The last couple of days, we've been traveling and are in Shanghai right now, so the end of our Xi'an time was never duly recorded.
Our last official act as a group was the farewell ceremony. The farewell ceremony was held in the school upstairs cafeteria, the "nicer" one, where we ate lunch every day. (As opposed to the George Orwell Dining Hall downstairs on the ground floor.) The kids and Y and I had been warned ahead of time that we would be making speeches, so the kids worked on them with the Chinese teachers.
They had set out a buffet table in the cafeteria and a PA system that was playing Western Elevator style music. At the appointed time, Madame Jiao gave a fairly lengthy speech in Chinese which was translated fairly well by her assistant. It was classic -- how wonderful the Sharon students were, what a fortuitous start our collaboration, Y and I were praised, etc etc,. There was also a few aphorisms like "we will be separated by distance, but friendship is eternal" -- that sort of thing. Then the kids got up and gave their speeches. What I noticed, even though they were reading them, was how much more fluent their Mandarin was. It seemed like they understood the Chinese and were reading words, not just syllables. They had progressed so much beyond the phrasebook Mandarin some of them were speaking at the beginning. Y was very proud of them, understandably. The kids received some sort official certificate from the school as well.
I had to give a speech too, and other than hello and thank you, I spoke in English. Y assigned me that task as she would be the translator. I had written the speech standing at the windowsill in the classroom while the kids polished up theirs with the Chinese teachers. I used notes, mostly so I wouldn't forget to thank anyone, but it is pretty easy for me to talk, and this was actually less formal in some ways than the whole speech thing in Japan was. It is a different culture than Japan, and in this case, I had a personal relationship of one sort or another with most of the people there. My main point was that although we came to China as American students, teachers, and citizens, that we were leaving as better citizens of a wider world. I also mentioned that the kindness and generosity of the Chinese people we met would be things we would bring back to our friends and colleagues along with all the photographs and souvenirs. blah blah blah. Very Chinese speech-like and with the same level of sentimentality we had heard in everyone else's speeches in China. But, I meant this, actually.
Make no mistake about it, the Chinese government has many flaws, and the system that runs the country has made many mistakes. We lived in an area that was driving out poor people, that was polluting the air, and the Chinese students we lived with there stood in the yard everyday doing exercises Mao would have liked. But the individuals we met or interacted with were also kind, helpful, interested in knowing more about us, patient, all sorts of things. I liked most of them. Some of them liked me, I know. They were really just people. One student on a card the kids made for me with notes on it wrote, "Please support Beijing in 2008." This wasn't a grand political statement; it was a request person to person. She said "please"; there were no exclamation marks. The Chinese people want to hold the Olympics. The Chinese people include this 16 year old girl who listened to me talk about American history at 7:30 in the morning. It is hard to hold all the things China is and represents in both hands sometimes.
Before we could eat in friendship, or whatever, however, we went out to the front courtyard and took a million pictures. Some were done by a professional photographer, some by individuals. There were all kids of permutations and combinations of teachers, kids, host parents, Madame Jiao, and on and on. When we got inside, everyone was ready to eat. The chef had done an outstanding job. Where he is when the regular food is served out of that kitchen, I have no idea. There was quite a variety including spam and cucumber sandwiches and little tiny whole shrimps that i couldn't see without my glasses so ate anyway. They were crunchy and tasty. There was also rice and vegetables, fish , chicken, passable sushi and other stuff. One of the best things for me is that it wasn't laced with MSG. I sat with the grownups and managed to choose my own food, the only exception being some oxtail soup Madame Jiao had the serving girl bring over. Y said it was a delicacy. I told her my line that delicacies to me are either weird animals you have to eat or weird parts of regular animals. In this case, the whole thing was weird. I ate some anyway, naturally.
At the end, people just left. The kids went with their host families and I changed clothes and went for one more bike ride. We had one more day to tie up loose ends, and Y and I had one more fancy dinner with Madame Jiao and Shang.
We were concerned about the weight limits on domestic flights from Xi'an to Shanghai - 20 kilos or about 44 pounds, and the word was that the airports ere going to be very strict. We were set to travel on the May 1 worker's holiday (don't even ask me why) so traffic all over was supposed to be more intense than usual. The day before we left, Y and I decided what to do with our personal stuff, clothes we thought we could with out and in my case of course the pounds of books I had brought.
We gave some stuff away and regifted things to people in the school. I left some books on Chinese topics with the school for future groups. I also left my bicycle for the use of whomever and then for the next group from our school if it survived that long. Y mailed some of her winter clothes to her parents and I left a couple of things on the clothesline, hoping some kid or worker would find them and make use of them.
The night before we left, y and I had one last dinner with Madame Jiao and Shang in a very fancy restaurant in a private dining room, as we always had with them. We had hot pot cooked meat and vegetables, but they cooked the food for you "off stage", so to speak. Shang picked everything as he always did. They brought the meat out before it was cooked for his inspection, a little like they uncork wine for you I guess. We sat for a couple of hours and ate and drank tea, excellent oolong tea. At the end of the meal, we were driven home by Madame Jiao's chauffeur. It was time to go.
.JPG)