Mid-Autumn Festival Weekend

I officially began my English Teaching Duties this past week with one-on-one tutoring of students.  I am working in the Center for Language in Education, a Department within the Hong Kong Institute of Education.  My duties are comprised of helping students when they come to me asking to please, "Help them be fluent in English," or "Help them pass the IELTS" a test that ensures they get a teaching job at graduation.  Faced with these vague, overwhelming questions, I condense my efforts into a 30-minute lesson.  The most common format for this lesson is to begin with some conversation, asking about their families, themselves, their needs.  From this, I can focus on any obvious pronunciation difficulties.  Some of the most frequent mistakes are with "d" and "the," which even native English speakers have trouble distinguishing.  From there we proceed to reading short stories in which we identify new vocabulary.  I then ask them to define that vocabulary, make flash cards with the words and definitions, and begin to use it in conversations with fellow students and teachers. 

In addition to these one-on-one tutoring sessions, I will also be teaching small classes of seven students.  These classes go by the acronyms of SAPS and WAPS on campus, and alternatively focus on improving students speaking and listening skills.  They also target different levels of language students.  So for example, in one class with more advanced students we will discuss war Photography in the context of the Vietnam War, while less-advanced students will write essays recounting their personal experiences.  My French language class and club will further enliven my teaching responsibilities.  Many students at the Hong Kong Institute of Education come from low-income families, but the government provides scholarships for students with even a small amount of foreign language ability to go abroad each summer.  My task is to figure out how to teach students basic French language skills so they will qualify for these scholarships, and have an opportunity they would not otherwise have.

Being a part of a university campus in Hong Kong allows me to appreciate the different characters of Hong Kong, be it the urbanity of an art exhibit, or the celebration of local holidays.  This past weekend I experienced both.  I visited an art exhibit entitled "J'aime l'argent" or "I like money" which examined the role of money in society.  The exhibit was unique in that it examined how money and the concrete images it disseminates through society can influence social values.  The artists had created fake money, envisioning an environmentally and socially responsible society. 

After this foray into the art world, I celebrated the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival.  During the Mid-Autumn Festival families gather to be together, witness the autumnal equinox, and light paper lanterns in celebration.  According to locals, in the 14th century, rebels planned an uprising against the Mongols by secreting messages inside cakes.  Today these cakes are called “moon cakes” and are beautiful, very dense, very sweet confections.  Families celebrate the holiday by eating their moon cakes under the moonlight.  Since mid-autumn festival is very much a family holiday, and I and the other ETA's are without families here in Hong Kong, we had our own family gathering making frozen dumplings, contemplating the full moon, and of course eating moon cake.

Walking around campus and on some of the streets near where I live, I saw families gathered on their patios hanging lanterns, and small children excitedly carrying their paper lanterns while clutching a parent’s hand.  I also witnessed the Tai Hang Fire Dragon Dance, accompanied by my friend Vanessa, a Chinese journalist working in Hong Kong.  According to Vanessa, this dance is unusual.   The Hong Kong Tourism Board describes the myth accompanying the dance, as follows:

     "Over a century ago, Tai Hang was a village whose inhabitants lived off of farming and fishing. A few days before the Mid-Autumn Festival a typhoon and then a plague wreaked havoc on the village. While the villagers were repairing the damage, a python entered the village and ate their livestock. According to some villagers, the python was the son of the Dragon King. The only way to stop the havoc which had beset their village was to dance a fire dance for three days and nights during the upcoming Mid-Autumn Festival. The villagers made a big fire dragon of straw and stuck incense into the dragon. They lit firecrackers. They danced for three days and three nights and the plague disappeared"      (DiscoverHongKong).

Dancers ran through the streets, supporting the big fire "dragon" and advancing to the sound of pounding drums.  It was a wonderful event, mixing Hong Kong Chinese celebrating their holiday, and western tourists like me there to witness and enjoy it.