Kunming Mission Trip April 2000
Introduction
My
trip to Kunming was not anticipated because I only returned to Singapore
recently after spending a year in Hull, England last year. My involvement occurred rather suddenly and
unexpectedly.
I
met Mr and Mrs Fong in March at my hospital while they were undergoing some
medical check up. I completely dismissed
our chance meeting until we met again in church on a Sunday. I was interpreting for the 9am Prayer and
Praise. After the service, I was
approached by her to see if I was interested to join them back in Kunming,
China for a mission trip. I politely
turned her down because I was busy already with my involvement in the Ministry
for the Hearing Impaired. Mrs Fong was
rather persistent, I was about to walk away when she mentioned that there are a
group of hearing impaired youths at Project Grace whom I may be
interested. This made me stop to
reconsider. Well, the rest is history.
Adoption of the Yi People
Wesley
Methodist Church Missions Committee decided to adopt the Yi People in 1998 as
part of a long-term mission commitment for the church. The Yi people are the largest minority group
of many of the minority groups of China.
They lived in the southern province of China in the Yunnan Province. Yi nation is one of
ancient nations in Yunnan. Their ancient people were related with Qiang nation,
now the population of 4.05 million . They are distributed over Chuxiong,
Honghe, Ailaoshang and areas of Xiaoliangshang in Yunnan. Their language is a
branch of the family of Tibetan and Myanmar languages. Yi lives in a type of
house of wood timbers battlement.
The fire of fireplace ( a hollow dug on the ground) is
never put off a year around in their houses. It is the living center of the
family so called "Fireplace Culture".Yi’s nature is so forthright,
good at drinking , singing and having a felt on the back. The family system is
the structure of a husband and one wife forming a small family. They prefer to
the black color, so in the history the Yi nobleman was always in black, the
white represented the "Wazi" meaning the serfs. The man has a black
scarf around the head and a set of black clothes. But the woman is in colorful
shining clothes.Yi nation believes in the Master of Soil and multi-Gods religion.
Their main holiday is the "Festival of Torch" .(Around in March)
Yunnan is a
province of multi-minorities inhabited . Ten million minorities live in mountain
tribal villages in Yunnan. Seventeen thousand of them are without medical care,
running water, electricity or other energy sources. Over two million of the
provincial population are handicapped.
Among the 56 nations in China, there are 25
kinds of minorities in Yunnan, they are Yi, Bai, Hani, Dai, Zhuang, Miao, Lisu,
Hui, Lahu, Wa, Naxi, Yao, Jingpo, Tibetan, Blang, Bouyei, Pumi, Achang, Nu,
Jino, De’ang, Mongol, Shui, Manchu and Drung nations. Their total population
has reached up 12.85 million and taken the 30% of total population in Yunnan.
But the inhabited areas had occupied around 70% of total areas of Yunnan.
Through long historical development, they have formed the different folk
customs which is a kind of social phenomenon. We can see their developing
history from the behavior of production, living, households, rites, foods and
religions. These have very worthy sections of human developing in the
history. Many of them are farmers and
they live in the hills of Yunnan.
Wesley
decided to assist Project Grace as it was already there in Kunming, the capital
of Yunnan.
One
can explore more on this website.
http://www.hbpage.com/index/index.htm
The Missionaries
Mr
and Mrs Fong represented Wesley Methodist Church for the last 2 years in
Kunming. They were supported by Wesley
Methodist Church, but worked under Project Grace as full time staff.
They
coordinated Village Doctor Training Programs, Community Development Programs as
well as Teacher Training Programs. For
the last 2 years, they receive medical personnel from Singapore as well as
other parts of the world, including America and the United Kingdom to Kunming
and coordinated training programs for bare-foot doctors.
EMAS
Projects
Project Grace
Project
Grace is funded by the Tear Fund and other Christian charity
organizations. They are not allowed to
evangelize, but they are to participate in Community Development and Poverty
alleviation Programs for the villages consisting mainly of Chinese minority
groups. It is run by 3 American doctors,
of which one is a Caucasian and two are American-Chinese doctors.
Besides
the Village Doctor training Program, they also have a Hearing Impaired Training
Program at Project Grace run by a
British sign language and audiology teacher.
She has been there for the last 3 years and she works with hearing
impaired students from the villages.
Yunnan province
is one of the poorest in China. Among it's population of 38 million there are
12 million minority tribal people and 2.6 million handicapped people who live
in mountainous villages. The average local income is less than $40 US. A group
of Christian individuals and organizations, including EMAS, under the umbrella
of Project Grace, have identified some of their medical and social needs, and
are mobilizing to address them.
Each village
doctor in Yunnan province looks after over 1000 patients scattered in mountainous
tribal villages. Only a third of the doctors have had any formal training. In
addition, there are 17,000 villages without any medical care whatsoever. There
is a great need to upgrade and train more village doctors to provide basic
medical care to the mountain villagers. EMAS, through it's Adopt a Village
Doctor Project and volunteer teaching missions has contributed to the village
doctor training project for the past 3 years. The newly established Kunming
Medical Ministry within Project Grace will set up a central Village Doctor
Training Centre to serve remote regions by training additional village health
workers.
Another area of
social concern in Yunnan is the lack of adequate assistance to handicapped
people. The only high school designated for the 650,000 handicapped students is
located in Kunming and has an enrollment of 450 students. The Project Grace
partners have established a vocational training facility for teens both from
the handicapped high school and for those who haven't qualified for admission.
Most of these handicapped teenagers come
from mountainous tribal villages and cannot afford to pay for their medical and
dental needs. Kunming Medical Ministry will provide an in-house medical-dental
clinic for the handicapped students. EMAS has provided the capital funding for
the medical-dental clinic and has agreed to help with the operating expenses of
Kunming Medical Ministry.
Village
doctor trainee sponsorship is $30 per student per
month. We hope to sponsor a class of 50, to start to meet the needs of the
17,000 villages without doctors.
Deaf
training - provides 40 deaf students with skills
for a life other than begging. Sponsorship of a deaf student is $30 per month
for 5 months.
Handicapped
vocational training is set up for 80 handicapped
students who fail to qualify for high school. It provides them with skills to
make a meaningful living. Sponsoring a vocational trainee costs $30 per month
for 5 months.
Medical
clinic - provides free medical care and medicine to
the handicapped students and trainees of KMM. It is also a teaching unit for
the village doctor trainees. EMAS agrees to fund $5,000 next year.
Dental
clinic - provides village dentist teaching and
dental care for the students. EMAS will fund $6,000 next year.
(More
on website http://www.cmdsemas.ca/projects_grace.html)
Day
1 (Sunday 9/4/2000)
We
arrived at Kunming Airport around 12:30pm after departing from Singapore at
about 8:30am. Immigration and health
declaration was smooth. The team
consisted of 7 people, 3 of us are doctors.
Then
comes the baggage claim. It took almost 45 minutes for all the bags to be put
onto the conveyor belt. One of the bags
got caught in the X-ray machine and so we were waved past that check point
quickly in order not to hold up the queue as there were important officials
visiting Kunming for the Tourism Festival the next day. None of our bags were emptied and checked.
Mr
and Mrs Fong, the missionary couple was there at the Airport with their
assistant to receive us. We headed for
lunch after leaving the airport. They
told us as first time guests, we are to try the local “Guo Chiao Mian Xian” which
means “to cross the bridge noodle”.
There we had our first taste of Kunming food which is usually hot soup
with lots of boiled vegetables mixed with chili and monosodium glutamate added
to the soup. Without the flavoring, the
soup is usually rather bland as meat is a rarity in Yunnan as the area consists
of poor minority groups of villagers.
We
checked into the local hotel which is newly built after lunch and proceeded to
unload the items which we have brought over for the Mission trip. They were carefully repacked into another bag
and brought out of the hotel room into the car so as not to arouse any
suspicion.
Mrs
Fong then brought a few of us to attend the local underground church group for
Bible Study. We were briefed that we are
to pray with our eyes opened and to mask our sharing sessions and Bible study
with loud television or radio on to drown our voices. Christians are not allowed to attend churches
which are not approved by the Central government. People running the ‘approved’ churches have
been screened carefully so that no undesirable material can be preached accidentally.
We
had a good time at the house church and the meeting ended with a time of
fellowship with the usual offering of local fruits and sweets.
We
returned to the hotel to find out that we cannot stay at the hotel as the
management has not received the “license
to put up foreigners” including us (we are considered Hua Chiao which means
Chinese from overseas). Obviously we
were discovered that we have deviated from the normal routine of ordinary
tourists visiting Kunming.
The
manager called another hotel to put the group of us up. We had to check into another hotel which has
already received the “approved license” to allow foreigners to stay.
That
evening, we met with the 34-member bare-foot doctors team for the first time at
Project Grace in Kunming. Most of them
come from the various tribal village representing their respective minority
race. They may not be highly educated,
but the village headman for being outstanding in character, moral, compassion
and innovativeness have nominated them.
This
group of students were special as they had been to Project Grace previously a
few years ago. They are here this time
to attend the 1st Advanced Village Doctor Upgrading Course.
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Preparation of the medication for the Field Trip (photo 1)
The
students together with our 7-member Singapore team, the nursing officer, a
lecturer from the Kunming Medical University specializing in infectious
diseases, 3 American missionary doctors were all divided into 4 teams. We went through our final coordination
meeting including packing of the medicines needed for our trip to the village
for the next day. The head of the
Project Grace briefed us about the different kinds of illnesses we would be
seeing during the out-station trip. For
the others who belonged to non medical
professions, they were briefed about their responsibility in crowd
control. This is necessary as the
villages usually swarm the make shift clinic in hordes to receive free medical
care.
Day
2 (Monday 10/4/2000)
We
woke up at 7:30am to go down to Project Grace after being driven from the
hotel. We have repacked our bags into 2
so that we only need to carry our utility bags to the village. The other one can be left locked in Project
Grace. We do not anticipate to shower or
take baths and were prepared to rough it out for 3 nights and return to Kunming
on Thursday morning.
The
4 teams were separated into 3 buses as we drove along the main expressway out
of Kunming to the town of Hua Lin (flower forest). The journey took about 6 hours. We arrived in the town and was met with the
village officials who took us further to the rural villagers as escorts. They brought us as prearranged to the Police
quarters of Yu Lu (open rain). Yu Lu
will be the central point of all the villages we will be visiting for the next
3 days amongst the 4 teams.
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Uploading of baggage and medicine onto the Minibuses (Photo 2)
Loading onto the minibuses to go to the villages (Photo 3)
They
allowed us to move freely within the police compound, but we are not to wander
around in the village without permission.
Anyway
the journey was long and tiring and we were not in the mood to explore. We quickly settled down in the dormitories
and got ready for the next day.
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View from the top of my dormitory in the center of Yulu Police Quarters. (Photo 4)
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View behind my dormitory along the Main Street through the
village (Photo 5)
Day
3 (Tuesday 11/4/2000)
I
was put into Bravo Team. We had a total
of 12 students (bare-foot doctors) with us.
Dr Yan, the lecturer from Kunming Medical University as well as Mrs Fong
and her lady assistant were in the team. Our first stop was a primary school
with 240 students.
We
drove through treacherous mud roads with the steep slopes on one side revealing
a dangerous plunge into the gorge below should the minibus loose control. The same driver who drove us along the
expressway were not allowed to continue the journey with us. Another set of drivers were acquired as they
are more familiar with these treacherous roads.
Unfortunately these buses looked as if they were the
“city-rejects”. On the other side of the
road, is another steep slope rising to the peaks of the mountain range. The roads which the buses traveled were
mainly large enough for one way traffic.
Should they meet with on-coming traffic, they would either engage in a
honking competition to see who will back up, or they will back to a path which
is marginally wider to allow 2 minibuses pass precariously close and get on
with their journey in opposite directions.
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Set
of buses which further took us to the village from the Police Quarters (Photo
6)
The
team traveled in 2 minibuses and the Project Grace jeep into the surrounding
village. Farmers mostly occupy these villages. The school as well as the village head hut
was the central buildings in the village.
Some of the schools offer lodging for the students who stay very far
from the village.
Our
minibus refused to start and all of us have to get down the minibus to
push. Fortunately, the Police Quarters
was situated at the top of the hill. We
pushed it out onto the street and he put the bus in first gear and jumped
started the bus. We hopped onto the bus
without thinking what if it stalled at the bottom of the gorge.
Sleeping quarters
in the Yulu Police Quarters (Photo 7)
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We
arrived at the school with the whole school turning out to welcome us in 2 neat
rows on both sides of the courtyard clapping and shouting “welcome”. The primary school was 24 km from the Yulu
Police Quarters. The school was named Lu
Chang Wan Primary School. It means
“aluminum factory” primary school. It was
really a grand sight as we could see them in the distance as our bus rumbled
into the valley. The school was located
at the foot of a wide valley.
We
unloaded our medicines and other equipment and then assembled the students at
the courtyard in separate rows according to their standard. The teachers and principal were also there to
greet us.
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We started our program, after changing into our white coats and caps, with an anti-smoking advice to the students. Of course, it was difficult to convey the message with their form teachers puffing away behind them. Then comes the Personal Hygiene message. Most of these students do not have a habit to
wash their hands after they have gone to
the toilet. The toilets in the village
is terrible as there is no proper flushing system. All the villagers pass motion into a designated
latrine which is just a large hole in
the ground under a concrete shelter from the elements. Usually one can see the piles of human waste
amongst the paper, flies, maggots and solids of different shapes, colour and
consistency.
Furthermore,
the children play by the roadside where the donkeys, water buffaloes and dogs
pass their waste indiscriminately on the road to be later flattened by the
passing vehicles.
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Anti-smoking Campaign at the First Primary School ( Photo 10 )
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Therefore we taught the students the reasons for washing their hands regularly as well as the technique to scrub with soap and water. This included using their nails to remove the dirt under their fingernails and also regularly trimming of their nails.
Lunch Time At Lu
Chang Wan Primary School (Photo 11)
After
the lesson, comes the practical. We
lined them up behind a basin of water and gave them a piece of soap. We showed them how to wash their hands and
stood there to ensure it is carried out correctly. We noticed to our dismay that the well water
drawn for their washing is just as dirty.
The water used for washing turned black after every 4 children have
gotten their hands inside.
After
hand-washing, the students lined up to take their de-worming tablets. Some of them participated in a study conducted by Dr Yan who got samples
of sticky tape prints obtained after pressing the tape to the anus of the
randomly selected students. By
performing such a maneuver, cysts and
ova of the worms infesting the children can be studied carefully after fixing
the tape to a glass slide. The slide
will be brought back to the university
for further study under the microscope.
Lunch
was simple. A basin full of vegetable
soup and parts of chicken and pork mixed with salted vegetables was served with
large helpings of rice. The town
officials accompanied us during lunch as they filmed our every movement. The school caretaker who did all the cooking
was serving us with a large ladle. He
was from the Yi tribe and it is the custom of the Yi people to make sure all
the guests’ bowls are filled with rice throughout the meal. This included the bowl must be full when the
guest leaves the table.
Most
of us were not familiar with the custom including the bare–foot doctor
students. We tend to obediently finish
the bowl of rice which is in our hands.
To our surprise our host caretaker kept filling our bowls with
rice. We came to a point that we are too
full and tried to escape by leaving the table with the empty bowls. Now I realize why he has such a long and large
ladle. He would skillfully fill our
bowls even when we are quite a distance from the table. It was quite a comical sight as each of us
tried to evade him, until the town officials explained it is their custom that
the bowls must always be full.
While
we were taking our lunch, the school children were told to go home and tell
their families that we are providing free medical health care to them.
After
lunch, the entire village came to meet us.
We saw a total of 300 patients between the 14 of us that afternoon. When we left, the teachers and principal
gathered the school children again in 2 neat rows just outside their school to
say farewell to us.
That
night just before we retired, there was a large discussion to iron out the
administrative difficulties which we faced during the day. We were also briefed about the schools and
villages that the 4 teams will be visiting the next day. Lights out was quite early that day as most
of us were very tired.
Day
4 (Wednesday 12/4/2000)
The
next day, Team Bravo was to walk to a village which is about 2 km from the
Police Quarters. The school was called
Guo Ler Primary School (Happy Fruit).
This village consists of many Bai tribal people. They are called Bai because it means
white. They like to wear white as it
symbolizes truth and purity.
We
were met by the village head who led us on foot to his village. We took approximately 45 minutes carrying our
medicines and lunch, walking through fields ripe with wheat as well as herds of
water buffaloes.
We
entered a very old building which looked like a temple. There are no more churches and Buddhist
temples as the Communists will not allow the practice of religion
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Guo Ler Primary
School (Photo 13)
The
school takes only primary one to four students.
The older ones have to stay at the Yulu Village where the Police
Quarters were. The teachers live in the
school. Well watered is carried by the
students each day from the village well into the school and poured into a
concrete container in the middle of the school.
The water looks muddy, but it is used to boil tea for us.
We
followed the same routine of Anti-smoking campaign, Personal Hygiene Campaign,
practical of hand-washing and cutting of nails, sick parade for the students
and then break for lunch followed by seeing the students’ families later. We saw a total of 150 patients. But because the village is small and the
primary school only has an enrollment of 40 students, Mrs Fong told us to pack
up early to reinforce the Team Charlie which has gone to provide medical care
to the Yulu Primary School.
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Street Fair along
Main Street in Yulu (Photo 14)
As
we walked out of the Guo Ler Village and walked towards Yulu Village, we were
surprised to see there were many people from other villages gathering at the
main village. We could here the noise
and the bustle of the Main Street which was rare since we arrived in Yulu.
Main
Street was filled with merchants selling their vegetables, their livestock
(piglets, donkeys, chicken, duck) as well as other wares like farming tools,
clothes, shoes, traditional herbal medicine.
We realized why we needed to come to Yulu Primary School to reinforce
Team Charlie. The street fair has attracted
many other villagers and they all got to hear that Project Grace is providing
free medical care.
Team
Bravo was a welcomed sight for the former team who were running out of medicine
and they looked tired catering for the hundreds streaming into the primary
school.
We
quickly opened shop to support our colleagues and helped in crowd control. Additional medicine was brought by our
team. Despite that, we were also
overwhelmed. God was good because when
we could no longer cope with the number of patients, Team Delta arrived showing
surprise on their faces with the chaos within the school premises.
Their
medicine was quickly finished and by 4:00pm, we were turning away patients as
we no longer have any medicine left with us.
The people left the school dejected.
We could not help anymore.
That
night there was a tremendous sense of relief as the bare-foot doctor students
as well as the rest of the mission team knew that we have come to an end of a
successful trip. There was a short
briefing. We were surprised that the
Mayor of the town turned up after we have finished to greet us. He was very pleased with our work. Apparently the town as well as the village
officials were pleased with our public relations work amongst the villagers. We have not shown that we were in anyway
breaking our agreement that we will not evangelize. Little do they know that we have already sown
our seeds of love amongst the people. There
was congratulatory dinner in honor for us at the Police Headquarters. All the Police officials were invited to sit
with the Mayor for a time of celebration and toasting of whisky.
After
the dinner, there was the usual exchange of thanks and encouraging words from
both sides. The events were filmed on
tape. The students gathered to sing the
Chinese national anthem as well as 2 patriotic Chinese songs for the Mayor. It was quite a grand affair.
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Photo Taking
Session with the Mayor of Hua Lin (Photo 15)
Mayor is one with tie
standing to the left of the American missionary
Doctor
After
the Mayor and the rest left the Police Quarters, the students had a time of
celebration by teaching everybody the steps of their tribal dance. We spent the night dancing and singing
away. The mood was compounded by the
blackout which affected the whole village.
Day
5 (Thursday 13/4/2000)
We packed up to return to Kunming.
The journey was long and tedious, but it was made tolerable by the
continuous strains of Chinese hymns sung by the students all the way back to
Project Grace.
We arrived in the late afternoon
and unloaded our things before we checked into a new hotel for the night.
Day
6 (Friday 14/4/2000)
For
the rest of the team, their responsibility is almost over. I came back to Project Grace in the afternoon
to look for the Director of Deaf
Training. The person is Ms Ingrid
Simms. She came to Kunming 3 years ago,
trained as an audiologist and a teacher for the Deaf. She is from Ireland and came to work as part
of Project Grace.
(She
can be contacted at Project Grace c/o Huaxia Vocational School, Tudui, Yuchilu,
Kunming, Yunnan, People’s Republic of China 650118. e mail :
Ingrid@maf.org telephone: 8221231 13708850474)
When
I first saw her for the first time, she was sitting outside her office with a
group of deaf girls and they were learning how to make slippers by knitting the
top of the slippers with cotton flax.
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Deaf Girls from Different Minority Groups at
Project Grace holding balloon sculptures
We
soon got to chat about her work here amongst the deaf people in Yunnan. As much as the Village Doctor Project aims to
provide free medical care for the villagers in Yunnan, the Deaf Project aims to
help deaf people from the various minority groups. Each year, she conducts 2 stay-in camps for
the deaf people from the villagers.
She
first approaches the different villages in the rural districts to find out the
whereabouts of the deaf people. The Chinese government is very good with
statistics. Thus the records of all disabled people are kept carefully. This helps her to find all the deaf people in the villages. Then she approaches and reaches out to the
families establishing rapport so as to ask their permission to allow their deaf
sons and daughters to follow her back to Kunming (sometimes may be a day’s bus
journey) to stay with her for 3 months.
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Deaf Friends at our Farewell Party
Most of these
deaf people are illiterate. At least the
village knows that though they are not able to hear, they are as capable as any normal person in
the village to work. They are able to
work in the fields, for the girls, they look after and clean the house. They do not have a sign language of their own
and are very isolated from one another even in the same village.
Ingrid
brings them to Kunming to Project Grace and within 3 months, she tries to teach
them simple Chinese Sign Language to communicate. She shows them the love and care to live
together as a community.
The
deaf people are taught how to look after themselves as well as for one
another. For the boys, they are taught a
trade such as repairing the bicycle, carpentry, etc. For the girls, they are taught to cook, bake
and sew. Thought this may sound easy,
the truth is that it is not. Most of
them come from different tribes. Like
other deaf people in the world, they have their characters and personalities as
well as their special customs. There
were disagreements and arguments many times.
Disagreements were settled with fist fights at times amongst the
boys. The girls were especially home
sick.
It
was difficult to help them to live with one another. For the girls, they were unsure of the future
as mostly after the three months training, they would return to their village
to be match-made and be married off.
Whether they have a good happy life or whether they are being abused, we
will not know. There were very few
workers and volunteers to help Ingrid work with them. In fact Ingrid works alone with some other
older deaf adults.
Ingrid
knows at least these deaf people have at least 3 months of life where they can
feel the love of God and learn to depend on themselves instead of others.
The
other project that Ingrid is involved is to meet up and search out the Deaf
Christians in Kunming. Apparently long ago, they were reached by the German
missionaries. The adult deafs can still
remember the time they were taught to say grace and read the Bible.
Unfortunately,
they were also seek out by the Communist Party.
A few years ago, the Community Party inserted a few deaf people who
support the Communist Party in order to spy on the Deaf Christian community and
discover their leaders. These deaf
leaders were found and persecuted after they put in jail for teaching their
followers. They knew that the community
will break down once the leaders are removed or jailed. It was a time of danger and suspicion. But praise God, the group of deaf Christians
have survived till this day with God’s grace and blessings.
I
sat in the sunlight with the girls who smiled at me shyly, but we were unable
to communicate. Ingrid showed me a
simplified Chinese Sign Language file with all the essential words. Then she gave me a dictionary of the Chinese
Sign Language as a gift. I look through
the pages of the file to see crude pictures of hand shapes with Chinese
characters but mostly pictures of the meaning.
It
is difficult to teach sign language to the illiterate. Many words cannot be represented by just
using pictures. Ingrid has done her best
to compile that file. She hopes that one
day, a pictorial Chinese Sign Language book can be printed and given to the
deaf illiterates. This will enable them
to remember what they are taught and use it the sign language with one another
when they meet in the market place.
Communication amongst the deaf is essential and also for the Gospel to
be told and shared amongst the illiterates in the village.
I
could not stay very long because the Village Doctors Group was calling me for a
medical debrief for our field trip. I
bad my farewell to the girls and Ingrid and made another appointment with her
the next day.
The
doctors from the Singapore team sat as a panel of experts in the front of the
class and we went through the path physiology of the conditions we saw at the
villages. It was a rewarding 3-hour
conference and the students left satisfied that their field trip has been
worthwhile participating.
Day
7 (15/4/2000)
I
woke up early for breakfast and then met up with Ingrid who took a cab with me
to the neighboring park. She has told
the Deaf Christians about me even before I arrived in China and they were very
keen to hear about my Deaf Christians in Singapore. We were holding a secret meeting in a public
place so as not to arouse any suspicion.
As
long as there are no deaf spies around, the hearing people around will see the
group as a group of visitors walking or having a picnic in the park. Most people are still not familiar with
Chinese Sign Language.
We
met up with the group after arriving at the gates of the park. They arrived in couples. There are no young people except for one
girl. She is actually from the Bai Tribe
and is about 24 years old. The rest are
couples and 1 couple brought their hearing daughter along. We struck off quite well because I offered
her some sweets.
It
was a great time as we exchanged greetings.
Of course I was using my American Sign Language and they tried their
best to teach me some Chinese Sign Language.
(I tried to have a crash course myself in the hotel the night before
with Ingrid’s gift of Chinese Sign Language Dictionary.)
The
group went around the garden and finally settled beside a lake. There we started to share about our
lives. The leader of the group shared
how she hope to see the group grow and build “ A Church of a Thousand
Deafs”. She mentioned about a group who
wished to be baptised and discussed the
location. They were wondering if they
should be baptised along the river in the middle of the night or should they be
baptised in the public pool where no body would understand what they were
doing. The group was against being
baptised along the river because most of them are elderly and they are afraid
they may catch a cold. In the end, they
will discuss the matter another time.
They
turned their attention to me and asked me about my trip to Kunming and how I
got involved with Deaf people. I shared
with them about MHI and how this trip was very special because I felt called to
come. Later they demonstrated Tai Chi to
me as one of the elders is an expert and she has constantly taught the members
some moves to keep healthy.
 |
At the Park Beside the Lake
Later
on we moved on to another part of the park to have something to eat. I shared a simple English Gospel song with
them in signs. The weather turned
suddenly very chilly and we had to leave because it was rather old.
We
bade farewell to one another and went our different ways not knowing when we
will meet again as we returned to Project Grace.
Day 8 (16/4/2000)
We
packed and went to the airport after we checked out. Mr Fong and his assistant came to pick us up
at the hotel. Half way, one of the
landrovers broke down along the highway. We were delayed for a while as the
front vehicle realised that they are no longer followed and thus returned to
help us.
We
still arrived at the airport on time to meet some of the students who have come
to see us off. Each of us received a
bouquet of flowers from the students as we checked into customs and leave
Kunming for Singapore.
(The End)
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