a small village....

Yesterday we went to a small village located outside of Xian. This small village had a population of around 300,000 people, a very small city in China.
Before I tell you about yesterdays's experience, I need to tell you a bit of backround knowledge, yesterday the officials decided that they did not want our group to go anywhere. They do not want us to organize anything, go to any public space and they don't even want us to leave the hotel; even to go to a restaurant was something that they were telling us not to do. But we only have three weeks in Xian, so for us what they were telling us to do was crazy, we have tons of plans, and things that the students need to do and they are just telling us that we can't even leave our hotel?
So today we decided that we were not going to go with that. The other professor who is half chinese and is the one who mainly talks to the officials, decided that we would have to go along with our plans and just see what happens. So now as we sped towards a village outside of Xian, we all had our cell phones turned off, in case the officials tried to call us; and a military car in front of us, heading towards a school.
After visiting the factory we took the bus a different way towards a high school. There were 4,000 students who attended the high school, and they all gawked at us as we entered the campus. But of course instead of simply looking around and waving at the masses of chinese children, we had to go into the class room and perform in a sort of talent show.
Their were around ninety kids in the one classroom that we visited and our experience was like nothing we had ever had before, as soon as we were ushered into the classroom we were asked to introduce ourselves, telling the small class our name, where we were from and if we liked China. Anything that we did, they clapped and shrieked with happiness and these were 16 and 17 year olds, not little children. I was starting to have flashbacks of my experience back at Jiao da.
First they tried to get my mom to sing, which did not work out well; as they cheered her on and she kept on telling them that she was unable to sing, she finally nominated one of her students, Keith, to sing instead. And... he did. He sang you are my sunshine, or half of it to the cheers of the chinese, then of course they choose one of their best students to sing. It was a group of three chinese and together they sang a trio of old chinese verses that was amazing; we were all stupidifed after this amazing display. Then they wanted us to sing a chinese song, of course that was doomed not to turn out well...but we were saved by Julia, whose Chinese teacher had taught her one Chinese song which Julia had memoorized easily...but I will let her tell you about that experience.
After that amazing display, a large fan grouop gathered around Julia, calling her lovely and talking to her in a mixture of Chinese and English, and then one of their students sang; this time in English. SHe had an amazing voice and beautifully sang an English song and did very well, and her song did beat Keith's song.
Then they wanted someone from our group to peform something, and this time we did have a trick up our sleeves. This time Nathan came up, who could bend all of his fingers backwards, all of his hands, all of his arms, all of his legs and the Chinese scrieked with amazement. Then Keith came up again and he, Jessica and Lyndsey did a kauta in some kind of martial art. Before we left our new friends and went back into the bus, this time heading towards a farm village that was home only to sixty families.


Hana