This Land Is Your Land

Ms Waterman
(teacher)

We were lucky to visit the elementary school in Pang Liu village today, and we finally got to meet the famous Richard Wang! Richard has been the tour coordinator for the DS China Exchange for 15 years and Ms. Viz has always spoken highly of him and his work. He accompanied us to the school because Pang Liu is the village where he grew up.

The Pang Liu school is quite small- there are 11 teachers and 130 students ages 4-11 (there used to be 350 students 15 years ago when Nancy, our guide, taught English at the school). Since the school is in a rural village that is not wealthy by any means, all students receive breakfast and a hot lunch every day. It is interesting that this meal program is not available to students in urban schools, and the girls and I talked about how there is just as much (if not more) of a need for subsidized meal programs in urban as well as in rural settings in the US.

The school has had many repairs after the 2008 earthquake and the government has given a lot of resources (air conditioning, stove, etc). We also saw the Sino-American Friendship Library that was built by a partnership between Richard Wang, our trip coordinator, and friends he made through his years of work with Primary Source, a teacher professional development organization based at Harvard. We were happy to see that the library’s English corner included the Dr. Seuss books we all love- “Green Eggs and Ham”, “The Cat in the Hat”, and “Are you my mother?”.

When we arrived, all of the students were outside for morning recess, and we were immediately surrounded by kids calling out “Hello!” and “What is your name?” and “How old are you?”. As you can imagine, it was difficult to have a long conversation with anyone because there were so many who wanted us to write our names or other English phrases in their notebooks. Despite the swarm, Kelby, Liz, and Iona did a great job of speaking as much English as possible to the kids. One of the teachers told me that the students start learning English in third grade and that they have class twice a week. That helped me to understand why some kids in the group were able to answer my questions and some could only say “Hello!” and “Thank you!”.

After recess, we visited a fifth grade class with 18 students. (This seems very reasonable compared to what Nancy told us about her son. In private school in Xi’an, Nancy’s son is in fifth grade with 47 kids in his class. If he were in public school, he would have 78 kids in his class. As a teacher, those numbers are astonishing and horrifying! I tried to imagine what my classroom would have to look like for me to teach 47 students at the same time, but it started to give me a headache, so I gave up.) In the fifth grade class, we taught them how to pronounce our names, sang the song “Jingle Bells” (at the suggestion of the teacher since they already know the words in Chinese), taught them the chorus of “This land is your land”, and played telephone with sentences in English and Chinese. Later, I realized that though the song “This land is your land” might not mean much to the kids who were just learning it, it is significant that we sang about sharing a home with everyone while we are cultural ambassadors in another country learning about another culture and sharing our experiences of our home. Richard commented that it is so important for the students to see native language speakers because it helps them connect the abstract language to real people in the world. I agree wholeheartedly - making personal connections to the world around us is essential!

Before leaving the village, we ate a delicious lunch in the sunny courtyard of the home of one of Richard’s brothers. Richard told us about his life in the village and his tumultuous education. Listening to him talk about the difficulty he had in completing his high school and college education because of the Cultural Revolution made me so grateful for the direct path my education and career have taken and the many family and social structures in place to make it happen. Richard also gave us each the gift of a beautiful scroll featuring the calligraphy of the Empress dowager who ruled before the Opium War. She is one of two most powerful women in Chinese history. The characters on the scroll talk about making peace between the West and the East and the importance of forming long-lasting relationships. The scroll also features a peony which is the national flower and symbolizes prosperity. As today is international Women’s Day, these scrolls seem like a fitting gift to us as women!

We spent the afternoon at the Big Wild Goose Pagoda in Xi’an. Before the Pagoda existed, there was a temple called the Wulou Temlle. Built in 589 during the Tang Dynasty (618-907- thank goodness for the dynasty cheat sheet our guide gave us!), a Buddhist monk named Xuan Zhang worked in the temple to translate Buddhist texts to Chinese from Sanskrit. It was awesome to see examples of both texts; both scripts are beautiful and so different from each other!
After completing his translations, Xuan Zhang designed the plans to build the Big Wild Goose Pagoda to house the texts. In the temple, we saw various incarnations I’d Bodhisattvas, including one that Liz and I saw represented in the Tang Dynasty dance show last night: Guan Yin, the Buddha with 30 arms and eyes on each hand to be able to see all the problems in the world and to reach out to help everyone. I think Guan Yin is my favorite thing I’ve learned about Buddhism. After visiting the temple, we were able to try calligraphy! It was just as difficult as it seems, but it was so fun to try to follow the brushstrokes and to imitate the shapes of the characters.

In the evening, we visited a huge lantern festival which featured lights in the shape of animals, flowers, buildings, geometric shapes - everything! The path through the lights led us around a lake and next to Tang Dynasty-style pagodas. It seems impossible to escape the mark history in this country - I love it!