Gettin’ culture
Monday, April 3rd, 2006I told somebody in my host family community the other day that I was here to learn about their culture, and they laughed and said they didn’t have any culture. Translation: Culture equals education, learning, knowing to read well, knowledge of all this classical Chinese stuff.
Yesterday, Dean Zhao called Eunice and said that he needed to see us. What did we do, the two of us, that we were getting busted for? I thought. That Hugh didn’t do? When we got to the office, we learned that we’d been invited to participate in this big Li Bai culture festival that Jiangyou has been gearing up for for months, that people had heard that there were a couple American teachers at Jiangyou Normal that could speak some Chinese. Li Bai, in case you were wondering, is one of THE Tang Dynasty poets and hails from none other than our fine little city. Kids start memorizing his poems in school in first grade.
So Eunice and I are going to be on stage, along with an Israeli woman and some Japanese people and about 80 primary schoolers, reciting a Li Bai poem about a waterfall. The first two lines, Eunice have to say by ourselves. It’s been good practice for tones…and, for sure, the topic of the week for my Chinese lesson will be to have Ms. Lai teach us how to properly read a Chinese poem. (People read very slowly and expressively.) I’ve almost got it memorized, about the purple smoke and the waterfall falling for thousands of feet.
All the buildings in town have new faces on them, roads have been cleaned and repaired, new pedicabs are wheeling down the streets, and seven interpreters have been trained. There are billboards everywhere about “building Li Bai culture.” The man in charge says that over 75 foreign journalists are supposed to be here. I’ll believe it when I see it, but for sure, with all the fan dancing, fake soldiers waving flags, kids waving flowers, middle-aged ladies dressed in pink banging drums, and people dressed in dragon suits, it should be an good time.
Christina