Sandi's Play

The MCs for the Teacher's College Drama Festival.

Things got a little busy for us before we headed out on our Chinese New Year trip and we got a little behind in our writing. Now that we're back in China and getting settled into our old routines, we're just now getting around to writing about some things that happened right around Christmas and New Years. This is the case with the post below:

December 12, 2008: Tonight was Sandi’s school play. Sandi is an extremely friendly and eager-to-learn English student at a college down the road from us. We have gotten to know Sandi through Janet, our neighbor and fellow foreign teacher, who met Sandi on a train. Sandi noticed the white person, who she correctly assumed spoke English, and struck up a conversation. Janet is really friendly, too, and so they became fast friends!

Anyway, during the months of November and December, we'd noted that Sandi had dedicated A TON of time directing and preparing for the play (which was part of her school English Department's 8th Annual "Drama Fest") and we were eager to come and watch it. I wasn’t expecting much from the play, other than the usual oddities. Of course, Sandi didn’t know the date of the performance until about 2 days before and we didn’t find out the time until the day of. (I'd enjoyed the sequence of emails from Sandi leading up to the final email that actually included the date of her performance. She simply titled each one with a single catch word like, “Maybe” or “When.”) Nevertheless, we didn’t have any other plans for this Friday night, so we were able to go.

We met Sandi after dinner outside her school gate and walked through the campus (which was deteriorating a bit) to the auditorium. The sun had set so it wasn’t as noticeably run down, but you could tell, despite there being no campus lighting, that the buildings were crumbling and cracking at the edges and were suffering from water damage, molding, and staining from the pollution. The grass was poorly kept and the sidewalks were a mess. But otherwise, it looked like a typical college campus. Large, square buildings, plenty of sidewalks and trees, and a large soccer field and track. We walked to the auditorium building, the most architecturally interesting on campus, with its one rounded edge to make room for the stage. We proceeded to go up 5 flights of stairs up to the auditorium. Upon entering, we were greeted with gasps and “Nice to meet you", and were promptly escorted to the second row where a woman with a flimsy plastic cup of too-hot-to-hold tea awaited. We were immediately handed whistles to blow (instead of clapping), glow sticks, and programs. Then, the conversations started. Many girls asked, “May I know your name?” or “May I ask: How can I improve my oral English?” What a question! The only answer I think they could possibly want is, “Hang out with me all the time!”

After a few pre-performance photos with the foreigners were taken, the lights were dimmed for some extreme neon light effects, like the entire room was the inside of a kaleidoscope. The stage was decorated with tinsel and teen popstar posters (I'm not sure what that had to do with all the plays). The show was set to begin. There were 7 plays in total, each performed by a different English class. They had each chosen different plays. Some were adapted Western plays and others from Chinese works (which were translated into English). The evening began just as many performances in China do, with commentators. These are more than just your average emcees! They have become a symbol of China as I’ve witnessed various “shows” and performances. They are always the same, whether it is for the City Foreigner’s Banquet, the National Day ceremony, or Teacher’s Day festivities. It is usually a man in a white tuxedo with spiky hair and a beautiful woman dressed in a ball gown. On this night there was a male and two women. The girls had glitter eyelashes on and glitter-sprayed hair. The young man was even wearing makeup. They took turns talking and they always ended the sentence with a powerful word spoken together. They used extreme vocal variations to portray their intense excitement for the event. For example,

Male Commentator: “Tonight we are so happy to be here. How do you feel Jenny?”

Female Commentator: “Oh, I am so exited to be here. What a wonderful evening. Thank you for being here tonight.

Together: “THANK YOU!!!”

There were many "Thanks" said for each teacher and judge present. Not just “Thank you to all the teachers and judges.” Each person was individually thanked, both at the beginning and end of the show. This is the Chinese way. They over-used the word “CONGRATULATIONS” throughout the evening. I suppose that was just a direct translation, but the context in which it was used did not always work in English.

The evening started with the “Happy Dance.” The Happy Dance was in fact a unique melding of Riverdance and line-dancing to the music of the “Cotton Eyed Joe.” The young women dancers wore Elizabethan dresses (with bare feet). It was entertaining to watch these young Chinese women dance Irish dances to “Cotton Eyed Joe.” What a mix of cultures!

After some more commentating by our beloved emcees, the first play began. The actors and actresses were quite good. The strangest thing to me was that the actors did not speak their lines. Instead, there were students standing at the edge of the stage speaking into the microphones while the actual actors just acted and lip-synced. We later found out from Sandi that they simply did not have enough portable microphones for the performance. (There was one class who had a few microphones they could wear while acting, and apparently they had to pay for those themselves. Most classes simply couldn’t afford this.) Because of this, the whole thing reminded me of a dubbed over movie you might buy from a black market DVD shop. Often girls played male characters and a male would dub the voice. This was partly because the English department seems to be mostly females, but also because love scenes (and by love, I mean any touching at all) are better acted out between two women than two members of the opposite sex. Anytime the actors were of the opposite sex and the two characters touched or even said the word “love” the audience broke out into uncontrollable squeals and “oooo”s. The students were very creative, using sarcasm and hidden meanings throughout their English plays. I was amazed to think that the entire audience was able to understand what was being said. (Honestly, we struggled some to understand because, despite being in English, the Chinese cultural influences were strong and the microphones were squeaky.)

Instead of intermission they interrupted the plays for a fun game of “Happy Round and Round.” I had been told it was something like "Telephone", so when they asked for volunteers I felt confident enough in my knowledge of the game and English skills to raise my hand. Of course I was chosen, and the audience erupted with excitement. The commentator again welcomed "our foreign guest". The game was not as much like Telephone as I'd expected, in fact it was more like Charades. The rules were as follows: A proverb (I found out later) was given to the first person, who then had to act it out to me. Then, I acted it out to the next…so on, so on. The last person was supposed to guess what proverb was being acted out. It went terribly and no one got it. Sheesh! They played the game twice with two different groups of people. The second proverb was “Love me, love my dog” and I didn’t even know this one!

  The Happy Dance .

Intermission game - doesn't Tiffany look confused?

While intermission was a bit of a flop, the plays definitely held their own and made for a fantastic evening by anyone’s standards. The plays were as follows: JinKe Assassinated the King of Qin, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Medicine, The Necklace, The Sound of Music, Lost Youth, and Butterfly Lovers. The Necklace was a Chinese version of Cinderella. The lead actress was invited to a ball where she was hoping to be crowned “Most beautiful women in the world” but alas, she had nothing to wear. An angel came to offer her a beautiful necklace with the condition that she return home from the ball on time. The woman won the title but lost the necklace and therefore became the angel’s slave in an alternate world. Her lover eventually rescued her. How romantic! The Necklace was not the only play that had serious similarities to some of our favorite western stories: JinKe Assassinated the King of Qin had a scene in which the actress stood in front of a mirror and said , “Mirror, who is the fairest of them all?” And we were reminded of Romeo and Juliet when watching Butterfly Lovers, a story of forbidden love which ended with the lovers committing double suicide so they could spend eternity together. The Lost Youth was very powerful. It was about a young student who became depressed after losing her boyfriend and experiencing other terrible tragedies from a teenager’s point of view. She then began to use drugs and party at clubs to cope with her depression. Her mother comes to her rescue after she gets taken into custody by the police, and the story ends with a lesson on second chances and a mother’s unconditional love for her child. All of the plays were really well performed. Sandi was in the Medicine and she was the hero. This play depicted war between China and Japan (I believe the setting was WWII, which seriously strained relations between the two countries). Sandi had to pass through the Japanese troops to obtain more medicine for the Chinese wounded soldiers. Sandi was playing a man and had drawn a mustache above her top lip. Her character, disguised as a Japanese Soldier, tricked the Japanese pharmacist into giving her (and therefore the Chinese army), a large supply of medicine. The play was meant to be comical, but it still definitely screamed “I love China and hate Japan!”
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  The students' various performances, the final being "The Sound of Music"

Throughout the evening plastic whistles were blown, glow-lights waved, and a bat repeatedly circled the auditorium. (Yes, a bat indoors. The Dean of the English Department joked that the bat was drawn into the auditorium by the great acting.) The judges tallied their scores, and somehow, every class won something. Then, there were more speeches and in unison, the commentators exclaimed “CONGRATULATIONS!!!.” Actually, the students' English was really good. The worst English we heard all night was from the teachers, who had to make a speech when handing out the awards after the performances. Only the Dean of the department spoke well.

After all the plays had ended and the awards were handed out, we took more pictures with college students and the male commentator, handed out our phone number to complete strangers, and shook hands with the line of students and teachers waiting to see us (I'll never get used to feeling like a 'celebrity' here). Sandi then escorted us to her dormitory for a birthday party for two of her roommates. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to see her college dormitory. She has said it was tight and that 12 girls all lived together. We walked maybe 15 minutes through campus, past street food stalls, small fruit shops, the cafeteria, and old apartment buildings for housing campus staff. On the way, we saw a new dormitory that honestly looked like a dormitory in the States (if not nicer). It appeared to have nice lighting on the inside, and Sandi explained that they even had hot water, a 'good air-conditioner' and only 2-4 people per room! Sandi then showed us where she had to come to get her hot water: A small building next to a school gate lined with plastic and metal hot water jugs. Sandi had to make the 10 minute walk to this building from her dormitory each day to have drinkable water or even water for a bath. The students' various performances, the final being "The Sound of Music"

We then made our way to the dormitory. Her room (I should say "Their room - there were 12 girls in all) was on the bottom floor. We opened the door and were greeted with smiling faces and an incredible applause. They all rose to their feet and thanked us immensely for coming to the party. It was very odd to receive an applause for attending a party. I didn’t really know what to do, so I applauded back, saying, “Congratulations to the birthday girls and the incredibly talented actresses!” They seemed pleased with this and we all continued congratulating and greeting one another with smiles and more applause until they settled down a bit from the excitement so many get when in the presence of “foreigners.”

After the performance: Random Pictures with new friends!

The room felt narrow because bunk beds lined the length of both walls (3 per side). The space left in the middle was occupied with desks. There was a really narrow strip to walk through, but if there was another person in your way, you might as well have just stayed where you were. Each girl had a desk, a stool for sitting on (and conveniently stowing away under your bed), a 2 ft by 2 ft cubby for all of their clothing and personal possessions, and a bunk bed. They each had decorated the wall next to their bed with posters of popular Chinese actors and singers. The girls were honored to tell us they had won the “best decorated” award in their dormitory. I thought they did a pretty good job for what they had to work with! The bathroom was at the opposite end of the room from the door. It contained two sinks and two squat toilets. There was no shower and there was no hot water. Each girl had her own bucket and large plastic basin. They would fill the bucket with hot water from their thermos (which they filled at the station 10 minutes walk away) to take a sponge bath. Then, they'd wash their hair by dunking their head into the basin. It sounded like a very cold and uncomfortable way to get clean, especially in an unheated room. They didn’t complain. In fact, they were very happy. I began to think, a group of 12 American girls living together, taking all their classes together, and spending every waking (and sleeping) minute together would begin to develop jealousy and hatred towards one another. But this did not seem to be the case here; there were no cliques or enemies. They were one group, nobody won out over the other. I have noticed this in my junior high students as well. They develop a sisterhood; they are loyal friends through it all. That must be incredible! I know that the Chinese have a strong group mentality and they see themselves as part of a community. In contrast, Americans tend to be very independent and think about their own personal goals and progress. Maybe it is this Chinese mindset that keeps their friendships strong. Maybe because many don’t have siblings, they develop sibling-like feelings towards their classmates. Whatever the reason, their friendships were heavy with respect and consideration. It was a pleasure to witness this!

I got the impression that none of the girls in Sandi's dorm room had much money. How could they; they are in school? So, it was a big deal to buy a cake and snacks for a celebration. The cake for the occasion was really beautiful with a lemon-yellow gelatinous glaze and white fluffy icing in the shape of chrysanthemums. Everyone tried to give the icing flowers (the best part) to the honored American guests. We insisted the birthday girls should have them, out of both kindness and selfishness because, actually, the icing is intoxicatingly sweet and artificial tasting. Chinese birthday cakes are beautiful but are mostly icing with a layer of Styrofoam flavored white cake as a base for the icing artwork. We “ooh'd" and “ahhh'd" over the cake: “How pretty!" and "How delicious!” Then, more snacks came out! Spicy, pickled edemame and other veggies were a hit. The girls made pained faces as they successfully swallowed the spicy foods. We tried them and got a round of applause for our attempts. There were dried, glazed fruits and gummie candies shaped like orange wedges. Then the girls’ teacher stopped by the dorm room with a bag full of oranges as a gift for the birthday girls. We ate those too! There was a lively debate as to whether the oranges from the teacher, who had brought them from the countryside, or the oranges from the store were better. The Americans agreed that they were both delicious and then we were offered another two each. Sandi turned on a tape player and was excited to have us listen to some English songs she knew. The theme song from The Titanic was a favorite among them all, and when it was played they all started to sing along. As could have been anticipated, the girls then begged the Americans to sing a song. We sang "Deck the Halls” as it was the Christmas season. They clapped and smiled but I guess that wasn’t enough. Next, they wanted us to sing a song in Chinese!! The three of us together knew two songs, so we picked the easier of the two, a child’s song to the melody of “Are You Sleeping, Brother John?” They were impressed with our “perfect Chinese!” Later Sandi reiterated that they thought we spoke Chinese so well! (haha). After plenty of singing and snacks, it was nearing the time for lights-out on campus. Sandi walked us back the way we had come, then onto a larger road that would lead us out of campus. We thanked her for a beautiful evening and said our goodbyes. We then walked home in the dark thinking how the evening had been such a surprise. None of us expected to have such an amazing time. I guess I just need to have a little more faith in this place.

The birthday girls and their beautiful cake!

What a tight room!!