Having the students here is, for the most part, a vacation for them but Dennis hoped that they would also learn.  None of us is quite clear on what the lesson is but we are all engaged in it fully.  Yesterday, Sally took the four girls and taught them to start the outboard and run the boat.  In and of it self, that may not seem like so much but these girls are much more soft and petite than our local femmes.  They have been raised to dress nicely, be pleasant, study, work, maybe cook and shop.  And not much else.  Hong Kong life doesn’t leave much room for much else.  They have never run a motor of any kind in their lives.  But Sally’s 9.9 Evinrude empowered them!  Testosterone charged teenage Chinese mutant boaters!  Pretty funny to see them squirelling all over, practically out of control, shrieking and covering their eyes while Sally constantly lurched over them to save a collision.  Power Squadron it was definitely NOT!

This boat handling lesson followed on the kayak lesson the day before.  That went well.  Amusing but well.  Queenie (we have Annie, Winnie and Queenie with Kin and Su-yen.  4 girls, one boy.  Queenie is the smallest at about 80 pounds.  Even the smallest kayak makes her look like the proverbial bump on a log.  The kayak paddle was almost as thick as her arms!  But they are all pretty game and even Queenie kept up as Sally, John and Jorge guided them around the bay and the peninsula while I took the required pictures.  You have to have pictures for everything!

The strangest subjects for pictures are the meals.  Breakfast, lunch, dinner and even snacks are digitally recorded.  “Why do you take pictures of meals?” I asked.  “They are so beautiful and we remember meals more than anything!” So much for the kayak lessons, I guess.  Maybe a little cream cheese spread on the deck…….?

Kin is keen (same pronunciation) to be the lumberjack that Winson (a previous year student) claims to be after having chopped wood when he was here.  Winson took 2 hours to whack his way through one round of wood.  He wouldn’t give up until he had that round split.  But Kin got an unexpectedly dry piece  and managed to split it after about ten minutes and twenty or thirty whacks.  We have a new champion! (in the under-125 pound class, anyway).

Because Kin was pumped and looking for more wood to cut, I offered to take him log salvaging so that he’d have more to practice on.  We headed for a nearby beach and selected a slender 8 inch round log, admittedly a good 30 feet long.  Kin and I got out on the beach with our log-dogs, grappler, ropes, axe, hammer and chainsaw and proceed to get the log down to the water from the high water mark to where we could then tow it to our home beach.  Conceptually, a piece of cake.

But this log was particularly dense for it’s size and was unexpectedly heavy.  ‘Course, I didn’t let on.  It was not really too heavy for me but Kin had met his match and, to be frank, the beach rocks were pretty awkward for both of us.  Not that he would admit it, either.  After he and I struggled for a bit, I mercifully cut the log in two and we schlepped the halves down the rocky beach.  Kin was tested.  We took the log back to my high-line and I fired up the winch to haul it to the top.  But first we had to set chokes and that required scrambling up and down the steep hill (about 100 feet at 35/40 degrees).  Then we hauled it up with the winch screaming.   When the logs were up, I was going to drag them to the sawhorse and chainsaw them into rounds.  I looked at Kin.  He looked at me.  His eyes were wet.  Sweat, mostly.  I think.  He was not looking forward to the next step.  “Well, that is enough for now.” I said.  “We’ll finish tomorrow.” Kin’s relief from that news was palpable.  “Maybe I help girls do cooking!” And he was gone.

I am not so sure that his choice was a good one.  We do all the meals and the kids do the dishes.  But for one night, they cook Chinese food and I do the dishes.  Yesterday they started to cook at 3:00 pm.  Five (count ’em) students going full tilt in the kitchen until 8:00 pm.  When Sal and I are in the kitchen together, we feel as if it is crowded and we often bump into each other.  She takes up a lot of room.  They danced and pirouetted around each other graciously for five hours.  FIVE hours!  Then we ate.  The food was excellent. 

Winnie was the ‘lead hand’ and knows how to cook.  But – OHMYGAWD!  The dishes!  And the time!  These guys worked very hard to do a great meal but no wonder MacDonald’s is popular in China.  I had no idea Chinese cooking was so labour intensive.  We must have all folded dumplings for half an hour at least!  That’s seven dumpling folders for 30 minutes or 210 minutes of intense dumpling folding – NOT counting making the pastry and the filling!! 

That is over three man-hours to make enough dumplings for three men to eat in ten minutes!  Think about that.  China is already poised to become the world’s largest economy and it is only the meal preparation time that is holding them back.  Another few thousand more MacDonalds and KFCs and the world is theirs!! 

Interesting note: we talked about education and, amongst other things, learned that the kids had been taught European and American History.  Also basic Chinese history.  But they have little knowledge of Hong Kong history.  No knowledge of SE Asian history.  Seems it is not deemed as important as American history.  On the same theme: Kin is a sociology student.  Their lessons are based on American and European books and models.  They have no sociology based on Chinese society!?

And all the students say that their English is poor (and it is) and yet, all the courses taught at the university are taught in English!  All except Chinese language and some ‘home economics’/life style courses.  I asked if their Chinese was good…….”No, our Chinese language skills very bad.  We speak good ‘street’ Cantonese but our written and grammatical language skills are poor.”

“So let me get this right…………?  You are amongst the best educated in Hong Kong and can’t speak either of the two official languages well.  How is this possible?  How can you do the job you are trained to do?”

“It is not hard to do a good job in Hong Kong because we all speak the same.  But it is very much harder to do that same job anywhere else – especially overseas.  We had one professor of Chinese languages come from Beijing and he had to leave because he couldn’t understand the students!”

And, complicating matters, it seems the Chinese rely even more on acronyms and short cuts than we do.  Especially the new ‘text language’.  Some students have even submitted papers with ‘texting’ language ( for example: ICU instead of I see you).  Once again I am struck with the dichotomy of smart, intelligent, hard working students who, for reasons local and cultural, are hamstrung by their own habits.

Maybe we all are.