There was a big celebration for Mid-Autumn Festival. The
whole center plaza of the school was lined with different booths for making
things, selling things, activities, and I think a little bit of food. All of
the foreign teachers were asked to attend and participate in what they call an
English Corner which was to be part of the event. An English corner is
basically a gathering where people (Chinese students in this case) can come and
practice their English. It doesn’t necessarily need to have foreigners (fluent
English-speakers I mean), but they always help and they give the English Corner
a little more credibility. So we went to this thing, which was at night at the
center of the campus, and as soon as we got there it was a frightening sight:
hundreds of students were gathered in the center, filling it up…and the
center’s pretty big. Why was this frightening? Normally in America it wouldn’t
be so. But imagine you were a movie star and you just walked into a huge crowd,
where everyone could suddenly see you and everyone knew who you were. That’s
kind of what it feels like when you’re a foreigner walking into a huge crowd of
excited Chinese students. I’m always nervous around these big crowds because
I’m so scared there’s going to be a mad rush at us.
There’s never a mad rush, but we definitely get pretty
swamped. This was the first night we ever got swamped. We made our way through
the crowd and to where the English corner was supposed to be, and began talking
to the people running the corner. Our
job as the fluent English speakers at an English corner is to talk to the
students as a way of practicing their English…this is a huge way to increase
your foreign language skills super fast (I talked to a friend I made in Peru
who spoke no English in Spanish for two hours and immediately I was able to use
it more…I was getting around fine in Peru, that is until I continued learning
Chinese and lost all my Spanish skills, and now when I want to speak Spanish
only Chinese comes out). It’s also our job to correct them if they make a
mistake they’re aware of.
So as we’re talking to the workers the students start to
come and talk to us too. And they’re coming at us like they’re super excited
fans, asking us all about our lives. They’d ask me where I came from and I’d
always make them guess. The VAST majority of them said Africa, but I’ve gotten
some interesting ones too, as well as some who got it correct. A couple guessed
Brazil (which is actually not a bad guess), and a couple guessed India too…all
of which I see why they would guess that, especially if my hair is
straightened, which it was at the time.
But ultimately, there was a lot less conversing rather than
asking brief questions about myself and then “can I take your picture?” Each
one of us foreign teachers was swarmed by the crowd, and we constantly were
talking and taking pictures. It was like signing autographs, you have to do it
quick and then move on to the next person because they just keep coming. And
that’s what it was: “Hi, my name is Kexin.” “Yes, 我回说中文 (I
can speak Chinese).” “Thank you (after receiving a compliment of how good my
Chinese is.” “You guess where I’m from.” “No, not Africa, guess again.” “Yes
very good, I’m American.” “Yes, you may take my picture.” *smiles*
By the end of it, my face hurt from smiling so much. It
honestly did, no joke. I had to stop smiling for brief moments to give it a
rest or else my face would cramp up.
We stood there for maybe an hour and a half to two hours…at
least that’s what I think it was, it could’ve been a little longer. After a
while, when we got a quick break, I found another foreign teacher, Kyle, and
said, “We gotta get out of here before they swamp us again.” He agreed, and we
made our way out of there, a few other foreign teachers tagging along as we
found them too.
As we were about to leave the area, we found many Chinese
students at another booth lighting Chinese lanterns and watching them sail into
the sky. We watched them do this for a little bit, but we did not participate
for fear we would be swamped by students again…and we would’ve been too,
because each time we tried to make our way through the crowd, if we ever
stopped for a second, at least one person stop to say hi and ask for a
picture…and when one person did it, another one followed, and another and another
until we were swamped. So we watched briefly, hoping the dark would hide the
fact we were foreign (though it didn’t help that we were speaking English), but
we remained safe and then continued on and left.
The lanterns were really beautiful though, there were so many of them going up into the sky…not nearly as many as they show in Tangled (I’m not certain that’s even possible), but there were a bunch…and it reminded me of that Tangled scene where the lanterns travel into the sky. It was fun to watch as they went higher and higher, and once they went high enough the fire burnt the paper up and the light went out. Altogether it was a pretty interesting night. Not something I’d like to do on a regular basis, cuz the swamping is stressful (I was physically worn out by the end of it), but it was an interesting experience.
These are blurry cuz they're night pictures, but you get the idea: we are standing next to the lake and taking pictures of the students that were lighting lanterns further away at the school center plaza. It was really cool to watch.
In this one, it looks like they're flying to the moon!
At school the next day, our Chinese co-teachers gave us each a box of several mooncakes, which are the traditional food of Mid-Autumn Festival. Each mooncake in the box was a different flavor, and I thought they were all really good.
