Letters from Overseas

September 2008

• The Amity Foundation
  Education Division
  71 Hankou Road
  Nanjing, Jiangsu 210008
  CHINA

Hi, everyone!

My evening out with my students was a great success. The huoguo—"hotpot"—was delicious. They had some vegetable that I am sure are fiddleheads but I couldn’t confirm that with my students. We had to sit at two tables so I split my time between them. When I was at the table all the conversation was in English. They had a rest when I sat at the other table. Great opportunity to practise social conversation as well as cooking methods and food vocabulary.

On Wednesday this week, we moved outside the classroom to practise "sports" language while we played badminton! It confirmed everything we know to be true about experiential learning. Everyone had a great time and learned all kinds of vocabulary and usage: "out of bounds," "good hit," "sorry," "my fault." We followed up by enjoying some brewed American coffee and a soccer movie (Goal, The Dream Begins) at my apartment. Yet another opportunity for real vocabulary development: "couch," "coffee-maker," "drip," "napkin." They also had to get used to the dialect of the Newcastle United team! Several journal entries reflected on what great opportunities for learning these outings were.

I have just had my first experience travelling on intercity buses. It’s quite complicated to find the right bus. For example, there are many buses that go to Wuwei but they vary in their "cruising time." This is time spent within the originating city to drum up more passengers—the touters run along beside the bus yelling out to attract more customers. Customers who get on after the bus station are charged and counted differently. This process can take as long as 90 minutes. The number and length of stops also varies. In order to get a particular ride, you must know the licence plate number of the appropriate bus. It would be impossible for me to ask all the necessary questions and understand all the answers in order to get accurate information. Fortunately, I was travelling with the friend that I was going to visit!

The two Amity teachers whom I visited are the only foreigners who live in Wuwei, a city of 200,000. It had a picturesque and clean downtown—no Western shops or KFCs. We had haircuts, which took about an hour because of the head and neck massage that is part of the routine, and visited a shop where they make and sell traditional silk shoes. Many, many people on the street practised their "hellos”! Karin and Christine say this is not typical, so we are thinking that it can be attributed to my white hair drawing attention.

It is an interesting drive between Lanzhou and Wuwei. It is a poor area with very little rain and the typical homes are one-story clay with flat dried-mud roofs, built around a courtyard. There are areas where you can see the desert encroaching on the farmland. There is a great effort to encourage dry farming in greenhouses covered with plastic and straw mats, and to eliminate illegal wells so that the water table can be restored.

There was a lot of haying activity today on my drive home, with hundreds of workers stacking trucks with huge piles of hay. The temperature dropped drastically overnight so I wondered if that would account for the increase in activity from Friday. Close to Wuwei I saw many burial mounds in the fields, each marked with a circle of stones and a stone on top. A few also had tombstones. I’m assuming that they would all be members of the family who farm that bit of land.

Mary Fraser is a United Church of Canada Overseas Personnel serving with the Amity Foundation in China. The work of this ecumenical partner and the work of overseas personnel are made possible through your gifts to the Mission and Service Fund of The United Church of Canada.