What I Actually Did in Mainland China

When I first came to Guangzhou, it was at the tail end of a whirlwind month in Hong Kong. Towards the end, I didn’t have any days off or time to mentally prepare for traveling to what may not have been a new country, but was definitely a different culture. So I arrived in Guangzhou on a Saturday night, after running around Hong Kong all day in an “Amazing Race” type bonding activity with the other interns. Arriving with no preparations, no expectations, and no local currency, I half-heartedly threw a prayer out into the universe that a city I’d never given anything to would embrace me anyway.

And it did.

Everyone I met and worked with in Guangzhou had an incredible strength and generosity of spirit. A lot of that comes from the fact that Chinese culture is much more about checking in with your neighbor and social responsibility than western culture, and also that the people in Guangzhou seem to take a greater satisfaction in their day to day lives. This is not to say that they are at all blind or ignorant to societal issues, or any problems they may have with the government, but it seems to me that they choose to devote their time to improving the quality of life in their community, rather than constantly complaining about larger scale issues. But they far from complacent. They just focus their immediate efforts on the things they can change, and don’t get neurotic about the things that will take a little more time.

Imagine if Americans weren’t constantly dissatisfied!

That Monday, I met the 30 campers who would be my window to the eastern world for the next 10 days. They were all between the ages of 6 and 10, and, knowing very little English, understandably preferred to speak Chinese. In Hong Kong all the children’s programs I’d worked with were conducted in English, with one of the goals being to improve the kids’ language skills. However, this camp was about character education, and teaching a 6 year old about this stuff was hard enough without throwing a foreign language into the mix.

Now, what exactly is taught in a YMCA character building camp, you ask? Honesty, Caring, Respect, and Responsibility, the 4 words that all American YMCA employees memorize before their initial interview and then forget about until they see them on large banners in the gym or aquatics centers. In Asia, they actually market every one of their projects and courses as pertaining to one or more of those values.

This isn’t to say that American YMCA summer camps are full of a bunch of heathens, but sometimes we get a little bit lazy in summarizing to the kids why we’re doing so much team building, or doing a charity event, or practicing critical thinking through games.

Being a camp counselor in Asia is not the same job as being a camp counselor in America. The expectations are completely different. In America, a counselor’s job is basically to ferry the kids around from one activity to the next, play games during free time, and to make sure the kids come home from camp in one piece every day. In Asia, a counselor takes on the role of programs coordinator and teacher, both designing and implementing the lessons and activities. It’s a lot more responsibility than I was expecting, but it also came with a great deal of freedom and possibility.

The first few days were tough, as everyone was figuring out what my role in the camp could and couldn’t be. Not speaking the language made it very difficult for me to take a leadership role in the activities, but I could certainly contribute by designing them. After a few days, the kids shocked me by starting to communicate with me, knowing full well that I knew even less Chinese than they knew English. The older ones used hand gestures, drawings, and miming to get their point across, while the younger ones would run up to me, say something in Chinese, smile, and run away again. It was amazing, and it made me kick myself for not trying as hard as they were to communicate from the beginning. One very little girl named Alice took it upon herself to teach me some Mandarin, and by the end of my 10 days I had a group of 5 teachers and a very long list of new words.

I’ve only just begun to process my time in Guangzhou, but I do know that I felt life experiences happening to me every day, even if I couldn’t define them. The culture in mainland China is beautiful, and the kids are curious, keen, and kind. Had I not been so excited to return home and see all my friends and family before going back to school, leaving Guangzhou would have been truly heartbreaking.