Honorable Guest
Trip Start
Jun 18, 2008
1
14
46
Trip End
Sep 04, 2008
Beijing,
China
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
We woke up extra early this morning to meet a waiting luxury sedan (with leather seats!) and a third white person. As we were driven over, we all speculated about what we'd be expected to do and how strange it was that our appearance at a ceremony would somehow bring it more prestige simply because we are foreigners though we have no connection to the school. We arrived at the school and were introduced to the one guy who spoke some English though he eventually just spoke Chinese with Adam. He told Adam it was a retard school, and Adam translated for us special needs. People treated us like celebrities and showed us to a private room with breakfast snacks while we waited for the ceremony to begin. Here, we began to understand that the ceremony was in celebration of increased funding for the school that specializes in helping autistic children. The students range in age from 2-26, and there are 82 students with 50+ staff members.
Once we were seated for the ceremony, there were a number of speakers and performances. Of course, it was all in Chinese, so I couldn't understand anything, but there were at least four cameras filming everything and often pointed directly at me, so I plastered a smile and engaged look on my face. Among the speakers were honorable teachers, honorable students, honorable local Communist party leader, honorable parents, and honorable school director. Adam told me that basically every speech was the same: thanking, in turn, all the honorable guests in attendance before lauding the school and its students' progress. The performances were actually entertaining: Peking opera singers and an amateur clown routine.
After the ribbon-cutting, we headed inside for a tour of the school. It had obviously been cleaned for the occasion, so many of the classrooms were bare, but it was easy to see that it was a nice environment for kids with special needs. Adam couldn't help but wonder if it was somehow all a facade... what was the need for foreigners to be photographed at a school located on a military compound? I chose to not be skeptical because all these kids were really cute, and I felt bad that I was only there because I was getting paid.
In one of the rooms on the tour, some older students were working on crafts that the school sells to earn some money. This way, they are teaching the students a skill while also hoping to make a small profit. Most of the crafts were Olympics or Hello Kitty design trinkets, but they were also making bead bracelets in an assemly line fashion beginning with creating the beads from clay. Each guest had received a bracelet in a gift bag, which also included a model airplane and a shadowbox with pinned butterflies.
Following the tour, we were escorted to lunch at a nearby Peking Duck restaurant. This was my first experience of a typical businessman's meal where way more food than can be eaten is ordered and rules such as not drinking until the host does apply. I tried to be adventurous as possible with what I put on my plate because I didn't want to seem ungrateful or fussy by asking what meat was and wasn't pork. Though I have been trying not to eat pork here for kosher reasons, I know it's practically unavoidable since pork is China's main meat. I tried duck wings, what I think was seaweed, and --as I learned after I ate (and enjoyed) it-- pork's knuckle. At least there was no Baijio, rice liquor, which businessmen drink to get drunk, plus it tastes like death.
All in all, it was a surreal experience. We had no affiliation with the school and will probably never return. Yet people were excited to take our picture and ask for our email addresses as if we are something special when the focus should only be on the special needs students. Instead of letting it go to my head like some Westerners might, I actually found it bizzarely humbling.
