Chinese Countryside: Day 4

Our fourth and final day in the Chinese countryside was probably my favorite, yet I struggle to convey it in words. Despite the fact that our morning was wasted at the most boring museum in the world -- literally just a few artifacts and placards stuffed into an old building in what used to be part of a temple, things really took a turn for the better when we left our cushy accommodations at the hotel and set off for the farm where we'd be sleeping. Here's a picture of an awesome tower we saw. It has nothing to do with the stupid museum except that we saw it on the way:

I have no idea how we found them, but our host family was made up of some of the nicest, most hospitable people I've met in China. When we arrived mid-afternoon at their courtyard style house, they greeted us with copious amounts of tea and fruit and insisted that we rest and unpack before anything else could happen. It was pretty clear that although the village was very poor, our family seemed to be the most well-off. Within the complex that was their house, there existed both a traditional, dirt floor section and a much newer part with modern looking couches, a TV, a secondary bathroom complete with solar-powered water heater, and tile floors. Certainly not a mansion, as evidenced by the status of their main toilet (below), but privileged enough to cause us to take notice.

Afterward, the family gave us a tour of their village -- a series of dirt roads winding in, out, and around decrepit walls, farmland, and buildings in various states of disrepair. But if there was any feeling of pity or slum tourist guilt that should have pervaded the afternoon, it was ameliorated by the giggling gaggle of eight-year-old kids that followed us around. They treated us like one of their own, demanding that we race them, carry them on our backs, sing, skateboard, play their games, show them our computers, and teach them English.

I spent about two hours with the most studious one of the group going through his textbook and helping him work through the exercises, and quickly realized that his school's English education methods are seriously behind the times. Rather than focusing on in-class discussion, speaking, and listening comprehension, teachers use a method which I'm going to translate poorly as 'translation contrast'. Personally, I think there are circumstances where direct translation becomes a viable option in second language acquisition, but not as a sole means to an end. The result is that students don't really care what a sentence means or where it fits into the context of a conversation. They just want to know what each word means individually. Furthermore, pronunciation is hindered by the fact that most teachers can't accurately pronounce English phonemes, and students often use Chinese characters or their romanized pronunciation equivalent to represent English syllables. Since Chinese lacks many English sounds, it is impossible to learn proper English in this way. It also leads to fantastic sentences like this one, used to represent the pronunciation of 'I like vegetables, he likes fruit.':

矮来客围着台布，害来自法律。 = Ai lai ke wei zhe tai bu, hai lai zi fa lü. = The short guest is binding the tablecloth, harm comes from the law.

All in all, staying with the farming family was a very rewarding experience. We were lucky to get a chance to witness first hand the sharp contrast between China's cities and rural areas. But more importantly, we got to meet a group of really great people who fed us, played with us, and engaged us in a sort of exchange few people ever have the privilege to enjoy.

再见

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