Yes, that is the famous Nathan being badgered by fans and paparazzi for his autograph and photo. Nathan had me fooled – I just thought he was an ordinary Arkansas kid with a computer science degree and a nice wife. But his cover was blown by the fact that band started playing the minute we walked thru the security gates at WenHui Primary School.
Nathan and I were invited to WenHui Primary School, a private Elementary school yesterday, to help celebrate two holidays – International Childrens’ Day and Dragon Boat Festival. We traveled with Mr. Chen, our Assistant Dean of the English Dept and whose son attends WenHui, along with his secretary for research Mrs. Wang.
After being led to our seats in the auditorium under the thunder of clapper applause, Nathan was immediately coerced into giving an impromptu speech. He did us proud. He sounded like he had prepared for hours. Very smooth and even a couple Chinese words thrown in to impress the audience. I am sure that this speech and the fact that he is cute – sent him into the ranks of a superstar. I had a really hard time not chuckling with all the students crowding around him to get his autograph.
We watched the students perform on different instruments such as the GuZheng (21 strings) and the ErHu (2 strings), as well as dance, sing and do martial arts. The children were all extremely talented but my pictures don’t begin to show their skills. After the performances there were fair like activities outside such as picking up marbles using chopsticks, dragon boat race (the kids’ feet were hooked together) and of course lots of pictures (mostly of Nathan).
We were invited to the school cafeteria and fed a traditional Dragon Boat Festival meal of Zhongzi, which is pyramid shaped sticky rice with meat or egg filling wrapped in leaves, along with a hard boiled egg and a couple shots of an alcoholic drink. Ganbei! Yes, there was alcohol on a school ground and it definitely wasn’t a sipping wine, it was one of those shots you have to slug down. We were even given a gift bag of more Zhongzi and hard-boiled eggs. I think they must give really practical gifts because I got laundry soap and toothpaste for Mothers’ day and now food. We should probably do more of this in the US.
A wonderful experience and day, thank you WenHui Primary!
Side Note Information about the Dragon Boat Festival can be found here
http://www.c-c-c.org/chineseculture/festival/dragonboat/dragon.html
