Yunnan Stories 云南故事

Three Lis are three students whose last names are Li. Have I mentioned before that there are extra many Li-surnamed people here in Honghe? Just in my class the Lis make up nearly half, most of whom belong to Hani(哈尼)ethnic group. Really, nine out of ten people you meet in the streets are surnamed Li. From the angle of history and georgraphy, it is not hard to explain given that Li in itself is popular family name and that Honghe is relatively of a backwater.

The three Lis I’ll talk about are from one place called Shitouzai or literally Stone Village, which is 2 hours on bus plus 4 hours on foot from the county town where they go to school. A great number of students here have to rent rooms either inside or outside of the compus because the school dorms are far from enough. The rooms, varying in monthly rent from 30-50 RMB per person, are basically very ridiculously small—–2 by 3 meters at the most, which squeezes at least 2 students with a desk between their beds. It is not unusual that 3-4 students share such a cramped room, with 2 bunk beds.

The Three Lis, living next to our courtyard, are three sunshine boys. Their given names are Zhengzhou(literally,integrated and considerable), Tianxiang(Literally, fly in the sky) and Yangguang(literally, sunshine)from senior grade two, one and Junior grade three respectively. I didn’t know they are living in compus until the other day I stumpled into Tianxian( my student)carrying a bucket to fetch water from the public water station 5 minutes away. Asked him why bother and he replied that there were no water pipes connected to his dorm. Needless to say , he with his mates have since then become our daily visitors, washing clothes or even taking showers in our courtyard. Besides, I keep an open house to them and vise versa. As their friend, I will share my goodies with them if there are and ask them to feel free to consult me over English. Yet, what they fancy most is the 2 hours I have promised them to play QQ on my labtop at weekends. At that point, I, dealing with a large pile of laundry or homework, could feel they are the happiest kids in the world. After all, they are in the most lively ages between 15 and 17. Unfortunately ,they are all forced and trained to act like bookworms, with little time to have fun except hitting the dull books. Only from their excitenment with the QQ do I find they don’t look like nerds any more, about which I don’t know I should be happy or sad.

I often visit their dorm, which is let by a teacher who has moved to a new flat in the town. The first time of seeing them was unforgetable, reminding me of 15 years back when I leased a room with another buddy during the Gaokao(高考) countdowns. The similarities: intense studing atmosphere with books after books everwhere. The defferences: more cramped with little room to turn around your body, two bunk beds with the fourth berth as a luggage rack, two small desks filling almost all the rest space, one of which is even shared by two kids sitting face to face. Without places for putting chairs, the kids have to sit on the bed edges and so has every guest unless he would rather stand. I noticed there were some jars under the beds and asked what were they used for. They looked a little embarrassed first and then said they were for storing pickles, which could save them a sum of money from meals. Later I also learnt that they normally stayed at school until a semester was over. Asked them why and was given two reasons—-#1,They didn’t want to waste the 10- yuan bus fair.#2, The going-home thing was too troublsome to them, one way alone would take 6 hours on the way AND the school has ONLY Sunday off AND the Sunday evening class must be attended.

That is only the story from my first vist to their dorm, and in the following days, I just find there are too many things worthy of writing about the three Lis. Here I name only one example. Last Monday evening, Tianxiang was absent from the class and someone said he was ill. I headed to his place as soon as the 9:30 Pm- ring went off, which was finishing time of the evening study. His door half open and the light on, I found he was sitting at desk doing maths problems with a cap on his head. Turned out, he had a bad fall the day before and his eyelid was swollen plus he happened to catch a cold so he didn’t go to the classroom. Later his two mates came and said they had took him to the clinic and the doctor said there was nothing serious and more rest was suggested. I fetched some cold pills for Tianxiang and asked him to rest early. Probably around 12 pm, awoken with a start by a nature call, I jumped from my bed into the courtyard and found their window was still bright. Only then did I know they meant serious when they said in the past that they never hit the sack before 12 pm. I know there are too many resons why they have to study excessively such as endless homework and eagerness to get rid of the humble fate.Good luck, three Lis and the like.

By the way, the three Lis mentioned last time to me that how beautiful their hometown was and warmly invited me to have a look in person some day. Since then I have been looking forward to the day but have no idea when I could eventually make it. Maybe I will have to wait until summer holidays. And I really wanna experience ,just as what the three Lis said ,what it would be like running along the mountain ranges&paths in 4 straight hours just in order to make it to home or bus station before sunset!

If you ask me what attracts me most in Yunnan, I will say without hesitation it is the climate.  November now. In Shanghai, it is already freezing cold and my families have bundled themselves tightly. But here in Yunnan, it seems that people haven’t changed their outfits much since mid summer. Now I am in a cybercafe,  wearing a suit and feeling warm enough while the girl sitting beside me is only in a T-shirt.

Before leaving for Yunnan in August, I was told that there was no need to prepare a large pile of clothes. So my heavy weapons for the coldest days are merely a jaket and a sweater. Seeing the sunny weather nearly everyday, I just have no idea when we will be in the deep of winter. Maybe they will come in handy only when we are on the way back to shanghai in the spring festival.

The scene when I first landed on Kunming was pretty much vivid just like yesterday. It was still a furnace in Shanghai three hours ago, but the instant we got off the plane  we felt Kunming was like a huge natural AC. I reported the significant discovery to my family in Shanghai, thrilled and joyful like a kid. Sure enough, Kunming is a spring city worthy of the name. In fact, not only Kunming but most parts of Yunnan enjoy the wonderful climate. The hottest of hot days won’t make you sweat. Similarly, the coldest days won’t make you grow frostbites. At least I haven’t exprienced the two extremes here so far. Meanwhile, it is impossible for me to forget the sweating hot and numbing cold in Shanghai. Unbearable.

Some climate-related things I happen to like include fresh air, blue skyes,starry evenings, clouds or mists and even UV（紫外线). When we were in Yunnan on the first day, the tourist guide said that Kunming enjoyed the 5-star UV. She was swarthy but pretty,sweet and warm-hearted, exuding a heathy vitality of youth all over. Therefore I had a strange feel that UV is associated with beauty besides its function of sterilization. The charm of Yunnan climate also lies in its blue skyes. The blue is almost a daily occurence, bright, cristal, immaculate and even holy. Each time I am outdoors especially when sitting on a bus, I will not forget to look up into the sky. You may well use the word "greedy" to describe my feeling about the Yunnan blue.

What are equally unfogetable aslo include the starry skys in the evenings, over which we Shanghai teachers often exclaimed. Sometimes, we gazed at the night fall , silent for a long time. It is just so comforting to be reminded of the long lost childhood memories, in which we lied on the bamboo bed on the summer evenings, looking at the stars while listening to stories told by the adults.

Oh, the sunlight. Yunnan has far more sunshine days than Shanghai, which can be judged just from the number of the solar-driven heaters installed on the roofs. Nearly every household has one! In this sense, Yunnan fully deserves the title of the greenest region. Really, I sometimes wonder why Yunnan is so favoured, with the enviable weather.

Climatewise, I know it would definately be a totally defferent story if I were in Shanghai now. The weather of Yunnan will surely something I will miss in my rest of life. 

Today I had a demonstration lesson, which was observed by nearly 10 teachers. Not a big hit but something to write home about. In a nutshell, it was a reading class, aiming at cultivate the students’reading ability.

As all we know, grammatical questions are only fractional while listening,reading and writing account for 90% of the full marks.More emphases are being given to test students’ablities in using the language instead of the so-called knowledge, which has become a consensus. However, it’s not unusual that many schools are still walking on the old path, turning around the grammar. The result is: all efforts come to little. A falure as this method has long proved to be, it is still in fashion in the school where I am working. No wonder why students scored so low in all the previous examinations.

The text learnt today is titled "LIFE ON THE GO",talking about the increasing popularity of cellphones among teenagers. I didn’t follow the suit, exploiting the text like a mine and delve the "precious"new words and sentence structures. Such teaching approach can’t be boring enough. Without special preparations, I just read the text carefully and keep in my mind that every second of the 40-minute-class shouldn’t be wasted. On the warming-up stage, I use my mobilephone to elicit a brain-storm. The students’ responses were not so hot but satisfing.They were relatively introverted after all. Having activated the background knowledge, we just found it easier to understand the text. When focusing the attention on the informational words rather than grammar, the students got the meaning of the 1000-strong-word article without difficulty.As for the new words, they have learnt which to skip and which to guess from the clues, thus saving a lot of time.That finished, I asked them to make up some T/F questions to test their take on the passages. Sure enough, most problems were solved by themselves.

Believe these kids and don’t take care ofeverything for them, leaving them enough time.It’s not only crucial to student’s independent thought but also respectful to their personality. Some activities were also taken into consideration throughtout the class. For example, we arranged a debate on the effects of mobilephones and organized an interview to the guest teachers over their mobilephones. It should have succeeded had the kids not been too nervous.While the students were reading, I played a very soft light music to build a relaxing atmosphere.Their enthusiasm showed they had benefited a lot from the class.

Yesterday: First time to shoot my temple out of control. My assignments for the students to do after school are supposedly the fewest—-only a small composition each week. In the first place, I tried to keep calm when told by my little assistant that only 5 students turned in their homework the day before yesterday, considering more homework would turn up the next day. Then,I lost the patience waiting in my dorm and headed to the classroom when there went the bell for a break. ( Students here aslo have classes on Staturday). There I had my first confrontation with my students. They hadn’t done it at all and some girls even attempted to cut away on the spot when I questioned the other one, which really boiled my blood. I ordered them to stay behind after class to finish their undone work.

In fact, I didn’t think there grew bad blood between my students and me. Instead I am geting along well with them and so will I be in the future. The only pain on my nerve is that they hate doing homework.( Other teachers have the same complaints) So their homework had been reduced a lot to the present level. My resonings were: They were just too busy.Or it was enough that they listened attentively to my lessons. So Their English homework was just writing a small  weekly article. Difficult? They had studied the model and I had showed them the example. 15 minutes was sufficient for an average student.

Then I went in the neibouring Grade One’s office, where the class teacher happened to be present. Miss Gao, a new teacher, was clever enough to read my mind. She went to the nextdoor where the students were having a self study and then returned,saying the students were writing the compositions. I didn’t know what to say.

That afternoon, Sun, Zhang and I hunted the town for some one who could show us how to play cucurbit flute. They have taken to this instreument since a trip to XishuangBanna(西双版纳）last month. About Banna, there is a nationally famous tune called "the fernleaf hedge bamboo in the moonlight"(月光下的凤尾竹)—–very very romantic like a pretty Dai(傣族）maiden. Sun, knowing nothing about intruments like us , swore he would learn to use the cucurbit flute before returning to Shanghai in the next July. Moved by him, I gave the flute a blow or two once in while, which was  sent by Sun, who bought 2 in Banna. We all wished to play one or two pieces such as the "bamboo". Three motivations for us to pick up the flutes: #1 the folk instrument and tune is just so suprizinly wonderful;#2 we could kill the time and satisfy a year-long desire to master an intrument.#3 we wanna leave ourselves some sweeter memories and show off the new ‘talent’ if opportunities come.

The pity is: we didn’t know there were in Honghe county so few people who knew the cucurbit flute. We walked our butts off the whole afternoon only to be told that it was better to go to other places for help. Sigh. Even an amateur is tough to come by, not to mention a master. After all, cucuber flute is a Banna thing, where is nearly 800 kilos away from here. And The cultural diversities are so huge in a huge ethnic minoritie-populated province.

Without masters available, we plan teaching ourselves via cds and scores downloaded from the computers. Sun, our good example, kept practicing the flute everyday. Although pracising the finger positions is boring, the sound is melodoius. During the power-cut nights, our coutyard would echo to the sound from his dorm, which sometimes placed people under a delusion that they were back in  Banna(版纳). Except Sun, the other two including me have basicly laid aside the cucurbit flutes, expecting Sun to make progress by leaps and bounds and then teach us.  Word came recently that a student knew the intrument. Good.

"There is another day before the LAST month of 2006" said the emcee in a radio music program in a sentimental voice last night. Later, she played some pieces of music, most of which were love songs. I had long passed the age of having a love affair but I found the lirics and melodies were beautiful. 

One of the songs was seasons in the sun. Some words went like this: We had joy,we had fun, we had seasons in the sun..Everytime I was down,you should always come around and get my feet back on theground…..    It was already close to mid-night. In another several minutes, it would be the last month of 2006! My 2006. What have I done for you? I lay on the bed and couldn’t go to sleep.

Looking at the moonlight filtering through the window coutain and mosquito net and softly spreading itself on the quilt, I appreciated myself for building myself such a snug and warm bed of flowers. The day before, I made a significant adjustment to the layout of the furnishings. Pretty and  cozy. I used to dread the nightfalls but now they look so tender. In the daytime, it’s equally magic—-Leaving the door open, you can’t see me at the desk or on the bed but the fresh air and sunshine.

Now, it is already the last month in 2006. The wonderful melody is still ringing in my ears. Yes, we had joy and fun, we did have seasons in the sun. You did come to my help when I was down. Thank you, those I have seen or not, for your trust and care. Long live our friendship.