Songping English Festival

This a clip of the 9th Songping Primary School English Festival back in March where they basically told me to give a speech the day before.  It was too hard to upload it due to China's Great Firewall, so I'm able to do it now while I'm in Japan.  The school told me to give 'a short English speech to cheer them up,' whatever that means.  Now, this school is grades 1-6.  Tough to make a speech in English that a first grader and a sixth (or the teachers for that matter) would both understand and be amused by.  So I just made a few comments (after typical audio China difficulties) and my contact teacher told me beforehand, that after my minute or two speech, to read the banners that were hanging and have the children repeat after me.

Lillian, a fellow Chinese, English teacher was the translator.  After I performed this speech and looked at this video, I realized how 'Americanized' my speech was; meaning, I used index cards whereas, Lillian, memorized it overnight, as we practiced what I would say the day before.  Very embarrassing, I feel.  I'm such a buffoon.  China students are taught rote memorization; whereby they're famous for their focused memorization through sheer repetition (without the use of meaning as a basis to store information).

Certainly not one of my best speeches or performances, but oh well.  However, what is good is the song the children sing at the end.  A very famous song here in China (might be elsewhere too - I don't know).  I told them that the song was great afterwards and now that I have this video and watched it a few times, I like the song more & more.  The children did a great job!  Peter, the speaker in the beginning/end was one of my best students, but a bad ass!  His English was one of the best of the students at the school. 

My contact teacher, Lily, who speaks at the end is a tough lady.  She has no problem yelling at students in a classroom.  In fact, there is a male teacher in my office (not an English teacher) who kicks students in their asses when they leave.  Very amusing to me.  He just kicks them and yells something in Chinese.  Not what you would see in America.  Hope you enjoy the video!

Final Chapter - Songping Primary School

This may very well be the final post of this blog - we'll see.  School is over and I'm already on my final travels (before I head home). I have visited Xi'an and Shanghai.  I'm currently in Nanjing. I'll then be traveling to Seoul, Hiroshima, Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo.   I just don't think I'll have time to update the blog as I'll be very busy city/country hopping for the next few weeks.  If I can fit in a post or two (and get internet access), I'll try.  But this may be the final chapter....

About a week and a half ago, the English department and I when to lunch at a local hotel restaurant in Songping in my honor of teaching and leaving China.  It was very nice and the vege dishes were excellent; for the most part - sometimes there can be meat hidden in some of them!

The next morning, I went to school for some final pics of the English department.  The English department, as you can see, are all female.  I was the only male - which either they really liked (probably) or didn't - not sure.  The gentleman to my right in both pics is the headmaster (very quiet, but extremely nice; hardly saw him throughout that the year) - and the lady to my left is my contact teacher (who I went to whenever I encountered problems).  I was probably closest to - and worked the most with' the lady to the far right in the 2nd pic.  Her English name is Mini and she was really always nice.  She said all the students and English teachers really liked me and are sorry that I'm leaving which was nice.

The last pics are the 'Reading Room.'  During the first semester, I taught in individual classrooms; basically, I hopped from classroom to classroom for each English class.  During the second term, they decided I teach from this room and the classes came to me.  I didn't think I would like that at first but I soon realized I enjoyed having my own room.  The last pics are of the room I taught my English classes during the second semester. 


And that's it, for now!  I hope to be able to post new entries.  But if I can't, I hope you enjoyed this blog.  It was just an experiment when I started, but I enjoyed updating my travels.

Dameisha Beach, Shenzhen

Last weekend I went to Dameisha Beach in Shenzhen. Dameisha includes Dameisha Seashore Park and the hinterland, which covers an area of 1,680,000 square meters. It was the first time I have been to a beach in Shenzhen and for good reason - because they're far away! It took about two hours to get there by bus-subway-bus (Shenzhen is geographically large, think L.A.). I live on the west side of Shenzhen and basically I had to go to the far eastern part of the city. But on top of that, I arrived in Shenzhen late August last year - in fact, my first night in my apartment (how time has gone fast) was my birthday. It was already becoming late in the summer season last year and I didn't know the city nowhere near well enough to travel to the beaches last summer. Last weekend, was really my last full, free weekend in Shenzhen, so I decided to take a gander. I had no intentions of going into the water - I'll be living in Florida during the summer - and I'll get my fair share of beaches shortly. Besides, it was packed and everybody would have been staring at the laowai (foreigner). Dameisha beach is free but, starting this year, they have begun limiting the number people allowed to visit per day to 50,000.  It was really hot and I walked around for an hour or two and then headed back to the center city.  Below are some pics of this area...

Central, Hong Kong

Two weeks ago, I went to Hong Kong for one of the last times – though I'll visit again for a day or two as I fly out of Hong Kong to go home for good – to mainly get a haircut. I went to the Central district of Hong Kong on Hong Kong Island which is where a lot of the skyscrapers are. After getting my haircut in the morning, I visited three attractions.

It started drizzling as I walked to the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Museum. It is located in Kom Tong Hall and the museum opened in 2006, so as to commemorate the 140th birthday of the influential Chinese statesman. The hall was a residence until 1960 when the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints purchased the building. The building was subsequently sold to the government in 2004 and turned into a museum. The three-story building is one of the very few surviving structures in Hong Kong dating back to the early 20th century. Admission was 10 HKD ($1.25). It was in Hong Kong where he went to school and nurtured his revolutionary ideas.

The hall, completed in 1914, marks the blending of Chinese and Western architectural styles. The building is really beautiful inside with a grand staircase, numerous rooms, and stained-glass windows. The exhibitions contain reconstructed scenes, photographs, election results, edicts, school-work, models, mannequins, clothing, China, letters, etc. There is also a lecture hall, reading room, video room, activity room, and shop. See the three pics below.

 

After visiting the museum, I walked about 10 minutes to Man Mo Temple. This is the second Man Mo Temple I have been to in Hong Kong. From what I read off the web, a Man Mo Temple or Man Mo Miu is a temple for the worship of the civil or literature god Man Tai / Man Cheong and the martial god Mo Tai / Kwan Tai. The two gods were popularly patronized by scholars and students seeking progress in their study or ranking in the civil examinations in the Ming and Qing dynasties. There are several Man Mo Temples in Hong Kong. The temple I visited on this day is the largest and was built between 1847-1862 and is a fine example of traditional Chinese vernacular architecture. It is decorated with ceramic figurines, granite carvings, plaster moldings and murals; reflecting traditional craftsmanship. Just like some of the other temples I have been to, I love the giant incense coils hanging overhead.

 

For the last attraction, I walked about 20 minutes to the waterfront to go to The Golden Bauhinia Square which is an open area in North Wan Chai. The square was named after the giant statue of a golden Bauhinia at the center of the area, situated outside the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center, where the ceremonies for the handover of Hong Kong and the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) was held in July 1997.

The “Forever Blooming Bauhinia” sculpture, a gilded flower bauhinia, is 20 feet high. The structure stands on a red granite pedestal, which is cyclindrical in the upper part and takes the shape of a pyramid in the lower part, representing Chinese territory. The rendering of the Great Wall on the pedestal symbolizes the motherland. The sculpture itself is coated with gold and plated with gold foil. The pedestal is made of red Sichuan granite. The sculpture was presented as a gift to the HKSAR by the Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The golden sculpture is in the shape of a bauhinia; the regional flag and emblem of the HKSAR also bear the design of this flower. I like the first pic below, as you can see Hong Kong's flag to the left and the PRC's to the right.

 

Afterward, I headed for a few drinks (and a slice of pizza) and traveled back to Shenzhen in the early evening.

Lantau Island, Hong Kong

A couple weeks back, Laila and I went to Hong Kong to visit Lantau Island mainly to see the Po Lin Monastery and the Tian Tan Buddha Statue.

It is the largest island in Hong Kong, located at the mouth of the Pearl River. Originally the site of fishing villages, the island has been developed in recent years with the construction of Tung Chung New Town on its north-western coast and the completion of several major infrastructure projects, including Hong Kong International Airport (1998), Hong Kong Disneyland (2005) and Ngong Ping 360 (2006). Lantau Island has a relatively low population density, with a population of 45,000, compared to 1.4 million on Hong Kong Island.

To get to the monastery and statue, we had to take the subway via numerous transfers to Tung Chung. I have never been to this town before and it was a little bit of a trek. However, the monastery and statue is on top of the mountainous Lantau Country Park and to get up there, you could 1) hike it, 2) bus it or 3) take the Ngong Ping Cable Car. We decided to take the cable car for $125 HKD ($16). It was extremely crowded and was a long wait to buy your tickets as well as board the car. The cable car provides 360 degree views of Tung Chung Bay, Hong Kong International Airport, Ngong Ping Plateau, Lantau North Country Park, Tian Tan Buddha Statue, and Ngong Ping Village and the ride is about 3.5 miles. At the end of the journey, you reach Ngong Ping Village which is basically a tourist trap based on a fake Chinese-themed style village with a couple restaurants as well as expensive souvenir and gift stores. Next to the village is the statue and monastery.

Again, the main reason we went here were for the monastery and statue. The Tian Tan Buddha, also known as the Big Buddha, is a large bronze statue of Buddha Amoghasiddhi and was completed in 1993. It is a major center of Buddhism in Hong Kong and is also a popular tourist attraction. The Buddha statue sits on a lotus throne and is surrounded by six smaller bronze statues. The Buddha is 112 feet tall and was the world's tallest outdoor bronze seated Buddha prior to 2007. It reputedly can even be seen from as far away as Macau on a clear day. You have to climb 240 steps in order to reach the Buddha.

We soon came to realize – once we were already in the cable car, and we probably should have realized this earlier – that the fog and mist would be a serious problem. It made our visit not worth the time or effort, at least in my opinion. The Buddha is huge and you're suppose to see it while approaching in the cable car sitting on top of the mountain but you could not really see hardly anything directly in front of you. It was very frustrating. In fact, even at the bottom of the stairs, you would have no idea what was up there due to the fog. Look at the pics below and if you want or have time, go on the web, do a search, and see what the Buddha is suppose to look like on a clear day. Of course, the cable car company knew you would not be able to see anything once you went up there but they're not going to tell you that and let you walk away.

The pics below are of the cable car and from the cable car. The third pic below is the airport – which I'll use to go home for good shortly.

The next few pics were taken of a gate in the village. The fog was insane. These pics were taken like two in the afternoon.

The next few pics are of the Giant Buddha. The fog was terrible. I did meet four girls who stopped me – as I was wearing my Villanova tee – as they all went to Drexel. Small world; here we are thousands of miles away yet our universities are not even ten miles from each other in PA.

Next to the Giant Buddha is Po Lin Monastery which is a Buddhist monastery founded in 1906 by three monks visiting from Jiangsu and was initially known simply as "The Big Hut.” It was renamed to its present name in 1924. The main temple houses three bronze statues of the Buddha – representing his past, present and future lives – as well as many Buddhist scriptures. The monastery had a delicious vegetarian cafe/restaurant in which we enjoyed some lunch – I had some rice, a spring roll, and three different versions of mock meat. See pics below of Po Lin.

 

The fog was very depressing but we took the return cable car and got a beer next to the cable car terminal – of course, it was clear at the bottom – before we traveled back on the subway to go to downtown Hong Kong. We then headed back to Shenzhen in the early evening.

Lychee Park, Shenzhen

A couple weeks ago, I went to Lychee (Litchi) Park in the Futian district of Shenzhen. It's right in the city center and I had to take a bus and then the subway to get there.

It was created in 1982 and the park covers an area about 30 hectares. The park is really a green oasis amongst the downtown skyscrapers with plants, birds, flowers, shrubs, pavilions, a lake, and of course, lychee trees.

Outside one of the park's entrances, near a major intersection, is a huge picture of Deng Xiaoping.

It was really hot but a very nice park and a nice escape from city life...