[Repost] Gourd Class at Runsheng Garden

This was an event at the Red Mud Sum­mer Read­ing Camp. The bear and the bird each showed off their tal­ents, and the chil­dren had a blast. I pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed on the event live on Wei­bo, and here’s a full recap…Orig­i­nal address:Gourd Class at Run­sheng Gar­denauthor:Han and Miao

With high spir­its and a proud spir­it, they crossed the Yongding Riv­er. Bird, Bear, Fawn, and Ping­ping, car­ry­ing hun­dreds of gourds, arrived at Run­sheng Gar­den in Liangx­i­ang. Ajia and Inspec­tor Radish’s sum­mer camp is locat­ed in this lush green court­yard. Today, we’re tak­ing a gourd les­son.

Han Miao once took a gourd class, where we built a fake gourd stand in the class­room. At Run­sheng Gar­den, there’s no need to “make a fake” gourd stand. Here, we have as many sup­ports and vines as we need. Gourds are tru­ly fun things, and once they’re on dis­play, they imme­di­ate­ly sparked great inter­est among the chil­dren.

The bird told every­one the sto­ry of the gourd. Nuwa and Fuxi, the ances­tors of humanity—the bird omit­ted the broth­er-sis­ter relationship—were the only man and woman to sur­vive the great flood. They float­ed to the top of a moun­tain on a gourd, mar­ried, had chil­dren, and gave birth to the human race. Lat­er, their chil­dren, car­ry­ing gourds on their backs, trav­eled around the world, plant­i­ng gourds wher­ev­er they took root. The gourd is a sym­bol. No mat­ter where we go, we remem­ber that we are gourds grown on a vine, and we are always one fam­i­ly.

Draw­ing gourds is about rep­re­sent­ing a fam­i­ly, so draw­ing just one isn’t enough. Chil­dren are asked to choose sev­er­al gourds of dif­fer­ent sizes, depict­ing their father, moth­er, them­selves, or sib­lings. The gourds should be as many as the num­ber of fam­i­ly mem­bers. Par­ents present can also join in the draw­ing.

Count­less col­or­ful gourds were cre­at­ed under the artist’s brush, hung in fam­i­ly groups under the vines, cre­at­ing a tru­ly beau­ti­ful scene. Mean­while, Teacher Xiong gave the chil­dren a les­son on stone, putting the knowl­edge they’d learned from Grand­pa Xiao­di to good use. Hon­est­ly, we were a bit ner­vous attend­ing Ajia and Tanzhang’s sum­mer camp; these two have a keen eye for good and bad. We were hon­ored to have com­plet­ed the class, and it seemed to have been quite effec­tive. We had a healthy veg­e­tar­i­an lunch. The food here is all grown in the yard, per­fect for veg­e­tar­i­an birds.
After lunch, the chil­dren took a nap while the adults sat in the shade of the trees, drink­ing the tea brewed by the inspec­tor. A gen­tle breeze rus­tled the leaves, and in the sky, a large cloud, like a small ele­phant, flew and flew, then grad­u­al­ly dis­si­pat­ed.
 
Teacher Xiong moved Han Miao’s small stone exhi­bi­tion to Run­sheng Gar­den.
Sing with me: “The morn­ing rain in Weicheng moist­ened the dust…” Lis­ten to Aji­a’s class.
Inspec­tor Radish intro­duced, “Here comes Mr. Bird!”
Lis­ten to the birds talk­ing about gourds.
The child seemed to have lis­tened.

Let’s all come and pick gourds.
Draw it.

The young authors are all very seri­ous.

Draw one for Argenti­na too.


Par­ents also come to par­tic­i­pate.
The sea­son for har­vest­ing gourds.
Hang­ing gourds is one of the inspec­tor’s many strengths.
“Is it hung prop­er­ly?” Xiong came to check.

Father and Daugh­ter (Ajia & Xiaoyin)
Sis­ters paint­ing togeth­er.
The Argen­tine Primera División direct­ly took pho­tos and uploaded them to Wei­bo for on-site report­ing.
Inspec­tor Car­rot and Ajia.
Run­sheng Gar­den is a sim­ple and nat­ur­al coun­try­side.
Bear’s Stone Les­son.
You have to hold the stone in your hands to feel it, so the chil­dren all come and touch it.

“You come and touch it too.”





A good har­vest of gourds.
At the sug­ges­tion of Ajia and the inspec­tor, Bird asked the chil­dren to talk about the gourds they had drawn.

“This is my moth­er…”

The gourd class and stone class are over. Bear, bird, sis­ter deer, sis­ter Ping­ping, come and take a pho­to with the chil­dren.
Tea dur­ing lunch break.
The shad­ows of the trees are sway­ing.
It’s so com­fort­able. Some­one saw some­thing…
Real­ly, there is a Dum­bo in the sky!

 
~~End~~