China Week Dongguan

Now that I returned from China yesterday, I've had a lot of catching up to do.  Checking all my emails, doing my homework, and deciding which of the 600+ photos to post from last week has been taking some time, and I still have quite a bit to do.  But I figured I might as well write a post, considering how much happened last week.  My trip to China was incredible, and my group had so many experiences that I would never have back in the US.

We started off the trip by crossing the PRC border to Shenzhen (skipping the lines of course using our Hong Kong id cards), and then taking a 2 hour bus ride to the "small" city of Dongguan (only 8 million people!).  There, we settled down in our surprisingly nice hotel, and worked on our performances and lesson plans for the upcoming three days of teaching and cultural performances.  We had the first of many overly filling, delicious Chinese meals that night, before going to bed relatively early in preparation for the upcoming days.

The next day, we traveled to an elementary school for the children of migrant workers in Dongguan.  I was amazed by the amount of order everywhere we went.  Each morning, the 1000+ kids would march in their uniforms in exact lines and do morning exercises or listen to speeches about famous Chinese people (mainly Mao).  In classes, this level of order was not as great, with a kid biting another kid in the middle of the lesson, but still significantly better than I remember in elementary school. It was also interesting to see the learning styles of the children as we taught them.  Repetition and memorization seemed to be the emphasis of education, often too much so.  When asking a student "How do you go to school?", they would answer by repeating the question, instead of actually answering it.  When we called on students to act out different forms of transportation (our topic for English lessons), the majority would just reenact my demonstration exercise, instead of following the clear Chinese instructions of my co-teachers to act out a different form of transportation.

We continued to go classroom to classroom on Tuesday and Wednesday, teaching a list of common English words and phrases related to transportation, while the other groups taught countries, food, nature, etc.  The kids seemed to really enjoy the lessons, typically mobbing us "teachers" after the lesson was over to ask for autographs in their school notebooks.  The experience of teaching English to these students was very interesting, and I hope they remember their lessons and continue to improve.

Some of the students

 

After teaching was done on Wednesday, my friends and I had to perform at the cultural exchange show, where students from LPC and the Chinese school did songs and dances from around the world and China.  I had to sing in a group for the "Cups" song, as well as with all 20 of us from LPC performing a Chinese song, "Kan Guo Lai".  The performances went really well, except for one verse of the Chinese song that we hummed after forgetting the lyrics.

After that day was over, we had two full days in China dedicated to "cultural appreciation" aka sightseeing.  The first day we spent in the outskirts of Dongguan, biking at a really nice lake trail called Song Shan lake.  Going on tandem and tri bikes, we had a nice half day away from the bustle of the city.  Afterwards, we visited the Dongguan Institute of Technology, to talk with local university students and see what a Chinese university is like.  While the food was better than some universities I had eaten at before and the buildings were pretty nice, Chinese universities are still not on my list of where to apply.  We finished this random, fun day by visiting a cake museum, where we learned about the history of Chinese cakes, and best of all, we got to make our own cakes and eat them.

The following day, we took a 2 hour bus ride to the China's third largest city, Guangzhou.  It was such an eclectic mix of Qing dynasty buildings, modern glass skyscrapers rivaling Hong Kong's, and factories.  We started out at a 9 story mall dedicated to plastic junk exported to the rest of the world.  We had an hour to look around and buy, but in the end, I spent less than 10 yuan (less than 2 dollars).  Afterwards, we walked around some of the historic parts of the city, stopping to eat lunch near a canal.  In the end, we traveled to the central business district, with glass and steel everywhere, and entered the Guangdong Province museum.  This museum was the main one for Guangdong, the largest province (100 million people) with the largest provincial GDP (almost 1 trillion dollars).  Resultantly, it was very nice, with 5 giant floors dedicated to the history, art, and sciences of the region.  After 2 hours, we went back to our hotel, and unfortunately had to pack up for our return trip the next day.

The museum

 

On Saturday, we grabbed our stuff, left the hotel, and reboarded the bus to Hong Kong.  However, we were in for a surprise, our third and final museum, the Opium War Museum.  It was dedicated to the valiant defense of the Chinese as they bravely fought with their blood and sweat to vanquish the British from the wonderful motherland.  All sarcasm aside, the museum was filled with poorly translated signs, inaccurate statements, and attempts to portray the Opium Wars as a victory for China.  The propaganda throughout the museum was quite entertaining, and my entire group was restraining laughter, especially when we read a statement claiming that only the Communist Party of China is able to eradicate drugs in the world.  I posted many of the signs on Facebook, so I won't describe the rest here.  Afterwards, we left the museum, ate lunch at the Hong Kong-China border city of Shenzhen, and reentered the land of free speech, Facebook, and frappuchinos.

Overall, my China week trip left many great memories, and it was so amazing to be able to volunteer, have fun, and learn all in one week.  Hopefully I will be able to travel more around China later, but this first trip to Guangdong province was definitely worthwhile!