"Tea" rrific

I am going to make an attempt to explain the rich experiences that have taken place in the last two day.

As you know, Tuesday ended with a family visit to Kit's house. Her family lives in the same town as the school, about fifteen minutes away. I learned that in China, there are many differences in the structure of the communities. In the United States, we have states, counties, cities, and towns. In China, there are provinces, within the provinces there are cities and then within the cities there are towns. The towns touch each other and they comprise the city. For our visit on Thursday, we will travel through four towns but stayed in the city the entire time. (I know confusing.)

We arrived at her home and were greeted by her entire family. Kit's home was encased with tradition. One entire wall in the living room was dedicated to the ancestors. On this shrine stood the lucky Buddha. In the Chinese culture, the fat face of the Buddha and the children climbing upon him represent good luck and fertility. Beside the door was an wall hanging with a goddess that protects the home. The color red was everywhere. Red is representative of happiness. Directly in the middle of the room loomed a 46 inch flat screen TV with football (soccer) filling the screen. (Different from your home? Not by much!)

Mom, dad, older sister, and grandma reside in the home. The furnishings were sparse for American standards but the quality of the pieces indicated that Kit's family was fairly well-established within the community. We sat in the living room and were served orange juice and fruit. This apparently is customary in the Chinese culture. Guests are greeted with hot tea and fresh fruit. The fruit we consumed included bananas, pea pas (related to mangoes), and sugar cane. The sugar cane was an adventure. (To eat fresh sugar cane - bite directly into the cane and tear off a piece. Suck out the juice while chewing the reed. The juice is sweet like sugar. Spit out the reed and repeat). We were a little nervous to eat the fruit due to being cautious but were in a situation that to refuse would have been considered disrespectful. We charged through hoping for positive results later. (YIKES...Cross you fingers for us!)

We were invited to join the women outside to prepare fried chicken wings, fried pork, and to make pork dumplings. These dumplings are fried in light oil. Once the food was prepared we sat to eat. The meal started with a rice and chicken porridge. We were encouraged to put green onions on top. Green onions are considered good for the digestion. Then came the dumplings and chicken wings. Then came sausages (hot dogs) and more dumplings and wings. This was the most sumptuous meal we have had all week. The food was outstanding. To consume a large quantity of food is considered a compliment to the cook. Well, we Americans did the USA proud. We ate a tremendous amount of food.

The meal ended and the young people left to walk around outside. The men moved to a table in the outdoor patio area. I joined the men. Tea began to flow. I was informed that I was participating in "Old Man's Tea". Apparently, in China, the old men sit around all day and drink tea from miniature tea pots all day long. The play Chinese checkers, eat peanuts and fruit and philosophize. Most of the teas that I drank were some of the best teas that I have ever consumed.

The first tea was very strong and dark. Now mind you, my tea cup was the size of about three thimbles put together. The second tea I tried was a light tea. The tea is shave from a block of tea that had been compressed for eight years. The more aged the higher the quality. The tea that I was served averaged $1000 USD per pound. I was considered a distinguished guest. The students then joined us and enjoyed the variety of teas. We wrapped our tea party up with a red tea. Now...this tea was a bit sketchy for me. The tea is fermented with yogurt and sugar. The residue is poured out and collected for consumption. The tea is considered prime when mushrooms grow on the top of the fermentation bottle. The taste can be equated to vinegar. This tea, according to the Chinese, has healing powers. The host indicated that since he had been drinking this tea, his skin had cleared from blemishes. All I know is that I just drank something that came from a bottle filled with mushrooms.

I loved the old man's tea. The sense of relaxation and peace that came from the evening was startling. I am understanding the culture to be one rooted in a slow pace and in social activities. Meals are about stopping and enjoying the people with which you are dining. Meals can take hours. A very different experience from our culture.

The following day (Wednesday) was sweltering. We escaped the heat by staying within the air conditioned conference room and planning the lessons that we were going to teach the students. We chose to teach about American holidays. Our choices centered on Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween, and Easter. We had so much fun. We broke the students into four groups and then conducted the lessons. We rotated the students through the different holiday lessons and they made ornaments for Christmas, wrote thankful cards for Thanksgiving, told scary stories for Halloween and engaged in an Easter egg hunt for Easter.



It was really quite amazing. The traditional Chinese classroom is very orderly. The teacher is the giver of knowledge and the students are passive recipients. We came in and created chaos. First we broke the class into groups, then we had the students move out of their chairs, and half stayed in the classroom in two different locations and the other two groups of students were taken outside (something that is never done...I found out later...oops). There was so much laughter and eagerness to engage in American learning. The teacher Fang said she had never seen her students so excited and active in lessons before. The teachers were a bit nervous when we started our lessons because the learning looked so different from their normal teaching but in the end, they too were smiling as the students participated in the activities. Fang asked us to come back to the classroom to teach another lessons. Our students were absolutely terrific. They were patient with the language barrier and handled awkward questions and moments skillfully. Kudos to them for being so awesome.





We ended our day on another home visit. This time we visited Rikki's (English name). She is a junior in the school. Rikki's family resides in what is called the country. To us, we would consider it to be the city. Her home was about an hour away from the school. To enter her home, we were buzzed into the entry here there were two motorcycles parked. This was the garage. We then ascended two flights of stairs and entered a beautiful home. Again, there was an entire wall dedicated to honoring the ancestors and the house was filled with the color red. Again, we served orange juice and fruit. This time we ate oranges. The students and I then moved to the dining room table where we were taught to make dumplings, like yesterday except these were to be boiled. Boiled dumplings are called WonTons.



It is very common to make the dinner together. The guests are honored in this process. The students and I made 300 WonTons. We, too, were shocked that we were going to make that many. However, with true dedication, we persevered. Three hundred won tons later, we began karaoke. We had so much fun. We sang children's songs such as Mary Had a Little Lamb and Bingo.



The meal was tremendous. The WonTons were filled with pork and then boiled. They were then served in the broth. I struggled with the vegetable. We were served boiled lettuce. That was a tough one for me but I ate enough to be polite.



After we ate, we shopped. On the way to the shopping center, we stopped by an artisan's shop. This artist was the town's famous writer. In China, to be a writer of Chinese characters is a rare skill. This individual is renowned within the town. We all had the opportunity to write our names on a scroll and then the writer created a work of art specifically for me with my name and role. This is a gift that I will always treasure.



After shopping in many little store we made our way back to Rikki's home for more karaoke. American Idol has nothing on our singing! We were so amazing, many of our songs would end with rolls of laughter. The host shut down our show around 8:00pm in order to head back to the school.