the nursery rhyme repetition

(15th-22nd/11/2013)
Loudai Ancient Town, Huanglongxi and Chongqing
Location: L and H both a 45 minute bus ride from Chengdu, Chongqing is a two hour train ride away.
Famed For: Being pretty, laid back river towns, Chongqing is Chengdu's sister town.             

'Laoshi, Rachel! Laoshi, Rachel! E-I-E-I-O!'

                                                                                                                                       -Student quote of the week

 

 

'Old Macdonald Had A Farm' is perhaps one of the most well-known children's nursery rhymes ever created. It is also now the theme song of my kindergarten tots, who have latched onto its simple repeating chorus with a tenacity that has surprised everyone, including me. Teaching farmyard animals for a couple of weeks and having shown them the song (complete with video) I have only myself to blame for their obsession.

 

I have, quite simply, created a monster. 

E-I-E-I-O (the only words they truly understand) is sung with gusto at every opportunity. Any new song that is introduced is mistaken for their favourite classic and though I teach them different words, some of the children resist and fit E-I-E-I-O into every nursery tune we sing. They begin it spontaneously every time I come through the class room door. Sometimes I even wake up humming it.

 

One lesson I decide we have sung it enough and so I teach them 'One Finger, One Thumb' and the 'Hokey Cokey.' They love it. But the look of disappointment on their faces as I pack up my things at the end of the lesson and they realise we are not singing their farm song is heart breaking. One little girl bursts into tears. I cave in and next week we sing it. Twice.

 

Yes, they have me wrapped around their tiny fingers.

 

In other teaching news, I end up being the only teacher to turn up to English Corner this week. As it's not a requirement that G and I go, we only appear occasionally as you end up fielding the same questions (Where are you from? Why are you here? Do you like China? ) for over an hour.

 

Of course the week I decide to make an appearance, I discover that the students are expecting a lecture on exam practice, Joshua has gone home and Gregory and Mark are stuck in Chengdu and won’t make it back in time. I am now left with over ninety students, an hour to fill and no plan. Applause begins inside the classroom as I am announced and I have no choice but to go in. This feels like the beginning of a nightmare but unfortunately it is very, very real. Which underscores the lesson I learn this week of always, always having a backup plan.

 

Or an escape route.

 

Needless to say, my improvisational skills have a sudden and very steep learning curve and it's amazing how long sixty minutes can last when you have no idea what you are doing.

 

To add to my distress, this week I discover that the canteen is feeding us spicy congealed pig blood and not spicy dark brown tofu, which is what I’d thought (hoped) it was. It joins the chicken heart as dishes that are Not Good.

 

The recent weekends on the other hand have been mostly stress free. We go to Ciqikou porcelain village in Chengdu’s sister city of Chongqing. It’s a beautiful warren of streets and shops, selling everything from fluffy, golden egg custard tarts, to hand drawn fairytale style pictures of China, carved wooden hairpins to Chairman Mao busts. It has signs pointing you in the direction of temples and ice bars, aquariums and the intriguingly named statue of ‘Young Married Woman and Little Peeing Boy’. We even get upgraded at our hostel for being late and are given a double room with en-suite instead of the six bed dorm we’d booked.

 

We visit Huanglongxi, a small peaceful place with a bubbling creek slicing through the town centre before flowing into the basin of the river. There are waterwheels and stepping stones carved like giant turtles and a huge humped stone dragon emerging from the water to guard the town. An enormous fountain sprays water up over a fat lipped bowl in the main square, restaurants and tourist kiosks ring the centre, and it’s a pleasant place to sit and eat lunch and watch the world go by, except K decides that now is an appropriate time to attempt to choke to death on pork leg.

 

G and I take the opportunity to debate whether she is actually choking or just having a violent coughing fit, the various merits of offering K water, tissues and a slap on the back, and the unfortunate fact that out of the three of us the only one who actually knows First Aid is K. Surprisingly, K recovers without our help, revealing she’d caught a tiny bone in her throat. Of course the only remedy for almost dying is snacks, shopping and sweet fruit flower tea. Fortunately, China has all three of these is abundance and the tea even comes with a trio of very persistent old ladies attempting to give us a massage that we don’t want.

 

Finally we visit Loudai, the home of the Hakka people, where we are shown round for free by a student from the nearby tourism college. He takes us to the local museum which reliably informs us that ‘Hakka women are brave, strong and resilient […] and the men are imaginary.’  We visit a local Hakka woman making shoes, the meeting houses of the Council, eat ice-cream, buy more souvenirs than is probably healthy and get sung to by a group of teenage girls who seemingly appear from nowhere and sweetly demand that we listen to them serenade us.

 

We have no idea what they are singing, but it's keeping them happy so we just smile and nod along and let them get on with it.

 

At least it's not Old Macdonald Had A Farm.