The varying shades of green makes the evening walk outside the school after dinner really enjoyable.
We encountered flocks of sheep. It is actually illegal to let your sheep graze the grass on the roadside. Hence the shepherd was a bit apprehensive when we started taking photographs. But we assured him that we were visitors from the south; and found them interesting because we didn't often see sheep.
They are raised for meat rather than fur. Each takes about 8 months to be ready for the market and fletches about 400 RMB. They seemed oblivious of me until about 2 feet away. Encountering an unmovable object (me), they simply turned the other direction.
A woman marries a man on a farm. She gives birth to a daughter. The man dies. The mother remarries. She refuses to take the girl with her. The girl is left in the care of the grandfather. The grandfather is old and in poor health. There are aunts and uncles but they can hardly take care of her because they have families of their own. The girl attends school sporadically and performs poorly. She is at least two grades behind kids of her age. What kind of prospect does she have in life?
A man picked up an abandoned girl and raised her as his own. The man is a Han but the girl has Caucasian features. The girl is now 10 years old, has rosy cheeks, big rounded eyes, and a high nose. She is shy but smiles easily, and often. Very pretty and pleasant.
When we visited her, at around 11 am in the morning, we were surprised to see a man sleeping on the kang. We were told the man is a brother of the girl’s adoptive father; and that he is deaf but healthy otherwise. We thought we heard it wrong initially, but apparently she sleeps in the same bed with the man.
There was a woman around, whom we thought to be the father’s wife. It turned out she was married to another man, who had subsequently died. She is now living together with the adoptive father but they are not officially married. Complicated, isn’t it?
We noted that the father did not speak a lot with the girl. And when he did, he spoke to her rather harshly. The girl did not say anything to the father while we were there. Neither did she make any attempt to approach or touch the father.
The charity felt that the girl would be better off in the orphanage. But the father was reluctant to let her go, saying that the place would be quiet if she were to leave. In that case, there may not be much that can be done - although the situation does not look ideal for the girl.
A man is so poor he cannot afford to get married. He picks up a baby abandoned at the train station (a popular place to drop off unwanted children). He treats her (it is always a her, never a him) as his own, and never told her the truth. The man can only find odd, temporary jobs because he is uneducated. The man suffers from bad health. Eventually the man dies from some disease or traffic accident (a common cause of death these days). The girl is now living with her adoptive grandma. Grandma has a poor leg and poor health. They live on rubbish picked up from the street, and the low income subsidy from the government (about 100 RMB a month). The only furniture they have were donated by the girl’s teachers. The charity wants to accept the girl at the orphanage but the grandma is reluctant to let her go.
The girl is understandably shy. But she appears to be more sad than shy, and did not smile at all throughout the half hour visit. When the visitors left, she followed them all the way to the entrance to the village, as if she did not want them to go. All the while, she did not smile, not even once.
It is frightening and worrying to see the ethnic dimension of the problems in Xinjiang. Ethnic conflicts have a tendency to spiral out of control. You hurt one of us? - We will kill one of you. You killed one of us? - We will kill two of you. ... Hatred feeds on itself, and ends up hurting the hater more than the hated. Please stop before it goes too far. Let God judge and take vengeance. Not us. Please.
Our work with the Jubilee Care Primary School in Gansu did not end when we left 10 days ago. Among other things, we set up a video conferencing system between Jubilee and our university; and we have started a weekly online class with the school. Today we ran the third such class, teaching primary 2 English. It is wonderful seeing the kids again, and watching them learn enthusiastically. Equally gratifying to see our own students putting their hearts into it. We are still experimenting with camera positions, lighting, speech patterns, etc. Once we sort out how best to run these classes, we plan to get other Hong Kong teachers and schools involved from this side.
We are also working out a one-year curriculum for the computer and information technology subject for the school. Lots of exciting work to be done. Much of which can be useful references for other schools in similar situations - and there are lots of them in mainland China. We can only do so much ourselves, restricted by time, funding, manpower, etc. But we are determined to do as much as we can, and to share our experences. God as been gracious to us, and it is our privilege to be able to share some of the blessing we have received.
On the last day, a Saturday morning, we took the kids hiking. It turned out that it was the kids that gave us a lesson on climbing, and courage.
We have been walking leisurely towards a mountain for some time. Suddenly I heard some people shouting, raised my head, and saw some of the kids climbing the mountain. At first, I couldn’t quite understand why people were shouting. Then I realized that I was standing at the rim of a deep gorge.
Apparently some kids flew down the gorge carved out by a river (from the left side of the photo), crossed the muddy river, and ran up the opposite side (right side of the photo) in no time. Most of us were stuck on this side, trying to decide whether to take the suicidal plunge.
Despite my vertigo, I did screw up enough courage (actually foolhardiness) to slide down the gorge gingerly. Unfortunately (or fortunately), one of us was not feeling well and decided to climb back up. So, in an act of chivalry (as well as self-preservation), I climbed back up in company.
Many of us were even more conservative than I was and simply stayed on the rim.
We have built up a strong relationship with the school since our first visit in January 2008. The school is isolated in a remote place, and finds it difficult to recruit teachers. One way to overcome this problem is to build up a system to support interactive online teaching between Hong Kong and the school.
We have already organized and tested several video conferences during our visits. We tried a variety of software, cameras, lighting situations, and other settings. The results are quite encouraging.
We are now setting up a weekly class throughout summer, after we return to Hong Kong. Initially we will target English and IT classes, with PolyU students and professors taking up the first classes. We plan to bring in other collaborating primary and secondary schools in the future. To be effective, the system has to be inexpensive, easy to set up, and support effective teaching. If the arrangements are satisfactory, it can be a good model for other schools with similar problems.
Looking back, we have achieved a lot over the week, and we are proud of our students who worked so hard.
We were under some pressure to cancel the trip to Gansu because of the swine flu. We studied the guidelines from WHO, the government, and the university. We consulted other departments, our students, and the Jubilee School. Our students were all eager to go, the Jubilee School had been expecting us for a long time, and several other trips similar to ours organized by other departments were going or had already gone. Eventually we decided that we should take all reasonable precautions, but go ahead with the trip.
We wore masks in the airport and on the plane, took the temperature of the students every morning, gave them vitamin C, and gave them alcohol gel for cleansing. We left Hong Kong on Sunday, 21st June and returned to Hong Kong on 1st July. Thank God nothing happened and no one caught the swine flu.
The varying shades of green makes the evening walk outside the school after dinner really enjoyable.
We encountered flocks of sheep. It is actually illegal to let your sheep graze the grass on the roadside. Hence the shepherd was a bit apprehensive when we started taking photographs. But we assured him that we were visitors from the south; and found them interesting because we didn't often see sheep.
They are raised for meat rather than fur. Each takes about 8 months to be ready for the market and fletches about 400 RMB. They seemed oblivious of me until about 2 feet away. Encountering an unmovable object (me), they simply turned the other direction.
The year-old ram eyed me suspiciously.
