In China, the beginning of June each year brings the national university examination, known around these parts as the
gao kao. One of the most common criticisms of Chinese education is that it's too exam focused, leaving no room for creative thought, and thus depriving students of usable real world skills. The
gao kao is the reason for this. Almost everything done at Tian Jiabing is done with the goal of achieving better results on this the culmination of secondary education. The grade three students have been locked away for close to a year now preparing via countless practice exams and even the grade one and two students have had the importance of this two-day exam drilled into them, by classmates, teachers, parents and every other imaginable source. The reason? A student's score on this exam is the sole determinant of if and where a student will continue their education at university. No grades in high school, no extra-curriculars, no application essays or interviews matter at all, so no matter whether you agree or disagree with the system, it's hard to deny the importance of these days in the life of every senior middle school student. Until the system changes (which doesn't seem imminent thanks to the argument that, given the Chinese propensity for personal relationships and connections to trump the fair implementation of any rule, that this is the only way to objectively and fairly gague which students should attend university) it often seems the best we can do is try to round out the educational experience in whatever small moments fall through the cracks in the
gao kao oriented sidwalk.
On the upside this holiday has left me with an annual mini-holiday each of my years here. Last year I journyed south to the karst of Guilin and Yangshuo with Mom and Pop Harris, but like a few other times in my second year here, when the exam rolled around I just couldn't find the motivation to get myself out of Liuyang, so I decided something closer to home might be better. On what amounted to little more than a whim I then set out for a small town in the northwest of the county, so small it isn't even on the county map which in and of itself made Zhou Luo an appealing destination. I couldn't help but be excited about going to a place that not only wasn't in any guidebook but was even unknown to many of my students. In fact, the only reason I knew of the place was that one girl in my class mentioned it in passing during a discussion of the word "scenic". Turns out it was her home town. With no direct buses to Zhou Luo I grabbed a window seat in a mini-bus headed for Shegar, home to Number 8 Middle School and the closest town with bus service. Scenes flashed, unfolding themselves and running past the van in fast-forward. Terraced and geometrically compartmentalized fields fought for orderin contrast to the chaotic mottled complexion of the hillsides which encircled them in varied shades of green. In front of me, a young boy fell asleep in his father's arms in a series of progressively longer and deeper nods. From the hot and dusty intersection that serves as the Shegar bus station (three destinations available at last count), it was 20km on a moto-taxi to the village of Zhou Luo. Here in the true rural heart of the nation, the late spring season revealed itself in the varied states of the fields; some lay fallow for another season, some muddy and furrowed with recent tracks waited for their residents to arrive, cast by the handful by their owner. Small nursury fields played temporary host to close-packed rice seedlings, and a few, but growing portion of the land showed off its orderly procession of still young individual rice stalks so recently planted to be watched over by their bigger brothers, the tall stalks of corn and broad leafy greens.
Arriving in town I was suprised to see it so calm. Both common and exceptional places in China tend to bustle with activity, but at first glance the village seemed sleepily quiet in the late afternoon heat. Being the only outsider, I was left to my own devices to wander the paths around town and with nothing on my mind other than clearing my mind I was all to happy to simply observe. What had first appeared to be an absence of action was in fact just an absence of hassle. Everyone doing something, no one hurrying to do it. Nothing to sell, nothing to buy. Slowly the rhythm of the village began to show itself in the action and lack of action that combined to form the scene; the slow but steady crack of a whip, the plodding steps of a draft ox. The sound of a breeze moved quickly through the mottled light and dark greens of hillside stands of bamboo and tree and a woman, calf-deep in the flooded fields, raised her head from the transplanting, pausing motionless to enjoy its refreshing touch.
As dusk fell in the valley of Zhou Luo a combination of haze and darkness obscured the finer details of the mountains above, but their hulking shapes dominated the horizon and for the first time in months the mountains rather than the valleys that seperated them became the dominant element. In this moment, I found myself thinking of missing the mountains of Colorado and that my impending return home might be something I'm ready for.
