Left Behind Children

Itinerary: April 11, Friday  
http://www2.scut.edu.cn/s/56/t/131/4c/92/info85138.htm

	Pick up on the University Town Campus at C16 Building
	Pick up on the Wushan Campus at West Lake Hotel
	Departure to Heyuan County
	Arrival at Heyuan County
	Local lunch
	Arrival at Qunlian Primary School
	Donation by the International Office, Group photo
	English classes by foreign teachers, Group photo
	A tour of Qunlian village
	Departure back to SCUT
	Dinner on the drive back
	Arrival SCUT Wushan Campus Arrival SCUT University Town Campus

We hope through this trek, we could bring a window of the world to them by inviting our foreign scholars to give an introductory English class to them.

Foreign Teachers at South China University of Technology were invited to participate in the University Outreach Service Project.  The Itinerary was an ambitious one leaving our campus at 7:50 AM and returning back to campus after 9:00PM.  We enthusiastically replied we wanted to participate and arrived at the pick up location Friday morning.

Each foreign teacher was assigned foreign students to work in the classroom.  This little village school had never seen foreigners or had formal English instruction. I was assigned three foreign student girls to assist in our classroom, one from Indonesia, one from Kyrgyzstan and one from Pakistan all English speakers and Chinese students at SCUT.  It always makes me feel embarrassed to be monolingual around people who speak three or four languages when I listen to them shift in and out of several languages based on whom the conversation might be with. The girls spoke English to me, Chinese to the students, and Urdu to each other, there were others shifts with Russian students, but I didn’t recognize which other languages they were shifting back and forth.  I was particularly interested in learning about life in Pakistan since Garrett and Cindi will be in Pakistan next August. My foreign student just happened to also be from Islamabad and was very proud of her country.  She told me all about the beautiful scenery and delicious food that could be enjoyed in Islamabad.  I hope I can go there!

The bus ride was long but provided us a glimpse of the countryside out side of the 15 million people city of Guangzhou.  Lots of rolling hills and forest areas with lumber mills located along the way. Rice paddies were prolific along the way. 

We arrived at the village just in time for lunch at a famous little restaurant that had actually made the big times on CCTV recognized for their delicious food.  Most of the faculty members loved the food because the food was direct from the farmers, very fresh and no GMO! I was so thankful that I took my crackers along to eat on the bus later.

When I read the title of this project “Left Behind Children” I immediately had all those horrible thoughts rush back from the George Bush era of “No Child Left Behind!” All the testing we implemented in our schools left a negative connotation of that phrase.  My first impulse was “lucky children they escaped the TESTS and were left behind.”  The Chinese explanation of “Left Behind Children” has nothing to do with testing.  These families live in remote primitive poverty conditions.  The village cannot support the needs of the families to live so the adults in the village leave to go to Guangzhou to find work, mostly domestic, food service, manual labor pretty much anything without an education that might be available for a very low salary.  They live in large groups in an low rent apartment in Guangzhou, send what money they can to their families and return to the village maybe once or twice a year to see their children and parents. Therefore the children are “Left Behind” by their parents and raised by their grandparents. Grandparents and children populate the whole village.

The children were all lined up out front of the school when we arrived; they were very shy and hesitant to look at the foreigners. The dirt path to the school explained the condition of the children; they were in desperate need of attention both physical and emotional. We were assigned the first grade classroom.  The students were beautiful; those big dark eyes sparkled as they sat at attention in straight rows on their tiny stools.  The classroom was stark, white painted walls and a few examples of student work on the back wall.  Some organization had donated backpacks for each student that were neatly hanging on the side of each desk. 

I was happy to have access to a THE ALPHA DOG ABC ALPHABET online ebook written by my niece Mimi Brimhall on my iPad.  Thank you Brimhalls, you are now an international favorite! I opened my iPad, which was pretty dazzling for those first grade students and began teaching the English alphabet.  We were able to sing the alphabet song along with Mimi’s book after a few times through the book.  It was exhilarating to be part of the joy on their faces.  

With that success they were ready to stand up so I moved to “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” just can’t lose with that kind of entertainment.  The first graders all followed and learned very quickly.  They loved going fast, then faster, then fastest of all.  I loved hearing them laugh and giggle as they poked their body parts.  

Onward and upward, next we tried the Hokey Pokey.  It was hilarious; each of the foreign student teaching assistants took a row of Chinese first grade students and helped each student with right, left, front, back, shake, shake, shake!  They all loved the Hokey Pokey. 

I finished up with calming the students then back to their stools for vocabulary.  Again the foreign students teaching assistants were able to write the English with the Chinese translation on the board. So we finished with counting to five, hello, goodbye, teacher, girls and boys. I took an American Flag key chain for each student to hang on their backpack to remember America. The first grade class was excited to have an American flag. I was exhausted; what a great experience. 

Three Gorges Yangtze River Trip

April 4-7, 2014 marked the observance of the Chinese holiday “Tomb Sweeping Day.”  It is parallel with the US holiday, Memorial Day in May.  Chinese families honor their ancestors during the first weekend in April.  Many travel to clean or sweep the tombs of ancestors and some perform the Chinese ritual in other ways.  Generally it consists a food contribution at the tomb, incense, burning of rice paper money, and decoration of the tomb site with a number of varieties of bright colors, flags, foil and streamers. The location of the tombs seems to be determined with the location of the death.  In the countryside they can be seen out in the middle or around the edges of rice fields, in the city the ashes may be found in a temple or church or even in a private residence. 

Schools are closed but retail is open and the entire country travels to make their visits appropriate.  BYU teachers traveled to the Three Gorges Project in the south central part of China.  We boarded the MV President 8 ship at Chonqquing Port and sailed through the three gorges the Qutang George, Wu George and the Sandouping then through the locks at the Three George Dam Project.  

The gorges were steep and beautiful, we were able to go ashore near each gorge.  The Shibaozbai Temple looks like an aircraft carrier in the middle of the water.  It was an ancient temple that the Chinese government preserved by building a wall around it to keep the water from destroying the ancient “no nail” construction.  

The Shennog Stream is a tributary to the Yangtze River that again houses indigenous people high up in the mountaintops as was preserved by the waters when the dam began to fill up.  We boarded small Sampan boats pulled and oared by men and women from those villages to see the tributary and its contribution.

We arrived at the locks late at night but it was beautiful and exciting to be aboard the ship as we descended down the five locks to the reservoir.  The huge doors that swung closed as the ship moved through each of the five locks screeched as they moved from the sidewalls to close off the water flow.  We dropped 25 meters each lock, it took about four hours to complete the traverse through the locks.  

 The last stop was at the Sandouping Dock to actually visit the Dam.  The dam site for the TGP is the best site for hydraulic power plant in the world.  There are 38 valleys at the lower reaches of the river.  They pumped and poured concrete for three years 24/7 to put TGP on the map. This project began in 1994 and will be completely filled in 2015, a twenty year span of time to build and fill the dam.  It was put to use in 1996.  It is hoped that the power generated from this plant will support the modernization of China and reduce the 5000 Tons of raw coal combustion annually, which is a major contributor to the air and water pollution in China.