Shandong Twinning Programme

The students had a Chinese Folk Dance Session and they enjoyed themselves tremendously. We thought that was it, only when the Dance Instructor brought some ethnic costumes to offer our students. Can you recognise our girls and boys? I am sure that it was a very rare experience for them to dress like this.

Our school attachment to Li Cheng Er Zhong was very fruitful as the school kindly arranged many activities for us. Chai Chee-ians practically learnt new things everyday; Chinese lessons, Maths lessons, History lessons and also activities like Chinese knots, Chinese Drums, Seal Carving, Pottery, Dancing, Chinese musical instruments and Martial Arts. In this post, I am going to focus on Seal Carving. On the left, you'll see Chai Chee-ians looking at the introduction to seal carving in a powerpoint.

We were each given a set of seal, a carving knife, sand paper, white paper and red inkpad. The teacher then showed us all our surnames on powerpoint written in ancient Chinese.

For e.g. the word would be carved like this on the seal. When we saw our surnames written in ancient Chinese on the powerpoint, we felt very challenged. Nevertheless, Chai Chee-ians took the task very seriously and all of them displayed tremendous resilience in the process of carving their surnames on the seal.

We took about 2 hours or more to carve one surname. It required great focus as any lack of focus would result in the carving knife slipping away, disfiguring the seal. Besides the curly strokes, we also found it difficult to carve on the small area on the seal with the knife. We also had to carve very hard at the seal using great strength to ensure that every stroke was clear and defined, otherwise the print would appear to be blur. One really needed to be very patient too, as each stroke had to be done slowly and carefully. This is Nigel Chua's Chinese surname in ancient character 'Cai'. What do you think of his workmanship?

Actually, in China, especially at Qufu, the hometown of Confucius, there are many roadside stalls which offer seals with your full name at only 8 RMB (about S$1.60). However, many of the Chai Chee-ians saw a place which sells Chinese seals for the first time at the Confucius temple. They made their seals at 30 RMB, only to realise that there are many other stalls 5 minutes away which sell at only 10 RMB. The seal carving masters at the stalls also could carve our full name in three characters in about 3 minutes. (Imagine we took more than 2 hours to carve just one character. And after that, our hands were very exhausted.)

When we entered the multi-purpose room at level 3, the Li Cheng Er Zhong's Chinese Orchestra was ready in position with their musical instruments to perform for us. Chai Chee-ians were quickly assigned to sit with their buddies. After the welcome speech by the Vice Principal of the Pre-U unit, 马校长，it was my turn to read out the speech crafted out by Mdm Xing Rui. Luckily we went there prepared with the pre-written speech. I feel eternally grateful to Mdm Xing Rui and the Chinese Department's Subject Head, Mdm Goh Watt Keng for rendering assistance to me whenever I needed them, whether to do translation, write letters, or speeches. They were always so ready to help. Mdm Xing Rui and another student, Qifeng, also helped to train Guan Nan, to give the opening speech on behalf of the students. I admire him for having the courage to present a speech in Mandarin in front of so many people. It must have been an experience for him.

Over there, actually Ms Kong and I felt quite stressed whenever we had to speak to the teachers and vice-principals at Li Cheng Er Zhong. Putting aside their heavy Jinan accent, we also had to maintain conversations with them and inside our heads, we struggled constantly to translate some English terms to Mandarin. The last time I had Chinese lessons was over 10 years ago. Imagine how out-of-touch I was with the Chinese Language. But of course, I tried hard to maintain the image of a bilingual Singaporean teacher.

After the welcome speech and mutual exchange of the school souvenirs, it was interaction time between Chai Chee-ians and their Li Cheng Er Zhong buddies. The lively conversations that took place in the room put my heart at ease, as I originally was still worried that Chai Chee-ians would not be able to run a decent conversation in Mandarin with their buddies. To my pleasant surprise, they were able to clique with their buddies very well. By the second day, some already received presents from their buddies. They also went shopping at the school supermarket, school bookshop (can you now guess how many shopaholics there were amongst us?) and played basketball together with their buddies.

After lunch at the school canteen, we were invited to watch a performance put up by Li Cheng Er Zhong students as part of the warm welcome. We had a good time watching the school talents perform without knowing that we also had to put up a performance for them in exchange. When it was our turn, it really took us by surprise. Ms Kong and I had to explain to them that we came unprepared and that we needed a bit of time to discuss what we could put up for them. Being uncreative and after thinking and discussing for a long time, the only thing we could put up was.................yes.......I think you got it right.......it's our National Anthem, Majulah Singapura! I was sure that all of us appreciated how Mr. Loke drilled us back in Singapore at the Chai Chee School Hall, to sing the National Anthem loudly with pride and gutso. We managed to pull through that one.

After that, they continued to put up interesting performances for us. But no, our ordeal was not over. They requested for us to perform again for them. We really ran out of ideas and luckily Afina came to our rescue by putting up a solo dance performance. It was after that then I learnt that actually Afina has ballet background. Phew!

Dinner was sumptuous, at a restaurant at Shandong University. As usual, Ms Kong and I felt stressed again as we had to sit beside the Vice Principal of the Secondary Unit, 高校长. We talked about the education system in China and the policies of Li Cheng Er Zhong, and luckily the conversations managed to cover the entire dinner. Meanwhile, I was sure that the students enjoyed the dishes on the table. There must have been about 20 dishes, and on the first day, I think students really enjoyed what they were eating. (as compared to the last day, because they realised that they were eating the standard dishes over and over again for the rest of the ten days). 高校长 shared that Shandong dishes are 四呼呼, namely: 黏呼呼 (sticky)，黑呼呼(black)，咸呼呼（salty) and 油呼呼(oily), which was really true. By the 4th day, most of us decided that we prefer Singaporean food, and the students sort of held their own cup noodle party every night in their rooms. That marks the end of the first day. I must say we were all quite overwhelmed by their warm welcome (Perhaps the word 'warm' is an understatement) as we were treated like VIPs.