After breakfast we headed to the No. 2 High School which is the best high school in Quzhou. You have to apply to get accepted. It also includes a middle school. Once you're 16 you may choose to live on campus.
The school grounds are beautiful. Very wooded, though my guess is the students rarely go into the woods. It just didn't look like it. Although, I'd bet I'd find a cozy nook to call my own, especially in a school of 4000 students. But then I've been told that alone time isn't a common Chinese attribute, which now that I think about it is a little surprising considering so many are only children or have quite an age difference between siblings.
I was immediately approached by two students interviewing me for the school paper. I'd love to read what they wrote. Our first stop was inside a museum type building, the museum was an historical timeline of the Exchange Teachers the No. 2 HS has been involved with. What I found most amazing in the museum was the types of artifacts that had been preserved there. Any trinket a Chinese teacher may have received as a gift from an American during his/her stay was in there with a little note explaining it. Many shirts, blankets, notes, Red Wing pennants. I'm certain that from an American perspective "we" expected the clothes to be worn, the blankets to be used, the items to be used or kept in the receivers home. With regards to the notes, I wonder if these were the best notes the teacher received or these were extras? How did the teacher decide what to give to the Museum? Do any of the teachers have the opportunity to go back in there? Do any of them ever go back in there? Have they all seen the museum?
Then while we were in the museum, a gentleman who had graduated from No. 2 HS dedicated some pictures to the museum in honor of the WWII pilots that China sheltered. I knew just a little about why Quzhou was our sister city before arriving in China, but I learned a lot more while we were there. In a nutshell, during WWII the US was bombing Japan, but of course the pilots couldn't make it back to the US so since Japan was also occupying China, China allowed the US to use some of their airbases, one of which was in Quzhou. In fact, the Chinese helped so much that some 80 pilots crashed and 64 of them were rescued. The Chinese not only housed them on the airbase they also fed them and hid them in a cave next to the airbase. Someone in Red Wing (I'm sorry I don't know who) wanted to recognize Quzhou's role and so helped establish it as a sister city.
Then we went into a classroom and some students were already there ready to do a sketch of each of us. Mine turned out pretty well. Another student came in and playe Auld Lange Syne on his clarinet. We then went to visit classrooms. I went into one room and was amazed at how many students were in the small room and how many books they had. I told them about our visit and about snow and what we do during the winter a couple of students asked some really good questions and a couple told me about the Autumn Moon Festival.
Finally, we were off to lunch and then the Folk Museum. I could have spent more time and could have used my good camera to explore the Folk Museum. It was a very small ancient town. I found lots of great patterns.
The the Municipal Speeches and Municipal banquet, then to Quzhou College for a performance. The performance included so many acts, it was out of this world. We really lucked out too, because this performance is only in Quzhou once every four years.
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