I have recently returned from a ten-day trip where I was the piano tutor at tutti world youth music festival, a musical and cultural experience for high school ensembles in Beijing.
I admit prior to the adventure I was extremely apprehensive and nervous about the entire thing: travelling overseas (not really by myself, but also kind of..), being a very inexperienced teacher, feeling like I was somewhere between student and professional (so what really am I??), not really knowing who my students were going to be (and what level they were), and having heard all sorts of stories about the crazy things that only China does so well. Prior to this trip, I had no desire to travel to China, despite many friends telling me that it was a crazy, fascinating and incredible place to visit.
But now having returned, WOW. I get a small sense of what my friends were talking about. What an adventure! So much has gone through my mind about the entire trip, which blogging might be useful to process, so here goes. This warning here tells you that this post is EPIC long. Seriuosly long. I don't really expect you all to read it, but you have been warned if you decide to embark on it all!
These stories will hopefully be divided into various parts, which may not be entirely chronological.
But when friends have asked me, "How was China?" I have chewed off their ears!
In brief, China was an amazing trip: musically, interpersonally, pedagogically and culturally. And more!
Musical
Pretty much all the other tutors that made up the faculty are musicians who I consider to be my teachers. And I know that learning (should) never stop, at whatever age or stage of life one is at, but you must understand that I felt pretty daunted by the idea that I might be their equals, at least in the eyes of the students. But this is the wonderful thing about tutti - it is a festival where competitiveness is seriously downplayed, and our great aim was that everybody - students, teachers and tutors - would just have an excellent week of learning. And learning not just about music, but also about other people, cultures and life in general! There were a couple of tutor lunchtime concerts through the week, so I had the chance to play some music with these wonderful people. I played the first movement of Schumann's excellent piano quintet with the wonderful Michele Walsh, Yum Williams, Jeremy Williams and Louise King. What wonderful musicians! We had lots of fun; there were spills and moments of some uncertainty, but I think the spontaneity of the music making is what I've come to know about festivals: you don't often get lots of rehearsal time so you have to be as prepared as you can be, and trust your, and the others' musicality, experience and good nature enough to let go and have fun! The tutors also played at the Welcome Banquet, in a mish-mash of pieces designed to show us all off. The last movement of Weber's Grand Duo for Clarinet and Piano definitely tested the tired and out-of-tune upright piano! All the performances that the tutors did were wonderful - they were, risky, on edge and lots of fun. There was a rendition of Haydn's trumpet concerto with mixed ensemble like you've never heard it before - including one-per-part strings, a clarinet playing the oboe, a wind section that included a recorder and saxophone, a flugelhorn, and some assorted brass. There was Telemann that had a guitar. There was Butterfly Lovers concerto with the odd assortment of us all - and it was lots of fun! It was also really beautiful to watch the conductors in action and also to talk with the other tutors about teaching methods and about the progress of their students.
Interpersonal
This is such a terrible heading, apologies...but the only term I could come up with. I had a wonderful time meeting all sorts of people. As alluded to above, it was really wonderful to meet and work with the other tutors. The teachers from the schools were also really wonderful - they have such a hard job taking their school groups on tour as they have a musical responsibility as well as a pastoral duty outside of class times! I met teachers from Queensland, Western Australia and South Africa, most of whom were just so wonderful and eager to learn themselves. One in particular that I met was actually a girl who went to the same high school as me! We had no years of cross-over but discovered that we had quite a few mutual friends!
The greatest joy, however, I think, was definitely meeting so many students.They were so enthusiastic and full of excitement and were so excited to be in Beijing. The students in my class were just beautiful too. It was really wonderful to meet them all and get to know them - musically and personally. I had some excellent chats about the music that they liked to play and listen to, learnt about their schools, their cultures and some of their perceptions about music and life, including some about what they wanted to do when they got older (so full of enthusiasm and promise!). One moment in my class also happened to end up talking about toilet paper and the different types of toilet paper in different countries!
Pedagogical
The teaching experience was extremely fascinating. I was very nervous about the experience as we were unsure about what level all the students would be - we would only know when we got there. This, as you can imagine if you know me, did cause a bit of panic in me - I like to know what I'm getting myself into. This proved to be a valuable exercise to me also in letting go and going with the flow! I had five 'formal' students in my class, plus a few additions across the week, ranging from extremely competent and technically secure to those who struggled a bit with rhythm and reading forwards, and some in-between. What a mixed bag! One of the biggest challenges was finding things that might be applicable to all levels, but also in some ways it is also not hard to find things about playing (musical, physical, conceptual etc) that are applicable to all levels of students. We learnt some figure-8 warm-ups that made us look like swimmers or seriously uncoordinated humans with swinging arms. We did some breathing exercises (strangely enough applicable to playing music!). And we did some improvisation, David Dolan style! For almost all the students, this sort of improvisation was extremely new, daunting and had to be prefaced with "the world will keep on turning when you finish"! A few fabulous comments from this exercise were that it was actually quite fun, and liberating! Some students were even game enough to do it several times as they gained confidence, or wanted to experiment some more.
One of the greatest challenges for me was teaching my two Chinese students. Firstly, they were both technically extremely gifted, both young (12 and 14), and had little English! Not that this festival was about competition at all, but it was interesting to watch the two of them and to see their strenghts and weaknesses, especially in comparison to each other. I had been told by other teachers that in their previous experience with Chinese students that more often than not they were extremely competent especially technically but sometimes lacked the emotional impulse of making music (not to say that they didn't love what they did, but that their playing was mostly driven by technical mastery). I would say that this was certainly true of my two students, and I took a fairly different approach to teaching them. They each played a solo segment in the student concert evenings, and it was interesting to see how each played and it was fairly evident what was valued in their music-making. It was also interesting to watch the reaction of the audience to their respective performances, which was very different. In the Grand Concert, we allocated them a piano duet, Ravel's Mother Goose Suite. This was, I think, a huge challenge to them as they had never played with other people before, so there are things to negotiate, like physical space, how to start together, what happens if you make a mistake and so forth. Their first read-through was very good - they read and picked up on things very quickly but it was interesting to see their personalities on show. He charged through, easily understanding complexities while where she was unable to execute, she sung along. They worked hard to put it together, finding time where they could to practise together.
Add to that the complication of me not being able to speak Chiense, and their mostly lack of English! We had one of the student volunteers from Dulwich College (where the festival classes were being hosted) translating for us, but obviously the need for a translator slows the process down, and also many things are lost in translation, including nuances and the beauties of language, which I love! For example, I suggested, "You could take more time here" which the translator then asked, "So do I say 'you should go slower here'?". "No no no!!!" was my very hearty response! So given that the Ravel is so pictorial and descriptive, I got really good at singing (well, good might be a bit enthusiastic. I'm not using it qualitatively here..) and acting and dancing around the room! I also discovered that the way that Chinese students are taught piano is very diligent and somewhat prescribed. I quickly learnt that what I sang or said was taken on with great enthusiasm, so either had to give many options on how to do something, or none; never just one, because otherwise that would be the way it was done. In asking them how they wanted to do something, I suggested, "Like this? Or like this? How do you want to do it?" I was met with a stunned revalation of, "You mean I have to choose for myself?!" I was shocked but also pleased! The other revalation of Chinese teaching was when I asked if there was anything else they wanted to play, and one of them said, "Yes, but I have to read from the book". Nothing wrong with that in my opinion!
What a pleasure it was then to hear at the end of the week that apparently they had really enjoyed my teaching, and that while their teachers usually focussed on the technical aspects of playing, I had focussed on the emotional parts of the music (what I'd like to think of as just 'the music'!) and hopefully introduced them to another way of approaching their music. Also wonderful was when students made small changes to help them in big ways. Like thinking about different fingerings, or using breathing in our music (even though we don't need to breathe to operate our instrument per se), or thinking about the pedal and how it's more than just 'on' or 'off'. The other beautiful experience for this young teacher was to have a few students return to my masterclass out of their own will - particularly those who had come with their school ensembles as another instrumentalist, or vocalist. Though they didn't have much prepared to play, we discussed music and life anyway, and they stayed anyway. In my limited teaching experience, I don't demand that students stay but invite them to if they think they can learn something from it or contribute to it. One particular student came on the last day and stayed for three hours worth, even though he didn't play much, but was able to give some feedback for other students and hopefully found some insights and thoughts to take with him in his own music-making. Another came back on successive days to just listen and learn and to discuss music and piano. I hope that I was able to inspire them all at least a bit, to consider great possibilities, to think about other ways to approach and make music and to enjoy and listen to as much as possible!
Cultural
Wow. Where does one even begin?! I think this festival is truly unique - the musical aspects are given equal importance to the cultural tour that everybody came on. And it's all about learning and sharing. This environment was incredible and beautiful - and not that my normal environment is particularly competitive or pushy (only self-driven, admittedly pretty hard) - but this had almost no trace of it and was
just a time to meet different people and experience their culture.
Beijing itself is an incredible and baffling city. Since the Olympics, so much has been built and modernised (and also in the last 20-30 years!). But at the heart of this bustling modern city is an old civilisation steeped in tradition and history. The reign of the emperor and the imperial system still looms in the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace, while the rise of Communism and the various political tales have played out in Tiananmen Square. Old sits next to new in the hutongs and you forget that you are in a modern city while lost in gardens and courtyards and halls. You feel the sense of grandeur, also your insignificance, and wonder at human ingenuity and conflict as you walk The Great Wall. You try your hand at your best bargaining skills at markets as you try to get to get the lowest price on clothes, shoes and the like. They yell at you, shouting for your business; they appear offended when you offer a significantly lower price.
Also culturally surprising was what each school brought to Beijing. The majority of the faulcty were Australian, and a few from elsewhere, like North America. The biggest surprise to me was meeting so many South Africans - students and teachers. I sometimes get lulled into this false sense that if a country also speaks English, they must have the same cultural experiences and values as me. The largest group of them was from the most exclusive school in South Africa - an
all-boys all-boarding school in the English tradition. Wow, what another
world they come from too! Their boys are gentlemen - they all call
their teachers and elders Sir or Ma'am, and they hold open doors and
stuff for others. Not done out of obligation or mockery, but out of
respect and discipline. Most exemplified for me on one occasion where
the faculty were a bit late to the soundcheck at the China Conservatory
in Beijing and so we slipped in, and stood on the steps while there was a
briefing. All the students were seated. I was happy to stand as I knew
I'd probably be sitting around for much of the morning. With no
prompting, two of the boys from the school got up, exited their row and
said to me and another, "Ma'am, please have my seat". No questions
asked. I
was very struck by them and their school - so much that I'd like to
visit South Africa and visit their school and also another school in
Cape Town where I had a couple of students.
Their music-making was also extremely different to ours in many ways. While it was not perfect (nobody is!) it definitely had so much life and joy that was so obvious to the audience. So much of what they performed made everybody want to dance along. Their marimba ensemble had everybody grooving. Their choir was beautiful, even though apparently they were feeling a bit nervous and apprehensive and did not expect such a overwhelming receptino from the audience. It was very funny, then, at the Farewell Banquet when a rock band from one of the Australian schools played and all the Australian students started dancing. By dancing I mostly mean standing in a group and jumping up and down in very vague time. In contrast, most of the South Africans, who obviously have groove built into them, stood awkwardly at the back trying to figure out how to dance to this music! I sat down next to one of the teachers from the school and remarked at how funny this was, and he replied with, "I have to get a photo or video of this! People won't believe it back home!". Haha.
Back to China. Maybe more chornologically here on in....
Now the whole story....(warning: is very long, just in case the above wasn't long enough!)
We travelled with China Southern Airways and were seated in Premium Economy which was actually a bit better than normal Economy. The bathroom was like a suite - there was so much space! The long plane trip provided great opportunity and time to get to know my neighbours, including the saxophone tutor who chewed my ears off! (It's okay, we became friends and I even sat next to him all the way home, so he mustn't have been that intolerable!) The layover in Guangzhou was also a meeting point for a few other tutors and it was nice to spend a little bit of time meeting and getting to know them.
The first couple of days were spent just with the faculty: to get settled into Beijing and to have some rehearsals and a bit of a plan of how we were going to run things. We were bussed to Dulwich International School, which is about one hour out of the city and has Beijing's only cricket and rugby pitches. The school has lots of space, but with the city ever-expanding, the land will probably be prime real estate very soon! We were also bussed to have lunch and dinners at various local restaurants, which at first served a Chinese cuisine so Western (maybe in anticipation of Western tastebuds?!) that we protested that we wanted real Chinese food. I will point out that our party pretty much used chopsticks for the entire trip; we're real cultured and stuff.
On the first day we met with all of the school teachers to set the tone for the entire festival, and to introduce all of us. There were so many of us, it was somewhat overwhelming to have everybody go around the room and say what their name was; I have a really leaky head so by the time we got halfway around the room I had already forgetten a lot of the names and where they were from and what ensemble they took! I targetted a couple of teachers from the schools from which I had some students. We talked a bit about their music programme, and I asked what I could be helping their students with.
We then headed off to tour a hutong and have lunch at a local family's home. The hutongs are a
remaining part of old Beijing, where modernisation has not encroached.
There are all sorts of alleys and roads connecting the labyrinth, and
are where families used to live together in little communities. Our
hutong tour guide Alice (riding a bike) led our party (following in
rickshaws) through the maze and we had a home-cooked lunch, and then met
the father of the family. He told us a bit about his family, and showed
us some of the hand-cut paper cut-outs that adorned the ceiling of the main room. They were beautiful and intricate! We then
headed off to see a tea ceremony. There were all sorts of different
types of tea: jasmine, hand-rolled flower, white (NOT tea with milk!),
tea that was good for skin or losing weight and so forth. Each was
brewed in a different manner, in a different pot. For example, we learnt
that one is supposed to pour hot water over the clay teapot to warm it
up. Also, the outside is smooth but the inside is rough, in order to
absorb the flavour of the tea; and one flavour of tea is for each teapot
so as not to cross flavours. We were each allocated a teacup and
another taller cylindrical cup into which the demonstrator poured the
tea. The teacup is then placed over the cylinder and then inverted (very
hot!). Then you can smell the flavour of the tea from the cylinder and
roll it around in your hands to warm your hands. They were all beautiful! Of course, purchases from their shpo ensued...
We had a Welcome Dinner at the ballroom in our hotel that night where we could be in the same room as everybody: other tutors, the teachers, the students, and some supporters (mostly parents who were also on the trip. They had activities organised for them every day, and they also came to the concerts. Good holiday, huh?) There were a few speeches to welcome everybody and the faculty performed a few pieces to show us all off. We ended with a Ross Edwards piece where we were all stationed around the room.
The next day we started classes proper - I got to meet my students and they got stuck into tutti ensembles. We ate cafeteria lunch (serious downer after a few days of really good food) and then were off to our next adventure: the Summer Palace. It is as it sounds: the summer
residence of the emperor. This has a long and messy history; the Summer
Palace was built by the emporer to celebrate his mother's birthday but
through time, had been burnt down several times. We learnt about the
Dragon Lady, Empres Cixi, who was a power-hungry imperial concubine who
bore a son for the emperor. She went on to control two other emperors,
doing everything in her means to retain power. She killed lots of
people, bankrupted the nation, dismantled the navy and unwittingly paved
the way to the end of the imperial era. The Summer Palace is huge -
about three times as big as Forbidden City! There is a lake, and as you
walk around, you forget that this is still in Beijing, a bustling city!
There is also a beautiful long corridor with paintings depicting all
sorts of things, including Chinese stories and scenes, nature and
traditional Chinese designs, the longest painted corridor in the world.
At night we went to Wangfujing Street, which is a big mall with all sorts of shops - including big international chains. I have to admit that as it was so hot, we treated ourselves to Haagen-Dazs ice-cream. We wandered around as the sun set, poked our noses into a few shops and avoided getting hit in the head with flying lit helicopter toys. We also saw the Wangfujing food market, which was serving up all sorts of meat including scorpions and snake. On our way back we drove along the Avenue of Everlasting Peace, which is a road that stretches for a while and runs through the centre of Beijing. We drove past the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square and the concert hall and all sorts of fun things in the city centre.
The next day was a full day of teaching. We definitely deserved the drinks at the end of it all! This was a long and tiring day, but also fun. Due to the nature of the programme, there would be classes in which students would be coming and going, and also students were at some liberty to pick which masterclasses they wanted to go to, particularly if they play several instruments and sing. I felt a little bit like a broken record through this day (and also the other full day of teaching) but hopefully it wasn't too boring for the students! At lunchtime, we had the first of the two faculty concerts, where I played the first mvoement of the Schumann quintet. What fun it was to revisit the piece. We unfortunately had to endure cafeteria food for dinner but enjoyed a fun student concert in the evening. We were treated to the ensembles from three of the schools. It was a long evening, with many stage changes and talking in-between, but it was also so wonderful to see the work that the students had put in and just to enjoy having music played for us. I already raved a bit about Hilton above, so needn't say too much more except that by the end they had a whole bunch of people flood onto the stage below and start dancing, and then at the end they launched into a school cheer. How's that for brotherhood?! There were also a number of ensembles from St Stephen's School in Perth and it was really lovely to see one of my students performing in so many of their groups - choirs and bands.
Tuesday was thankfully just a half day of teaching. All the masterclasses were in one hour blocks or so, with ten minutes inbetween to shuffle between activities. Each day the students also had combined tutti ensembles: either orchestra, band, vocal ensemble, big band, mixed ensemble, or guitar ensemble, or in my case, tutoring the the Piano Duo made up of the two Chinese students working on Ravel. In the afternoon we went to the Silk Market, but that day it was raining so the traffic was pretty horrendous. The journey that should have taken about an hour took almost double that! Most of the tutors this year have already been to Beijing for this festival two years ago, so many didn't want to join in (and couldn't stand the idea of more cafeteria food). Those wishing to go shopping were in the minority, so we hopped on some of the student buses to go there. Thankfully I was not the lone female tutor on the all-boys school bus! Aimee and I hit the shops eager to try out our bargaining skills. We were pretty fresh at it, sometimes doubting whether we made a good purchase or not, and getting better at our, "Oh no, too expensive" and walking away act. Only to be yelled at: "Lady, you come back here!" when they really wanted the sale. I think we did pretty well for our first go. We made a few purchases and were sporting a few shopping bags. We ran into a few of the girls around the markets, who surprisingly didn't have that much shopping. The boys on the other hand, as we clambered back onto the buses, sported shopping bags galore full of shoes, clothes, headphones and the like. It seems that the girls were in general a bit uncomfortable about bargaining but the boys seemed to take on the challenge, egging each other on: "How much did you get that for? I got it for 30. I bet I could get the next thing down to 20."
We then had dinner en masse at a restaurant and then went to see an acrobatics show. If you get the chance to see one of these in China, go! They are pretty amazing. We saw a tightrope walker (who did all manners of tumbles and even unicycled on the tightrope!), a deft juggler, dancing girls who made formations while throwing and turning diablos, a contortionist so flexible it was difficult to tell whether she was forwards or backwards, gymnasts who tumbled through hoops, guys who clambered up poles and jumped around (sounds silly, but they were rad), and the same girls with fans who also rode bikes around the stage and even stood up on the handlebars and seat while the bikes were in motion! It was an incredible show!
A second full day of teaching was up next, broken up by a quick rehearsal for the faculty for our item in the grand concert a few days later. We thankfully re-negotiated the morning masterclass times to be a little bit shorter as the traffic was pretty bad and we were late. An even longer student concert in the evening made the post-epic day drinks very well-deserved, but again, it was great to see our students perform, and hoepfully have some fun doing so! Thus ended our time at Dulwich College, which played fantastic host to us (despite the lacklustre cafeteria food).
On Thursday we had a day at the China Conservatory. The morning was taken up with soundchecks for the various tutti ensembles. The hall at the China Conservatory is beautiful; it has a beautiful sound, the sound and feeling is quite true on stage and while it is fairly sizeable, it still feel quite intimate and doesn't feel too big. We had a fairly quiet rest of the day, with a brief rehearsal in the afternoon for the faculty ensemble for the Butterfly Lovers concerto, complete with cuts and all. The Grand Concert was that night, and the product of the hard work of so many people. It was really wonderful to see the tutti ensembles, to witness my piano duo ensemble perform (debut!), to hear the new composition written for the recorder and marimba ensemble, to see the primary school from China and their wind and percussion orchestra (this was amazing. So tight! So diligent! But also a small level of creepy haha). It was also extremely warm to play on the nice stage!
The final full day was an excursion to the Great Wall of China. I had been looking forward to this excursion very much, with the anticipation that I was going to be quite overwhelmed by the entire experience. We went to the popular site, Badaling, which is probably the closest part to the city. Thankfully we went pretty early, so it wasn't too crowded by the time we got there, but it definitely filled up quickly! We started out with a performance by the tutti choir (all the students!) of Demot's piece "My love is greater than the great wall" at the wall, which was a pretty cool experience for the students, and onlookers and probably Dermot too! A couple of great moments captured on video are two things Dermot yells out:
i) "Smile, you idiots!" mid-piece, and
ii) At the end, "Now scream and go crazy"
Climbing the Great Wall was really tough going. It was a hot day, and there is no shade until you get to a tower. The wall was built by slaves (lots of them!) and often when they died there was not enough time to have a proper burial or anything like that, so many bodies were built into the wall. The towers were used to send smoke signals back to the Forbidden City if they saw enemies advancing; the different smoke signals indicated how many troops there were, and could be seen from the city (unlike some days in Beijing that are obscured by smog!) and from there, the army in the city could get ready for battle in half an hour. Efficient communication method, huh? The steps to the Great Wall are all of uneven size, some very large - up to my knee. Makes life especially difficult for small people! Some of the steps have parts that are worn away, so there is no regularity as you're going up. Some parts are very steep too, so there was a lot of self-talk and will to get me along! I only made it to the first tower; I had wanted to go further, but my lack of fitness really didn't permit that. Next time I will train for a year in advance! When I got to the first tower, my back was drenched in sweat, my heart was pounding and my gut a little bit queasy. But I was pretty happy with my effort and was rewarded with some pretty good views. Coming back down was possibly even harder - the hardest being the very slight downwards slope at the end, just when you think you've completed it, the shins complaining and all! An ice-cream (or two, in Bevan's case!) were good treats.
PD says that the experience of climbing the Great Wall never gets old for him. I think I can understand that. I hope next time I will have the energy, fitness and will to go further!
We then bussed off, all sweaty and exhausted, to the Silk Market again for another time to try our hand at more shopping and bargaining. This time I was armed and more than ready. I went in with a plan and a list of what I wanted to buy, and came out fairly successfully! I stood my ground on multiple occasions, doing a little bit of shopping that friends have talked about as an experience in China. We clambered back onto the (tutor) bus with all our wares and excited cries of "what did you buy?!"
The Farewell Dinner was held on the Friday night at our hotel's ballroom. Such a strange feeling to be at the end of the festival, being ina room of lots of people that we now knew a bit more. There were lots of photos being taken, much more inter-school interaction and a feeling of great relief that we'd gotten through the week and also bittersweetness as we knew this was the end of the week. There were a few speeches of thanks, lots of hugs, exchanges of emails, and a few musical performances including a fun gumboot dance from a small group of Hilton boys. What a fun way to end the formal part of the festival.
Celebrations went late into the night, but I was exhausted and slightly hysterical (to the point of crying haha) that I went back to my room to pack as there was yet another early start to the next day. No tour of Beijing is complete without visiting the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. What an incredible place this is. Tiananmen Square is right in the middle of the city, and is the world's largest public square. Obviously, due to the political events that have taken place there, there is tight security. But many people still flock to it. Particularly to see Mao's Mausoleum; there already was a cue at about 8.30 in the morning, and people sometimes queue for hours to get in. To be honest, I don't really see the point of seeing a dead body, but each to their own. And I also am somewhat baffled about the Mao-worship that still remains a sentiment among some of the people. We walked through the square, and then headed to the Forbidden City.
The Forbidden City is at the heart of Beijing, the former residence of the emperor and his family and entourage. The emperor had complete power, almost as a deity; what he said, happened. There are three main halls and a series of many gates to enter before even getting to the centre. There are a large series of courtyards for all the different people, including the emperor's private courtyard (very big!) and also a courtyard each for each of the concubines! The main square in the Forbidden City is large, and is where the people used to congregate. The emperor could sit in the throne room on his throne and look out, but people cannot see in. The bricks underfoot are fifteen layers deep to prevent anybody tunnelling in. Woe betide those who attempt it!!! We learnt about the life of the concubines: they were selected every year during a selection period, from a set of girls who came from the royal family. They were wihsked away to the Forbidden City where they would fight for their chance to be the favoured concubine, often by bearing a son. Those who found favour with the emperor had significant improvements - not just for themselves, but also their family, who would be granted more land and money and their relations promoted to higher offices. But those concubines who fell pregnant would also be plotted against by the other concubines, who would attempt to kill her and/or her child, by poisoning or 'accidental' falling. We also saw the private courtyard of the Dragon Lady (of Summer Palace infamy), including the throne room where she sat behind a screen with the Dowager Empress as they tried to control a young emporer. The Imperial Garden is the only place in the Forbidden City to have trees, and was the garden for the concubines to enjoy. It was hard at times to imagine that we were in busy Beijing as we wandered around the Forbidden City, steeped in history and tradition.
We were then off to the airport to catch our long flight home, to rest and recover and for me, to re-live all the moments of an incredible adventure.
There were great moments of 'lost in translation' through the trip: often they were signs that were mistranslated, particularly at the breakfast bar at our hotel! Also, being of Chinese ethnicity, I was often mistaken for being able to speak Mandarin. This was only handy infrequently, as I was sometimes not harrassed in the same way to buy things. However, it worked mostly against my favour, starting out at Melbourne Airport where the security lady said to me, "xie xie" (thankyou) and I replied in a very Australian "ta". Things continued on the plane were the stewardesses would come around with food and drink and start talking in Mandarin to whcih I had to pull blank faces and sheepishly ask, "Can you please repeat that in English?". There were moments of gesticulation at the hotel reception and business centre to try buy stamps for postcards to send home. Even the arrival card I was handed on the way back home was in Chinese - I thought I could fill it out anyway, but realised that I didn't understand any of it! At shops, when I mumbled, "English....", I had a few comments: "But you look Chinese!" I had to reply with, "I am...but Australian!" and while trying shoes, "You have small feet, like Chinese feet!". "They ARE Chinese feet!" was my quiet protest.
We were so fortunate to have such an excellent tour guide in Amanda. She kept us entertained on bus rides with many stories of her childhood and growing up, her family, how Beijing and China have changed across time - politically, demograhpically and socially, many funny stories of everyday life in Beijing now, and the many 'lost in translation' English stories! Let's just say that concubines are not cucumbers! To the organisers and people that did so much work: Peter, Xiaolei, Bevan, Aimee, the Dulwich College helpers, their work, organisation and enthusiasm was incredible. The other tutors, led by Chairman PD, were a joy to meet and work with. The students and teachers I met were beautiful and such a pleasure to teach and learn from.
If you've made it to the end of this post, congratulations. You definitely deserve a medal. I hope I will get the opportunity to do this festival again - so much has been sparked and I need another fix of fascination, bafflement and wonder!
