The Most Beautiful Lake in the Most Beautiful City

On our travels, when we were asked where we lived and worked in China by Chinese citizens, their response to 'Hangzhou' was: "Hangzhou?! Hangzhou is the most beautiful city in all of China."  This response was so frequent and so predictable!

Now, I totally took Hangzhou for granted.  Being from a relatively small town (and trust me, everything in America is small compared to China, even our big cities are modest in comparison) I was used to wide open spaces, trees, and blue skies (and this is suburbs perspective, I can only imagine what people from the countryside must think of cities in China).  So when I first arrived, and people kept telling me Hangzhou was the prettiest city in China, I was skeptical.   That was until I got to travel about China a bit and I realized, that yes, Hangzhou is a very pretty city, compared to the very industrial feel of many of the other cities I visited in China.

The view from my parent's house...................................................and the view from the roof of my apartment in Hangzhou. 

The main reason that Hangzhou is considered to be the most beautiful city in all of China is the West Lake (Xi Hu), which is this enormously landscaped lake area located in the heart of the tourist part of the city.   Around the West Lake are a variety of parks, temples, and gardens, gardens, and more gardens.  It is a very pretty place to spend your day when the weather of is nice.  Although, I have been assured by my students that the West Lake is beautiful in every season, regardless of the weather--indeed, West Lake in the rain is considered very romantic.  Having been caught there in the rain--without and umbrella-- I do not find it particularly romantic.

West Lake in the fall, spring, summer and winter, respectively.  I'll let you be the judge. 

The inspiration for this post came from visiting a park in America recently, and while the park we went to was very nice, I could not help but to compare it to West Lake.  West Lake is in a constant state of bloom and greenery.  They have landscaped the area so that something is always going on--willows in the summer, lotus flowers in June, tulips in April, water shows in the summer, chrysanthemums in the fall, fireworks pretty much always...and a slew of other things.  And of course there are almost constantly open air concerts, people just dancing and singing for the heck of it, and a zillion different manicured lawns that are perfect for strolling, picnics, or chill'in in the sun.   You can also take boat rides along the lake and see some of the islands in the middle of the lake, as well as the iconic Three Pools Mirroring the Moon in the middle of the lake (you can find images of these on the 1.00 RMB bill).   You can rent bicycles or tandem bicycles and enjoy a nice calm ride around West Lake.

West Lake Activities. 

While you are walking around the West Lake, there are also a variety of places for you to eat.  Food such as purple corn, squares of rice stuffed with meat, stinky tofu, chicken wings, hot dogs on sticks, and sugar-dipped fruit kabobs can be found at vendors located fairly regularly around the lake.  You can also purchase bottled water, coke, Gatorade  tea, and juice at these vendors.  Around the lake, tucked into visually pleasing and historical looking buildings are Starbucks and Costa Coffee, along with dozens of restaurants and tea houses.  The streets surrounding West Lake are also filled with shops and restaurants, ranging from Western to Chinese and everything else.  West Lake is also very close to one of the clubbing districts in Hangzhou, so if you spend the afternoon/evening taking in the West Lake, you can then take that party indoors to one of the many nightclubs in the area.

Some scenic views of West Lake

When you are done taking in the lake itself and all of its pockets of flowers, quaint pathways, and shoreline views, you can also take in some temples and pagodas, most famously, the Leifeng Pagoda and Yue Fei Temple.  Leifeng is the one of the legendary characters in the history of West Lake and Yue Fei is a general and hero from the Song Dynasty (when Hangzhou was the capital) and is responsible for saving the kingdom and enduring some harsh treatment from the emperor. While these two are among the most famous, there are dozens of other places to visit including Lingyin Temple and the tea fields; indeed, getting lost in the tea fields will provide you with a nice workout, some scenic views of Hangzhou, and a chance to wander through some bamboo forests.

But really, the best reason to visit Leifeng Pagoda (featured in the center photo) is to get some really stunning pictures of West Lake and Hangzhou, if you happen to have a really clear day.

Justin above the tea fields and Liv lov'in some bamboo. 

Another reason Hangzhou is considered so beautiful is because it is so "green." I am not talking about it being environmentally friendly (quite the contrary), but it is literally green.  Not only is the infamous West Lake landscaped, but so is the entire city.  The medians and edges of all the roads are lined with trees and shrubs and flowers.  Large intersections include grassy edges, frequently with elaborate topiary and perfectly cut grass. Long sections of the highways have window boxes over the guardrails that are filled with green plants that drape over the edges.  The canals that run through various parts of the city are teeming with plants, creating quaint little escapes in the middle of (from an American perspective) a very large city.

Various cityscapes of Hangzhou

West Lake is, indeed, lovely, and has been the location of many fine days of strolling or biking. If you visit Hangzhou, you must see the West Lake, not only because it is pretty and there are many cultural and historical things to see (temples, pagodas, museums, etc) nearby, but because if you don't, and someone asks you where in China you lived/visited, and you say Hangzhou and you did not go to the West Lake, weeping will ensue. Seriously.

Oral English: Part III

Due to some teachers leaving and some scheduling issues our three-teacher Oral English class was reduced to a one-teacher operation at the end of the spring semester, and that one teacher looked like it was going to be just me in the coming fall.  Thankfully, Olivia, adding to her already very full teaching schedule, agreed to co-teach this course with me, keeping us at two-teacher operation.  Liv and I were pretty excited about this course because 1. We were allowed complete freedom to design our own course, and 2. While we worked at the same school, this would be the first time we were teaching together, and since we got along pretty well in every other adventure, we were excited to co-teach this course.

And I was particularly excited because not only had I made a bunch of mistakes (see earlier blog) and learned a whole lot teaching this course twice before (and Liv had also taught several sections of Oral English over the last year as well), but Liv and I had plenty of time to discuss what we wanted to do for this course over the summer, so we were, compared to previous semesters, uber prepared.

This time we had a plan! We had experience!! We had goals! We had a final assessment that the rest of the course worked to provide students with the skills to fulfill that assessment! We had a syllabus (thanks largely to Liv) that kicked all other syllabuses butts!

We learned that we would be teaching two sections of this course, just like last year.  One section of Liberal Arts students (these are the English and Chinese majors) and the Math and Physics majors. Again, the same as last year.  Now, by this time, we both knew that the Liberal Arts students would, as a whole, have a higher proficiency in English, and would be more motivated to improve as English is more relevant to their major.  We also knew that getting the math and science majors to speak up in class would be more difficult, as they are more concerned about their lack of proficiency in English and so are shy.  We could also expect a little bit less motivation as English was less critical to their majors.  But this time, we were prepared.

We met on the first day of class and we we outlined our expectations to our students.  We explained that we would be learning Oral English using skits.  We modeled a skit using intonation, body language, and expression (and also made our students laugh as we pretended to be a girl asking her mom for money so she could go shopping with her friends later).  We explained that the majority of their grade would come from participating in each weeks class.  We expected them to be talking (in English, or course; we made our classrooms an English Only Zone) and fully engaged and prepared each week.  The rest of their grade came from the final exam.  We did not have a midterm.

In addition to their kickass syllabus was a detailed example of how to write a script, which would be turned into the teacher on the day of their performance every two weeks. We modeled writing said script (we really nailed that whole modeling thing).  We set up a course email that students could contact us through and we occasionally assigned homework assignments that required them to answer us via email.

We explained to them that each person would be required to participate each week in the creation of the script and in the acting, and that each person needed to participate equally.  What  we meant was that you could not rely on the two most outgoing members of the five-person group to carry the majority of the skit; each person needed a part, and each part needed to have an equitable amount of stage time.  Most students understood this and complied.  We also (after the issues we had with acting out what they had written about in the previous semester) really hammered home the point that if they wrote, they would act it out; so make sure each person was comfortable with the script.  And lo and behold, we had no issues with this this semester.

We did a two week rotation, where I would have half the class for two weeks and Liv the other half and then we would switch.  This is nice because it allows us to have our own creative space in the classroom while still working together.  It also allows the students to receive two different teaching styles and methods.  And as a teacher, it is nice to have to only plan for two weeks to take up four weeks of classes.  It also lets you realize what works and what doesn't work and what you need to change and gives you a chance to change it when you teach the next group.

We spent the semester working on four big parts of Oral English: intonation, expression, inflection/stress, and body language.  I worked on body language and expression, particularly facial expression, while Liv worked on intonation and inflection/stress.  You might be wondering where pronunciation fits in this, and of course we tackled pronunciation issues when we encountered them in class, but the problem with teaching pronunciation is, that other than the s/th sound and the l/r sounds, there is really little point in really stressing pronunciation for a couple of different reasons.  One, there  really is not a great deal of standard pronunciation in English--I mean, think of all the dialects just in America!  It is more important that they get the syllable and sentence stress right, and the intonation.  So we did a couple of combined lessons (the two of us in the same classroom with all of ours students) to address that s/th and r/l sound as messing those up does impact comprehension.

By the end of the semester, both groups showed marked improvement in all of our target areas (and I will provide specifics with how I taught my sections of this course in later entries).  We were impressed with both groups, and even though I said earlier that the English proficiency was higher among the English and Chinese majors (as this makes sense--English is going to be necessary in their future careers) , the Math and Science students really excel in using facial expression and body language, and we were frequently pleasantly surprised with their performances.

The final exam asked students to take a fairy tales (we did some searching on the internet to find the basics of about 12 different fairy tales) and modernize them.  We explained what modernize meant and gave them an example.  Most of the groups understood and with a few exceptions did fine on the first draft of their scripts (we allowed them a week to write and send it to us for feedback before their performance, and we addressed any issues with most of them during this process).  They they had to take their modernized fairy tales and perform a 5-7 minute skit.  And we were quite pleased with the growth they had shown in each of the areas, as well as the humor and creativity with which they rewrote and performed their skits.  There were very few students who, for various reasons, did not perform up to our expectations and we were very proud of the work they had done.

I feel like, while my previous sections of Oral English were certainly rewarding, and a great learning experience, it was a stressful learning experience.  I felt that I took everything I had learned or not done quite as well as I wanted to the previous year and used it to make this section of Oral English as efficient and effective as humanly possible.  And we had lots of fun too; Oral English can be a really fun class to teach, weather you are teaching Romeo and Juliet or Fairy Tales.

Specifics on how I taught body language and such to follow.  I was going to post a video of the final exam for one of these groups, but for some reason, blogger is not cooperating.