" Hui Jia " 回家
China, year two: returning "home"
We've been in China for one year now, and beginning our
second year at the Western Academy of Beijing.
It was wonderful to arrive back after our summer holidays and feel
settled in our new life. We have a little Chinese under our belts, we know how
to get around Beijing, and, best of all, the kids returned to good groups of
friends, ready to start the new school year.
Lars is in fifth grade, actively involved in his sport teams: soccer and
baseball. Anne-Katrine is an eighth grader; she seems to have transformed into
a teenager overnight!
No Wang-Wang!
In September, I attended an IB conference on English
Literature Manila. As I was going
through Customs in the airport, I happened upon this sign. As I didn't know what
Wang-Wang meant, I was a bit worried: what if I was doing it? Filipinos speak English, but it is combined
with words from Tagalog, as well as remnants from Spanish, making some phrases
totally incomprehensible to the English speaker. After some research, we discovered that
Wang-Wang actually means avoiding discourtesies, such as cutting in line in
front of other people!
The conference was hosted by the International School of
Manila. I had a good workshop, and an added bonus of the trip was discovering
that my friend and former counselor from Lincoln School in Buenos Aires, Lisa
Ball, is now working at ISM. We had a great time catching up.
Chinese National Day and Autumn Festival
Oct 1 marks the National Day of China. The holiday is also called Golden Week. All
of the factories shut down in order to give the workers a vacation and the
chance to return to home provinces. As a
result, two things occur: the pollution clears immediately, leaving blue skies
and glorious sunny days, and the roads become jammed with millions of people
traveling home.
We enjoyed the holiday at home, and spent some time
exploring Beijing. We rambled through
the city hutongs near the Drum tower, and took a pedicab ride to Hohai. Anne-Katrine negotiated a good deal with the
driver.
Lars was invited to go with his friend Harold, to the
mountains. Harold is half Swedish and half Chinese. His Chinese mother, Naersu,
owns a retreat in the mountains, in a small village just one hour outside of
Beijing. She has converted traditional
courtyard style homes to make guesthouses. Check out the website at www.shanliretreats.com
Lars spent four days on his own with Harald's family, and
then Joergen, AK, and I joined him for a night. Just behind the village, we
hiked up the mountain, through terraced gardens made by hillside farmers:
persimmons, crabapples, apple trees, pumpkins. At the top of the hill was a
portion of the Great Wall, and some crumbling ancient watch-towers. The boys scrambled up to the top to have an
amazing view of the valley.
The Summer Palace
Our first trip to the Summer Palace, on the other side of
the city. Massive and impressive. The
emperor and his family would come here to escape the summer heat. This is still a favorite spot for locals to
come visit.
Writer In Residence Camp
WAB has a property in the mountains that we use for outdoor
education. Miao Liang Environmental Center is a sustainable, solar powered camp
where we bring kids for a wide variety of activities: collecting samples and
data for the Environmental Systems class, historical investigations and
interviews of local villagers about the history of the area (the camp is built
on the site of a community that was destroyed during the Japanese invasion of
Beijing (Sino-Japanese war 1937-1940), and outdoor experiences through our WAB
Wild department: learning rock climbing, repelling, and GPS navigation.
We've been looking for ways to use this property in other
creative ways. In October, we decided to launch a new program at WAB: the
Writer-in-Residence Camp. I took a group
of 15 tenth graders up to Miao Liang (a three hour drive from Beijing) for a
creative writing camp. The aim is to bring along a professional author to lead
the students in writing activities. For
our first experience we found Henry Clarke, a Shakespearean actor and author
from the US who is currently working in Beijing with Chinese Television. Over the course of two days, the students
crafted, edited, revised, and read their own 2 minute plays. It was a wonderful way for students to escape
the traditional classroom and immerse themselves in the writing process. You can see my article for WAB's electronic magazine,
Lianxi at this link:
We had a beautiful, sunny late summer and autumn in Beijing, with only a few high pollution days. It is now turning cold, and we are getting ready for winter.
The kids are hoping for some 雪 (Xuě)
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