Time has really flown by since our arrival here at Hangzhou. Since arriving last Tuesday, we’ve been at the school for over a week. During that time, I’ve grown to appreciate DSHS a lot more…let me explain.
A typical school day in Hangzhou begins at 7:40 AM, and given the absurd amounts of traffic in the morning, it usually takes am hour or so just to get there even if you live only 10 miles away. At school, the class dynamics are extremely different. There are several things to note but I’ll point out the most important ones. Since there are usually 40-50 students in one classroom, the desks are usually very cramped and not very spacy. Also, the teaching style is very different. Whereas American teachers encourage students to think for themselves with class discussion, Chinese education is almost entirely based on listening to the teacher talking the whole time and memorizing facts. This statement is further evident by the “gaokao” or college entrance examinations that every senior must take (unless they choose to apply to foreign schools). The entire senior year is spent reviewing information learned in sophomore and junior year, not actually learning new curriculum. It is common for a senior to stay at school until 9:30 PM to have self-study review sessions, maybe leaving only once to grab a quick bite for dinner.. While we have the luxury of being second semester seniors with senioritis, these Chinese students are painfully going full speed until early June. In my opinion, the system is extremely flawed because it only allows those with a high memory capacity or extreme dedication to studies to get into the top universities, and places no emphasis on special talents or sports. Because of this, the top universities in China really only consist of nerds really with not much diversity. That’s just my two cents on Chinese education. Chinese school is also different from American schools in that the school itself is an open building. At DSHS, each classroom is part of the main building, and even if you step out of the classroom itself, you are still in main school building itself. At Hangzhou High School, the building is open, meaning that once you step outside a classroom, you are outside…if you know what I mean. Other differences I noted are that the regular school day ends at 5:00 PM with hardly any extracurricular activities or sports (outside of PE class) and that most of the building does not have heat or AC, except the office. That’s probably enough about the school.
My own experiences in Hangzhou with my host family as well as city activities have been quite pleasant so far. My host family and sibling, Fanglei, are really nice people. It’s kind of funny because sometimes he’ll say something in English and not know the exact word, and then the conversation will immediately switch to Chinese. Sometimes we realize its not even worth the effort to talk in English, even though he really wants to try to improve his English by practicing with me. On weekdays, there really isn’t much to do with your host family because Fanglei has a lot of homework. Sometimes we’ll stay after school a little longer to play sports or go to the local video game store and play some Xbox, but after we get home, we usually each do our own thing. I’d always been really interested in how true Asian parents push their children to study. Over the years, my own parents pushed me quite a lot because I didn’t dedicate myself 100% all the time. But I think here it is different. At a high school of this caliber, most students are serious about getting into a good college and study 304 striaght hours on their own. So when I asked Fanglei if his parents pushed him much, he said they didn’t. My small sample size is probably not representative of most students in the school, but its good to know that at least there is no stressful tension in the household over education and studying.
The city of Hangzhou itself has been pretty exciting. We haven’t had many opportunities to see it but from the few chances we had, it was quite nice. On the weekend, we were invited by the principal and several organizers for a day out on the West Lake, which was absolutely gorgeous. We walked aruond the lake and saw some of the scenic attractions like peacocks. Then afterwards, we took a nice old fashioned rowboat tour along the lake itself. Fun fact, on the backside of the 1 Yuan bill are three buoys from West Lake, which we crashed into when the captain allowed another woman to row the boat for a while lol. The next day, one our good friends who teaches at the high school, William, whom Andrew hosted four years ago, took us out for a day at the wetlands. It reminded me of one of the villages we saw because of so many traditional shops selling food and stuff, it was a nice break from the urbanity of Hangzhou. That has been mostly it for Hangzhou, but I hope to see more as we stay here longer. We’ll have to wait and see.
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