DNS students with Chinese Rural Family

how is the daily life of normal people, how is the program of Chinese spring festival?

About visiting a Chinese rural family together with DNS

Time:Feb.05-Feb.06,2006

Name: Echo

Purpose:

Cooperating with the Chunhe Middle School, we contacted with a few families in advance. We want to show the true life of Chinese normal people in the rural place to DNS students through going to student’s home and do everything together with them. These two days will give them a clear picture how is the daily life of normal people, how is the program of Chinese spring festival and what custom do we have in rural place.

Team members:

Echo, Martin, Cristina

Activities:

Feb.05

It was very convenient to go to the family and contact with them. The village they live called tuanshan town 8 group. The road is reaching from the city to village directly, the traffic is very convenient. We arrived at the family around 10 o’clock. It’s a typical rural family in hongta district, yuxi city. Three generations live together and there are two children in the family. They built the house by themselves which is a three-floor building. The village layout is to concentrate all houses in the same area, and put all toilets together besides the living area.

The family we visited has lots of guests, during the spring festival Chinese people used to visiting relations and friends. The cousin of the student is a university student and understands English, she is very nice, accompanying with us as a good guider in two days.

After lunch we walked around the village. The lands surrounding us mostly planted with raps and strawberries, while their flowers and fruits are flowing and shining under the sunshine. As we walked on, the sun brought a red-golden light, reflecting on the hills located around the village. This is a beautiful village.

We went to the temple nearby. The old people living in near village gathered together to play some local theaters beside the temple, that day just was their last show. So we happened to watch the theater play. Foreigners are rare to village people, so Martin and Cristina were invited to make up and wear their drama clothes before they played, so was I. It was interesting. They helped us to make the dark face painting and to wear the exaggerate dressing, and taught us some simple gestures. All of us were exciting. After that, the actors and actresses played their drama seriously. They sang and spoke in yuxi dialect, it was a long story and they played around 3 hours. At the ending, we took a lot of photos with them.

Feb.06

When we left their home first day, we were looking forward the second day. When we came back to yuxi, we chose some photos to develop and took them to the family as the gift. Martin and Cristina also prepared some small gifts from India or Europe. So we can image that the second day would be a gift exchanging day.

The same as yesterday, the student and her cousin accompanied with us. But they prepare some interesting programs for us. In the morning, we made the dumplings together. Martin was in charge of making the paste with the flour, then we made the dumpling peers with wood stick and made the dumpling. It is very hard to shape the dumpling, too much minced meat or too much juice will break the dumpling peer. It’s not easy for us, but we were glad to try. When we were eating the dumplings made by us in lunch, everybody got the happiness.

Afternoon we took the chairs and tables outside, sunshine shadowed us. We gave the photo album we prepared to the student’s family and appreciated them. Then the family took out their photo album, sharing their family photos to us. We also saw some wedding photos but it was taken 16 years after the real wedding. It’s normal in China. Because our parents’ generation live in a hard years, everything was out of order and economical situation was not allowed to take such a photo, so many couples took wedding photo several years later to offset their pity.

We asked them lots of questions, such as how’s the wedding decades ago, how’s the education situation of new generation, how’s their wish to their children……they also asked the same questions to Martin and Cristina. We spent a wonderful afternoon together and knew each other more.

And we also visited the temple again, it was re-built by villagers themselves. Because the old temple was destroyed during the culture revolution period. But the villagers have the religion belief, they contributed money and built it a few years ago. And they manage it by themselves.

Around 6 o’clock, we finished our visit and left their home to Yuxi.

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