2nd day of Language class

The second day of classes was focused on language and allowing students to catch up with study, sleep, chores, etc. After lunch, thirty-minute individual sessions were held in the classrooms. When students weren’t in their sessions, they did laundry, bought phone cards for cell phones, visited the Internet café outside campus and rested. At six in the evening, students met in the lobby for a dinner to be held off campus. The dean of the International school hosted a dinner at a local restaurant called McFound Restaurant. Truly a synthesis, this restaurant had the décor of a European beer house, Impressionist oil paintings on the walls, Italian trattoria table settings and Chinese delicacies on the menu.

Students sat at two large tables in a private room and enjoyed all kinds of new foods, yet to be prepared in the dorm’s cafeteria. After dinner students sang children’s songs in Chinese and English and a group of students even tried their hand at impromptu translation of “I’m a Little Teapot”, which turned out to be a well received song since the after dinner entertainment was to visit a tea house to sample Guilin’s tea offerings and to learn about tea culture.

After dinner, students returned to the bus, which drove them to a teahouse close to GXNU’s campus. In the teahouse, students tried several kinds of tea grown around Guilin and purchased tea, teacups, teapots and other tea amenities. Yu Laoshi, Qin Laoshi and Cai Laoshi presided over the various tables, requesting certain teas from the pourers so the students could taste a variety of teas before choosing which ones to buy.

Students watched in wonder as the pourers went through their ritual for making tea. The tea is washed before steeped, cups are washed and heated with lightly steeped tea and the tea brewed is always a very small quantity so that over-brewing won’t occur. For students who generally throw a bag of tea into a cup of hot water, it became very clear that the Chinese take tea very seriously and that brewing and drinking tea is an art form in itself.