Sports and Culture Week in Jietou

Last week was sports and cultural week in the whole Jietou region and my school was the host school. Representatives of eighteen other elementary schools and kindergartens (kindergartens here are three years for 4-6 year-old children) joined us for four days of events.

"A warm welcome to the whole town and each school's teachers and students."
This kind of red banner is printed for all important events.

To kick everything off on Wednesday was an evening of teacher performances. The performances included dancing in the style of an ethnic minority, more traditional Han Chinese dances, modern fitness dancing, and dramatic skits. Here are a few glimpses. From the costumes, you might assume that this was an indoor, heated venue, but alas, it was outdoor and exceedingly cold.

First act: a dance in the style of the Lisu people.

Kindergartners as baby bunnies: simultaneously extremely cute and rather terrifying...especially with the makeup and grins.

My school's performance was an elaborate combination of poetry recital, dancing, singing, painting and calligraphy. As the music began, a local male teacher and my Chinese cofellow began with the recitation and one of the music teachers danced interpretatively behind them. As they finished, eight female teachers began a fan dance and I began to sing. Throughout the song and dance, one teacher did calligraphy involving the song title and my other Chinese cofellow painted a spectacular mountain river scene. I thought at first that our performance was overambitious. It was extremely difficult to coordinate all the parts. 

And, if you couldn't tell from the above pictures, it wasn't just about performing well, but about costumes and makeup too. As someone who likes subtlety and minimalist makeup, I approached the evening with apprehension. First we went to the hairdresser. There were ten of us and I was second to last. So I sat there for about three hours getting a headache from the hairspray fumes. But the final effect was actually pretty nice.

Then we returned to school to eat quickly. I then went back to my room to change into the qipao they gave me (and take some headache medicine). They had three different sizes that they had made me try. The first two were two small and the last one fit, but was so tight around the thighs that I could barely walk or sit.

Then I had makeup put on me. First they had me rub lotion all over my face. Then foundation. Powder. Eyeliner. Bright blue eye shadow. Bright red blush. Glitter. And more glitter. Sigh.

My favorite part of the whole evening was when one of my students came up to me and encouraged me, saying "加油 Jiāyóu". This is a commonly used phrase that literally means "add oil" but is used to mean everything from "go get 'em" to "persevere" to "you can do it".

Surprisingly enough it finally all came together--from each person's role to the makeup--and we pulled it off and won first place! The winning was gratifying but the nicest part for me was seeing the other teachers be so excited. When the evening was over, we all went back to the hairdresser to have our hair undone and washed. We haven't been able to use the water at our school for about a week because the drains are clogged somewhere down the line. So it was nice to have clean hair.

The next three days were all student events. The student performances were both impressive and cute.

Yes, these are kindergartners dressed as people from America, Europe, and Africa, as well as native Chinese. Some magic happens
by which these three visit China bringing with them things which they're told are not needed because China
already has them. The voices were recorded, but the children acted it pretty convincingly.

My school's performance including guzheng (a classical Chinese instrument), pianos,
glockenspiel (or some similar metallophone), drums, shakers, and dancers. Their's also got first place!

This one was my personal favorite, not because of the acting, particularly, but because of the story: The Wizard of Oz!

The lion, scarecrow, and tin man are introduced.

There was one more day of performances, but I left to celebrate Thanksgiving. All in all my school won the culture and arts section of the competition and was rewarded with water filters for the school!