[Repost] Flute Sound Month Travel (Part 1) — Visiting Dalonghua, Yi County, Hebei

I just dropped Ken­non off this morn­ing. She’ll prob­a­bly be back in Los Ange­les in a few hours, then on a small plane back home. Look­ing back on these past few days with her, I’m so hap­py. She’s such a love­ly and respectable friend!
    “Why are we so dif­fer­ent, yet feel so sim­i­lar?” — “Why are we so dif­fer­ent, yet look so sim­i­lar?” (“Stars and Moon”)Orig­i­nal address:Flute Month Jour­ney (Part 1) — Vis­it­ing Dalonghua, Yi Coun­ty, Hebeiauthor:Green Child

She always has a child­ish smile on her face; she does­n’t spend too much time on food, cloth­ing, hous­ing and trans­porta­tion, so she will buy the same style of clothes at one time.3pair of shoesor 2Pair of pantsorNA top; her good tem­per will give you the illu­sion that this is an old friend you haven’t seen for a long time; she said that she is like a cat… After only two days with Janelle, I couldn’t help but admire from the bot­tom of my heart: Life is a won­der­ful jour­ney, because there is always a chance to meet inter­est­ing peo­ple and encounter genius­es, and this time, I was lucky enough to meet Janelle, an inter­est­ing genius.

I will use at least three blog posts to record the lit­tle moments with Janelle. Now, let’s start with the event at Dalonghua on May 13th.

In fact, back when I was in Ning’er, Yun­nan, Teacher Ajia con­tact­ed me, say­ing an Amer­i­can pic­ture book author was com­ing to Chi­na and hoped to vis­it a rur­al school. Giv­en our tight sched­ule, we decid­ed to go to Dalonghua School in Yi Coun­ty (Green Kids mem­bers should be famil­iar with this school; among the Green Kids rur­al project schools, it’s the clos­est to Bei­jing). After some plan­ning, I cre­at­ed a sched­ule for the day, bas­ing it entire­ly on my own ideas. I was con­fi­dent in the con­tent, but I was con­cerned about time man­age­ment, which is my weak­ness. Of course, my hunch was ulti­mate­ly proven cor­rect.

5moon13On the morn­ing of the 15th, I met up with my group of 10 at the leg­endary “traf­fic jam” sta­tion, the Duji­akan toll sta­tion. As I was say­ing hel­lo to every­one in the car, I saw Janelle. Look­ing back, the thing that impressed me most was her clear eyes, her braid­ed hair, and her incred­i­bly friend­ly smile. The whole way, I was ner­vous­ly cal­cu­lat­ing the time. I had been blind­ly opti­mistic and planned for two and a half hours, but by the time I got there, it was…10At 12:00, we final­ly turned from the high­way into Yi Coun­ty and onto the nation­al high­way. On this road, we wit­nessed how dri­vers who “did not play by the rules” over­took oth­er vehi­cles. The most amaz­ing thing was that we saw a fake clean­ing vehi­cle with a turntable. It was yel­low and had a8The long broom, like the fly­ing chair in the amuse­ment park, rotat­ed at a con­stant speed. We were all shocked, but no one thought of tak­ing a pic­ture with the cam­era.10point50At 10:00 am, we final­ly arrived at the school. After get­ting off the bus, we exchanged a few words with the prin­ci­pal, declined the invi­ta­tion to have a “tea break”, and went straight to the class­room where the chil­dren were already wait­ing for us.
As the say­ing goes, plans are not as good as changes. Before, Mr. Ajia asked the pub­lish­er to send “Stars and Moon“15When I arrived at the school, I called the prin­ci­pal and told him I want­ed to invite the chil­dren to read the book, and those inter­est­ed could draw their own imag­i­nary draw­ings of the author. The prin­ci­pal agreed, say­ing it was no prob­lem. How­ev­er, when Teacher Ajia and I arrived at the class­room and asked the chil­dren present, we learned that they had­n’t seen “Stars and Moon” at all. The prin­ci­pal con­tact­ed the art teacher and learned that there had been a mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion: the book the chil­dren had read had been changed from “Stars and Moon” to “Green Child.” With­out much time to say any­thing, Teacher Ajia stepped in and began by explain­ing “Stars and Moon” to the chil­dren to get them excit­ed.

Then, every­one called out “Janelle” in uni­son. With a hint of shy­ness, she stepped for­ward and began to engage with the chil­dren, thus kick­ing off today’s event: Me and My Work. Janelle began by talk­ing about her birth­place and how she observed frogs as a child and even drew one on the black­board.

Then, she shared with the chil­dren how she cre­ates a piece of work. She’d first hang a sketch in the bath­room, then soak in the tub, star­ing at the draw­ing, telling her­self: “If I can’t write the words, I can’t write it.” It’s clear that Janelle is a mas­ter at engag­ing chil­dren’s atten­tion. Her pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence read­ing sto­ries at the library was cru­cial, as she could quick­ly gauge the chil­dren’s inter­ests.

At the end of the dis­cus­sion, she and the chil­dren played a shape game: a stu­dent would ran­dom­ly draw a shape on the black­board, and Janelle would refine it into a more detailed form. Ini­tial­ly, the chil­dren strug­gled with the “ran­dom sketch­es,” but after a few attempts, they grad­u­al­ly found the hang of it. Final­ly, two girls col­lab­o­rat­ed to refine Janelle’s casu­al lines, cre­at­ing the pro­file of an ani­mal’s head with just a few strokes, to every­one’s applause.
After the exchange, at the prin­ci­pal’s gra­cious request, we aban­doned our ear­li­er plans for a light meal and fol­lowed their instruc­tions. First, we went to the prin­ci­pal’s pri­vate plot to “steal veg­eta­bles,” which excit­ed every­one. Some took pho­tos, oth­ers pulled onions, and I head­ed straight for the radish pick­ing. Song Xi, the vol­un­teer inter­preter, was explain­ing to Janelle what kind of radish it was: not a car­rot, not a white radish, but… I could­n’t quite put my fin­ger on it. I sim­ply broke it open, and there it was: a white-fleshed, red-skinned radish! Janelle was delight­ed. She took the radish, rubbed it between her hands, and began to eat. We were delight­ed, too, and fol­lowed suit. The radish tast­ed deli­cious, sweet with a hint of spice. Then we enjoyed a meal of local spe­cial­ties. Janelle took a pho­to of each dish, exclaim­ing, “How beau­ti­ful!”
In the after­noon we start­ed the “Theme Class”. Janelle, Song Xi and I went to the fourth3) class to do cre­ative class, Ajia and Teacher Zhou went to the fourth (2) class shared sto­ries. I’ll dis­cuss this fas­ci­nat­ing part sep­a­rate­ly. In short, Janelle drew a pic­ture on the black­board, and the chil­dren relayed the sto­ry. Janelle drew what­ev­er they said. In just one hour, we saw that chil­dren’s imag­i­na­tions need to be stim­u­lat­ed, and once acti­vat­ed, they can gen­er­ate so many fas­ci­nat­ing ideas.
The final part of the day’s activ­i­ties was “Star Dreams.” In class, the chil­dren were asked to write their dreams on slips of paper, fold them into stars, and place them in a wish­ing bot­tle. Then, we went out­side and solemn­ly placed the wish­ing bot­tle in a dug tree pit before plant­i­ng a mag­no­lia tree togeth­er.
I scooped up the damp soil and sprin­kled it at the foot of the tree. I hoped that the chil­dren’s col­or­ful dreams would grow with the mag­no­lia tree and would nev­er fade.
 

Thanks to Song Xi, the vol­un­teer trans­la­tor for this event. Because of your efforts, the com­mu­ni­ca­tion between Janelle and the chil­dren was able to pro­ceed smooth­ly. Thanks to Xiaoyin, the guest pho­tog­ra­ph­er, because your snap­shots pre­vent­ed us from miss­ing the won­der­ful moments of Janelle’s class.