerant mountains covered by huge wifting clouds–absolutely a natural living Chinese painting.

In fact, the seneries here are ubiquitous, contantly changing on every turn. Our school is situated on a hilltop, which enables us look very far. On top of that, the air quality is unbelievably perfect and the sky is intoxicatingly blue. The other day, I asked a local about the distance from the opposite mountain and was told it would be a half day by bus. So unimmaginable cause I could see the villages!

Just imagine the feel of being surrounded by the oncoming clouds when stepping outdoors, the feel of strolling around the compus at the dawn, and the feel of enjoying the birds’ singing when lying on your dorm’s bed. No wonder I always suspect if I am here on vacation or at work. It’s just so amazing

It was said that this year’s tourism fair was so far the grandest in Honghe’s  history.  We could n’t wait to see it and particularly the famous long-street banquet when we got the news.

You could immediatly felt the festival flavour in the air as soon as stepping out of the compus. Seeing so many people flooding  every corner of the town and we all expected it to be the most ceremonious fare. What attracted us first was the various ethnic minorities wearing their most beautiful attire, which was dsazzling colorful. Naturally they constitued the most wonderful senic belt along the streets.

Kept taking photos with the locals on our way and we felt so lucky to catch such good chance only after a month here. All we saw could be called a feast to us for we had never witnessed such unique situation. Snapping and walking, we finally arrived at our destination.

It would be for sure our most unfortable sence in our  life.  Alike every vistor, we were instantly besieged by the overwhelming hospitality at the gateway. First took a sip of the wine held in a tiny bamboo cup ( Just imagine when half dozen of pretty girls surrouded you competing to serve you a toast with so swweet a smile) and soon we fould ourselves drowned in the sea of hospitality. Sanwiched by too long long lines of welcoming ethnic groups, each guest I believe would felt he was the king. Lining the road in the order of various ethnic groups, they happily danced and sang for every guest, with the bizzard instruments, dazziling ornaments, crazy rythms, touching voices and so on.

The climax was the long-street banquet. Hundreds of dinner tables were joined togerther, forming the most spectacular banquet in a zigzag or other forms. It was held in front of the county stadium, where a large variaty show took place. We could enjoy the meals as well as the exciting programmes, including  the most charateristc multiple-voice folksongs. Also intresting was our spontanious man waves in response to the team who toasted and sang along the tables from time to time. That really added a lot to the aready tasty banquet. Following that was bonfire, around which people sang and danced joyfully hand in hand no matter they knew each other or not.

What an a fantastic feast!
 

In the 10.1 golden week, we paid a homevisit to a student and took the oportunity to have a good time in Dayangjie–reportedly, one of the five most beautiful ancient villages in China.

(stay tuned)