From my Tingzijian

At both schools we visited, we took along clothing (including lots of hats and scarves from my knitting group, the Shanghai Guild), blankets, and toys for the principal and teachers to distribute. But the main purpose was to follow up on monetary donations to purchase a library — in each case, the school’s first.. (A library can be donated for 15,000 rmb, or roughly US$2,000.)

Heart to Heart asks the schools to make the purchases for a good reason — they know what they can use. They want to avoid making direct donations that turn out not to be of use. (For example, check out these dusty computers and desks,which I photographed through a broken window,Apparently they were donated some time ago. “We don’t have anyone to teach how to use them,” the principal said.

Back to the books. There were some amusing titlesbut apparently a great variety ranging from Chinese classicsto tales from overseas.Christine Cullen, Heart to Heart’s founder and director, told of a visit to another school, where a student was giving a thank you speech, and then broke away from her text to exclaim in excitement, “The principal says that during our break we can come in and read the books as much as we want!”

Still, there is a lot to be desired. In each school, when we saw the actual library, the books were laid out on desktops.Shelving would be a great addition.

And fixing the broken windows would be a help, not to mention making sure that the roof over the books doesn’t leak.

ceiling over corridor outside library

At the first school we visited, we foreign guests were ushered into a meeting room for greetings, a warm cup of tea, and for short speeches of thanks.

Zhen Tou Town, You Shan Primary School

We also took a peek at the books acquired with the money we were bearing (donated by Marks and Spencer, which has a big store in Shanghai now).I lingered at the back of the room and finally poked my head outside to see what was going on. A group of kids in a classroom down the way was doing the same thing. Lao wai! they shrieked when they saw me, and darted back inside.Not surprising — lao wai (老外）means “foreigner,” and they don’t usually see many of us. But in this case, it had an extra ironic twist: while 老 may have a connotation of respect, it literally means “old.” And  there were quite a few old foreigners hanging around these kids — right over their heads. (Look to the right and up.)

Newton and Edison, I believe.

Elsewhere, at another school, we saw other important figures on the wall, including some foreigners, only some of whom I recognized:Here’s the one I wonder about — is this really Stalin?

Who is this a portrait o

Chinese readers, I’m using a lifeline on this one!

What is that thing Kathy is sitting on, and why is she smiling, you ask.

Now erase that thought. I’ll get off and give you a turn to look at it.

Yep, under that grill and ash, there are live coals. Pretty nifty, eh?

I knew what it was, because I’d seen them variously put to use the night before. Here’s a shopkeeper using one to toast her hands and feet:

So, it had been pouring rain all day long, really grim

You Shan Primary School courtyard

so our little band couldn’t help getting damp and chilled as we slogged from house to house, village to village, school to school.

So naturally, when we stopped for dinner and were practically shaking, the staff brought in a couple of whatchamacallits and we took turns sitting on them.

We liked them so much, we decided to buy some. I got a pair and, all told, our group bought twenty (!) in fact. After all, we knew that once we’d delivered all our stuff, there would be plenty of room on the bus. Can you imagine the conversation between our minder, who called the guy who supplied them?

“Liu, this is Zhang. Listen, I’ve got an emergency on my hands! These foreigners… Lord only knows what they’re thinking. Anyhow, can you possibly round me up a dozen or so bun-warmers? Yeah, I know, we make combs and fans and all sorts of carved geegaws, and what do they want? Yeah, I know, they’re too big for them and will probably fall off — look, just do your best, ok?”

“Whoa…, no problem! I’ll get on the horn with my no-good brother-in-law and tell him to bring all the ones he’s got over at the house. He owes me anyhow, remember how he got plastered and embarrassed me last month drinking all the bai jiu? What’d you tell them they’d have to pay? 100 rmb each?!? Whoohoo, a vacation in sunny Sanya is looking good!”

Sure enough, a guy showed up within the hour (after 7:00 pm, still raining) with a pile of the things on the back of a pickup truck.

So here’s one of my bun warmers, back home on the front stoop in Shanghai:

Well it seemed like a really, really good idea at the time.

PS: I was with Heart to Heart Shanghai, an amazing organization that brings kids in need of heart surgery to Shanghai and pays for their surgery. We were in rural Jiangxi Province to check up on some kids and their families post-surgery and bring them supplies… also books to schools that haven’t previously had any. If there’s anything you’d like to see or know about that — like photos of the adorable kids and their families, or the hillsides blooming with rapeseed flowers among the tea bushes –  you just let me know.