Rainy Days In Hometown(continue)

* Qibei Elemantry School(旗北小学)  I stayed in that school with my father. I didn't have any pleasant experiences there. It's located in a hill. I had my early elemantry school years there. I remeber that this was the school where I learned a quite a lot of things, reciting the multiplication table, practising Chinese calligraphy, abacus and having some sport trainning for young kids including ping-pong trainning. Looking back now, it would be the period of time when China and the US initiated the 'ping pong' diplomacy. It's surely a period of time when schools strangely had the so called 'labor lesson', where teachers and students in school, led by the local peasants, would work on the field. We would plan all kinds of produce and vegitable, sweet potato, peanut, sugar-cane, corn, wheat, rice and even castor-oil plant(蓖麻). We would make compost out of grass and weed collected in the hill, and we would aslo raise pigs in school, all in an organic way. It seemed as if we all knew the future trend of being organic in advance that time.....

* Qinan Elemantry School(旗南小学)  This was the school that I finished all my elemantry schooling. I swithched to this school becase my father switched work in the same region. Nothing out of extraordinary happened as I remembered. We would walk to school and would have normal classes. It's the peroid of time I didn't spend enough time studying because we started to some sort of entertainment. We would listen to those long story series on radio, classic masterpiece such as Three Kingdoms, Outlaws of the Marsh and Journey to the West. We would never miss an episode because the story was so attractive and the story-teller was so professional and skillful that we would literally stick our ears next to the radio. At the same peroid of time, we would also listen to RTHK's(香港电台) radio programs. Their radio series was very professional and their music program was crystal-clear because they were the leader in high quality of FM stereo broadcasting at the time. In later years in the peroid, we started to have televisions. We would also watch TV channels from Hong Kong. We watched a few dramas such as IQ成熟时,骤雨中的阳光, 大地恩情, 天龙决, 天蠢变, 武侠帝女花.  It's interesting that the first westen TV series that I watched from CCTV was Man From Atlantis(大西洋海底来的人), a science fiction, by Patrick Duffy and Belinda Montgomery. Although it's a fiction, I was enchanted by it. It might be the first scientific encounter that enlightened me and help me to cultivate my insterest or potential in scientific and engineering field.....

* Zhuoshan Middle School(桌山中学)  This middle school had a long history of being the best in the region in history . I was placed one of the advanced classes, in which students were specially trained to be better prepared for college. In spite of it, I didn't feel anything special except that we would have better teachers for us this the class.....

* Oversea Chinese High School(華僑中學)  I finished my high school in this school. This was the school which I would need to learn how to take care of myself and be more independent. I would need to leave home and would live in the dormitory in school's campus. This school is established and supported by many people living oversea. It's a modern school in terms of its hardware at that time. It had very good teaching facility, such as standard classrooms, advanced labortaries, a sport stadium, a swiming pool, and a nice dormintory. I was moved to see that so many people living oversea made donation to support education back in their hometown. These people loved their hometown although they were living oversea..... After visiting all web sites of my old schools, my first impression was that the educational system there has been excelled to a level that I counldn't believe. Not only do they have the state of the art facility, but also the mentality they have toward education. They understand that education is key to their future. They put all necessary resources to vitalize the schools. The teachers are now all college graduates with teaching credential, which was very desirable back on the day when I attended these schools. To my astonishment, all schools have their IT department and IT classes to promote science and technology. That is awesome.