Mianzhu Hanwang: Chronicles of Renai School on June 30 and July 1 (Detective’s Notes)

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June 30

The down­pour, which began ear­ly in the morn­ing, last­ed for three or four hours, with spo­radic rain­drops still falling through­out the morn­ing. The sky seemed over­cast and gloomy. There were few­er than 20 chil­dren in the school, brav­ing the pat­ter of rain­drops. This was cus­tom­ary; in bad weath­er, chil­dren were usu­al­ly told not to come to school for safe­ty rea­sons. How­ev­er, some near­by chil­dren, unable to bear the lone­li­ness, came in groups of two or three.

2. The ground was still quite mud­dy, so mil­i­tary train­ing class­es were omit­ted. The two class­es were com­bined, and the inspec­tor read to the chil­dren instead of morn­ing read­ing. The morn­ing class­es were taught by Ju Xing, Xue Shan­bing, Qin Ming, and the inspec­tor, tak­ing turns. They did­n’t fol­low the exact class sched­ule, but with few­er peo­ple, it was eas­i­er to man­age, and the chil­dren seemed hap­py nonethe­less. The same chil­dren attend­ed the after­noon class­es. To com­mend their per­se­ver­ance in attend­ing school despite the chal­lenges, they were each giv­en var­i­ous sta­tionery as a reward upon leav­ing school.
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3. Lao Yang, a mem­ber of the Cheng­du Love Car Team, drove to deliv­er 900 fold­ing mos­qui­to nets and numer­ous mos­qui­to coils. Qin Ming and sev­er­al oth­er vol­un­teers vis­it­ed sev­er­al vil­lages, deliv­er­ing mos­qui­to nets and coils to needy vil­lagers. They worked for over three hours straight, and by the time they sat down for din­ner, it was almost nine o’clock.
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Enthu­si­as­tic Old Yang
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Mos­qui­to nets have been dis­trib­uted
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Car­ry it on your back to the fel­low vil­lagers~
July 1

Today was a beau­ti­ful day. A ray of morn­ing light shone through the misty moun­tains, and the sky cleared up! Good weath­er brings good times. The chil­dren arrived ear­ly, and the num­ber of stu­dents increased dra­mat­i­cal­ly. Even a few chil­dren from Niu­bi Vil­lage and chil­dren from Deyang who had come to vis­it rel­a­tives in the vil­lage joined the class. The two class­es com­bined had near­ly 60 chil­dren, and the vol­un­teers sud­den­ly felt quite over­whelmed.

2. Morn­ing read­ing began ear­ly, per­haps spurred on by the chil­dren’s ear­ly arrival. Xue Shan­bing even orga­nized a Tang poet­ry recita­tion com­pe­ti­tion for the senior class, split­ting the two groups into two groups. The chil­dren imme­di­ate­ly took to their wits, each bring­ing out their own unique skills, each com­pet­ing back and forth with equal vic­to­ries. The inspec­tor also led the junior class in a vari­ety of activ­i­ties, includ­ing recit­ing three num­ber poems in a row, with many chil­dren mas­ter­ing two at once. To moti­vate the chil­dren, the inspec­tor promised to tell them a sto­ry if at least ten stu­dents could recite it. Soon, the inspec­tor had no choice but to bring out a copy of “Fan­tas­tic Mr. Fox” and begin the sto­ry.

3. The first class was a mil­i­tary train­ing ses­sion for both class­es. The chil­dren seemed to enjoy it, hav­ing already formed up before the whis­tle blew. The sec­ond half of the train­ing ses­sion was a tug-of-war com­pe­ti­tion, with the younger class fac­ing the old­er class. Despite their young age, the younger class defeat­ed the old­er class twice, and after switch­ing sides, the old­er class emerged vic­to­ri­ous. It turned out that one side of the field was slip­pery, so who­ev­er was on top lost, and the match was declared a draw.
 
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4. In the sec­ond class, Ju Xing taught his­to­ry to the senior class, while the junior class was taught draw­ing by Xue Shan­bing. Ju Xing grad­u­al­ly got into the groove, and the senior class began to coop­er­ate. For the junior class, Xue Shan­bing took a gam­ble and let the chil­dren vote on which teacher to draw. Instruc­tor Zhang fell for it and obe­di­ent­ly served as the mod­el for the entire class.

5. The third peri­od was for Qin Ming’s small class and the inspec­tor’s class. Qin Ming was a mas­ter of Ander­sen’s fairy tales, and the chil­dren always had pas­sages they had nev­er heard before. The sec­ond half of the class con­clud­ed with a Tang Dynasty poem, “Farewell to Du Shao­fu on His Assign­ment to Shuzhou.” The inspec­tor’s class opened with “I Choose Myself,” explor­ing details in the pic­tures and engag­ing in an explorato­ry dis­cus­sion. The sec­ond half of the class was “The Light in the Attic,” where the chil­dren shared the absurd poem “Who Am I and What Am I” using role-play­ing.

Before dis­missal, the inspec­tor announced the final week’s sched­ule at Renai School. The chil­dren arrived ear­ly that after­noon and began check­ing out books in an order­ly fash­ion. The inspec­tor shared basic knowl­edge about Peking Opera facial make­up with the chil­dren in the senior class, using the sto­ry of the Three King­doms as a guide. They learned how to iden­ti­fy the facial make­up cor­re­spon­dences between char­ac­ters in “Peking Opera Cats: Chang­ban­po.” The inspec­tor also showed the chil­dren a Peking Opera excerpt from the scene. At the inspec­tor’s sug­ges­tion, sev­er­al boys in the senior class rehearsed a mod­ern ver­sion of Chang­ban­po, com­bin­ing Peking Opera excerpts with the sto­ry from the Chang­ban­po pic­ture book. The role of Xia­hou Jie was nat­u­ral­ly played by the wit­ty Yan Wen­long. Although Yan Wen­long was known for his mis­chie­vous ways at school, he brought his four-year-old sis­ter to school that after­noon. His patience and care for his sis­ter tru­ly touched the inspec­tor, demon­strat­ing how the vil­lage chil­dren are tak­ing charge ear­ly on.

7. The after­noon activ­i­ties end­ed on time. Except for the inspec­tor who stayed behind to write the school records and pre­pare din­ner, the oth­er chil­dren led the chil­dren in one direc­tion and marched into the moun­tains, car­ry­ing near­ly 100 fold­ing mos­qui­to nets and mos­qui­to coils on their shoul­ders and hands, and gave them to the vil­lagers on the moun­tain­side.
July 1st at 5pm: Car­rot Detec­tive
 
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