Our day started with another Chinese
language lesson – numbers this time and I can now successfully order ‘one cup
of coffee’ at McDonalds at the end of the day.
This seems to be the only place that I can get coffee, so it is a real
treat. Speaking of McDonalds, the chain is certainly not prolific in this part
of China. I have seen just the one next
door so far and although KFC is apparently huge in China, I haven’t seen any in
Deyang.
After class we were taken by Lucy, a young
Chinese teacher who has been assigned the Interior Design team to take under
her wing, to another part of this huge campus to see the building construction
program. We were amazed to see a class
of around one hundred young students, all dressed in the 1970s blue boiler
suits that we immediately associate with Communist China, practising laying
bricks.
We then saw two areas that have been set up
as exemplar buildings for the students to learn from. One was a timber construction full size
‘house’ and the second was a full size apartment block that has been built with
several deliberate mistakes for the students to learn from them.
Full apartment block with exposed elements as learning tools.
Timber two-storey house, as built in China
It was interesting to see the safety
signage in this area. Like most signage,
cute characters are used.
We passed a ‘space age’ designed building,
obviously unoccupied and we wondered why.
It is only now we are back in Melbourne that I have learned that this
building was built as a sports stadium.
It was occupied for about six months but has remained empty since, as it
is so poorly built that it has been deemed unsafe. We saw a magnificent digital artist’s impression of the great
hopes SCAT had for this structure.
Sadly obsolescent, this magnificent
building was occupied for only a few months.
Lucy then led us back to where we had our
elaborate Sichuan dinner yesterday and we were amazed to find that she had
organized a similar banquet for us today.
It was without the formality of yesterday and thankfully no chicken feet
or pigeon soup, but in similar style, the dishes just kept coming out. Again I surprised myself with eating a full
Sichuan meal, even venturing into some of the rather spicy dishes and enjoying
them.
We then embarked on a forty-five minute bus
trip to SCAT’s second campus on the northern outskirts of Deyang. There we were to see where Interior Design is
taught. It is a brand new campus, only
opened six months ago. Interior Design
used to be at the Deyang campus but when the Chengdu campus was built as a
result of the 2009 earthquake, this faculty was moved to the new location. What an eye-opener it was! There are massive tracts of land where
buildings are still to be erected and the over-all feeling was one of a
desolate place of study. All the
buildings are massive, with the biggest of them all, the canteen, being about
eight hundred metres removed from where the students take their classes. Soon
after our arrival, the students began their trek back to classes and it was
like a never-ending trail of ants as far as the eye could see.
SCAT students make their way back to class after
the lunch break
Student work was displayed around the
building we visited and it was most impressive.
Our students were excited to see work very similar to that which they
have done over the two years of their course.
We were shown an amazing model of the
Eiffel tower, built by four students in just two days. It stood head high and was most intricately
built of bamboo sticks, skewers and tooth picks. Every last detail of the tower was included
and we were blown away.
Lucy managed to get us into one of the
classes in progress. I was so glad to
have the opportunity to see teaching in action Chinese style. It seems that engagement by the students is
an option, with many of them chattering or on their phones while the teacher
presented the lesson on Powerpoint. I
have heard so much about the typical classroom, that I don’t think this was a
matter of bad class control, it is just the way things are here. Lucy interpreted what was being taught – all
in Chinese characters with no pictorial embellishment to illustrate or lighten
the topic. Again it was very much the
same content that we deliver in our course, which was reassuring to me as I
will probably be teaching in China at the end of next year.
Through Lucy, I asked the teacher if I
could address the class. She graciously
agreed and I went straight into school teacher mode, clapping my hands to get
their attention and then telling the students who we are and that we came from
Australia. They were staggered to learn
that our students study twenty-nine subjects in two years and that they have a
great deal of homework. I asked them
what subjects they study but all they were able to tell me was Interior Design.
The bus trip between Chengdu and Deyang
(which we did in the dark on Sunday night), was most interesting. It was all
farmland and was a real experience.
Dotting the way all along the highway we saw workers in the field –
hoeing, stooking hay, even one who was sowing seed by hand. Not a tractor in sight, it was all manual work. The crops were vegetables and lots of hay –
interesting in that we saw no animals apart from a small herd of goats. I chatted to Lucy as we travelled and she
told me that the average farm plot is around one acre. Naturally she was staggered when I told her
that my house is on half an acre and that we are by no means rich people. When I told her of the size of our farms and
our cattle stations, she was incredulous.
We had promised our beautiful young Chinese
girls who are working with our girls on their project that we would let them
take us to a good place to eat and so tonight was the night. Lo and behold, we sat up to our third Sichuan
banquet in two days! This time though,
there was a table that wanted spicy and a table that wanted not spicy, so naturally
I was on that table. The food was
delicious, especially the duck pancakes, a dish that I will look for in Chinese
restaurants from now on.
The meal over, we walked through the streets
and came upon dancing in the city square.
There were hundreds of people ballroom dancing to the music that was
piped over the loud speaker. This is a
nightly occasion and the local people do it as a form of exercise. As well as the main dance area, we came
across several small pockets of the square where they were also dancing or were
engaged with the karaoke machine.
As soon as we came across the dancing,
several of us joined in – our style rather than ballroom dancing. Soon there was a local guy who joined
us. Within a very short space of time,
the circle had grown to about two hundred people who just formed a dance circle
and took turns to do whatever dance style took their fancy. I was even in there at one stage, doing the
twist! The atmosphere was electric! The locals just loved it – except of course
for those who tried their best to ignore us and who kept on ballroom dancing.
The police and the army guys stood by watching and their faces told that they
were enjoying the show. At one stage the
SWAT team got out of their van to watch what was going on and they too were
enjoying the spectacle. This went on for
about forty-five minutes until we slowly disbanded and went off for a
well-earned drink. As we walked away,
the locals all called goodbye to us, shook our hands and wanted to talk to
us. How glad we were that we had learned
to say ‘I come from Australia’!
Students and teachers alike
had a wonderful time dancing in the square.
The police and the army kept
a watchful eye on the fun.
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