The end of the Spring semester here in Nanjing is finally upon us! We have been hard at work for the past couple of weeks getting ready for our final exams as well as writing final essays for different classes. It has been very hectic, and the time has just been flying by! We had a debate as one of our final speaking tests for one of my Chinese classes and the topic was “Should people live for themselves, or should they live for others”. It was a good experience to really dive into the language on many different levels at the various stages of preparation for the final debate. Philosophizing in another language can get really complex pretty quickly but it’s something that we all realize must be done to really take one’s command of the language to the next level. I am grateful for the experience no matter how stressful it was altogether.
There is a community outreach portion of the program I am participating in and it requires all students to volunteer time in the community for at least ten hours before the Fall semester ends. For my outreach project, I participated in a New Year’s day celebration that was held in a rural area outside of the city in a place called “Shitang Village”. I found the coordinator for this event through a random WeChat group I stumbled into. After exchanging pleasantries, the coordinator put me to work pretty quickly before the event even started. She put me in charge of a group of foreign students from our university that were participating in the event via another association on campus. This experience gave me a taste of what it would be like to work as some sort of coordinator in the tourism industry back home in Hawaii or even as a translator for an international company here in China.
On the day of the event, I was very nervous since I was the person in charge of transportation from both the Gulou campus and the Xianlin campus. I had to arrive at the pickup location on campus early so no-one would get lost as well as check in with the Xianlin group to ensure everything was going smoothly. Everything went well for the most part except for a number of no-shows. When we arrived at the event site, we were greeted with a lion dance group that was making its way through town and had coincidentally passed right by our group. It was a great way to start the day!
From there on, the other students made their way to the various cultural booths that were setup to get a taste of traditional and rural Chinese culture while I was put to work. This time, I was assigned to a food booth stall making a traditional food that is always eaten during the New Year celebrations in the south –New Year cake. I thoroughly enjoyed this and during my shift, I had fun interacting with the guests that visited us during the event. They were very surprised to see a foreign face not only visiting but actually working at the event! I was interviewed twice during the day by the local news station with cameras and everything. I felt like a star for the day even though I was working.
It was so nice to get out of the city proper and enjoy the countryside a bit. The air was fresh, and the people were warm. They gave me a taste of their local homemade rice wine which was the first type of wine I’ve tasted that wasn’t bitter at all. It was quite sweet, but the locals warned me not to drink too much as it is easy to get very drunk on that wine without noticing it. At the end of the day, they made sure I didn’t go home emptyhanded and gave me a bag of goodies filled with their local specialties to remember them by. I look forward to more excursions like this in the new year!
Tony in China 