Prologue
A Southern Song dynasty
scholar 洪迈(Hong Mai) had written 4 analogies to the
most elated moments anyone could ever experience. They read like this:
久汗逢甘霖, 他乡遇故知, 洞房花烛夜, 金榜提名时
Translation:
久汗逢甘霖 (jiu han
feng gan lu):
A long drought is met with sweet refreshing rain. This has an agrarian
origin and reference. It later became a metaphor for anyone who experiences
relief from a long, dreary wait in a dire situation.
他乡遇故知 (ta
xiang yu gu zhi):
To meet an old friend in a far away foreign land
洞房花烛夜 (dong
fang hua zhu ye)
The night of the wedding
金榜提名时 (jin bang ti ming shi)
To be named/nominated at
the imperial examination results announcement
Significance
The writer洪迈has identified the moments of ‘high(s)’ and
‘low(s)’ in a person’s life, and classified the above 4 experiences as the
ultimate moments of elation, in other words, the highest of the high points in
life.
I have had the blessing
of experiencing the 2nd analogy three times during my Fulbright
journey in the US. Below are the three narratives.
From the Art Room in
a Secondary School to Boston, MA
A memorable class
I taught in Girls’ Secondary School for
some 5 years and I have many good memories there. I fondly remember many of my
students and have reconnected with several of them on Facebook since 2009.
Eunice was one of my most humorous students. She has a
spontaneous and infectious laughter that can brighten anybody’s day within
seconds. I recall the fun I had teaching her and her class of unique and
cheerful bunch of girls. I also recall Eunice’s mother who was one of the most
enthusiastic parents in the parent-teacher support group. Eunice has certainly
inherited her mother’s positive spirit and hearty laughter.
Tie and Dye
revisited
In a former staff and student gathering at the girls' secondary school in 2009, I
met a few former students and Eunice’s mother. Eunice’s mother told me Eunice
has kept her Tie and Dye piece all these years, so has a few other former
students. As an art teacher, one of the most heart-warming words I can hear is
that my students have kept the artwork they did in Grade 10. In a way, the Tie
and Dye artwork has tied the connection we share all these years.
Northeastern Reconnection
Eunice left for studies in the US about 3 years after she
graduated from secondary school and I had not seen her since graduation. She spent all
that time in Hawaii, where she met her husband. Just this January, Eunice and
hubby were relocated to Vermont because of a new job. If Hawaii was far enough
to make it difficult for us to meet again, then Vermont would make it quite
impossible, until my Fulbright journey to Maryland. Under the Fulbright award, we
have been given professional development opportunities to attend education
conferences. I had originally wanted to attend the ASCD conference in Las
Vegas, but I changed my mind after reading the program of the Learning and the
Brain Conference that would be held in Boston. I was really pleasantly
surprised when Eunice initiated a get together in Boston. I was so touched when
Eunice told me she would drive over 2 hours to Boston for the reunion! After
all these years, we were to meet again in the northeastern coast of US! I
visited Boston some 6 years earlier and I like the city, but this time I was
really excited to go to Boston, both for professional and personal reasons.
Even my fellow Fulbright teachers could tell I was excited.
It was a great reunion, albeit over a short time of a dinner,
and a lunch sandwiched between concurrent sessions and seminars. We talked
about everything from the days in her alma mater, Eunice’s 17 years in the US, and the
updates on her classmates. I am very happy to see Eunice happily settling in to
a new job and new life in Vermont. It was also very nice to know that Eunice’s
mother was all excited about our reunion and kept asking Eunice 2 weeks prior to
the meet up if she had ‘met Ms Lee’. These are the little things that make teaching
worthwhile.
When we parted, Eunice suggested a class get together when she
visits home the next time, although she laid a condition: I would not pay for
her meal.
Well, we shall decide on that later.
From Victoria (Melbourne)
to Albany (NY)
3 Singaporeans strangers met in Melbourne
I met Josephine and Sijie well over a decade ago in
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, when we were undergraduate students. Josephine
was studying social work while Sijie and myself were fine art students at the
Victorian College of the Arts (VCA). I
still recall it was the international office manager who had contacted me in my
3rd year of studies about renting a room to a fellow Singaporean student
enrolled in VCA School of Art. I was the first Singaporean to study in VCA and when another
Singaporean enrolled, it was not surprising that the international office
manager thought of linking her up with me.
For 2 years prior to Sijie’s arrival, I had deliberately
stayed away from undergraduate student hostels as I have heard too much ‘horror
experiences’ of dormitory style hostel accommodation. I have also decided not
to stay with other Singaporean students, as I had wanted to experience life
like a local in Melbourne. The advantage of renting on my own also meant I
could lower the rental cost by staying a bit farther away from the campus
located in the city. But my Australian housemate of 2 years, Melissa, decided
to return to her hometown in New South Wales, and I had to find another
housemate to manage costs. Prior to Sijie’s arrival, I have endured several
undesirable 3rd housemates together with Melissa, from handling a young lady who went
back to her drugs, to a Greek Cypriot serial smoker who used expletives as
punctuation, to a Turkish student who would get pretty hysterical whenever she was
on the phone. So I reckoned renting to a Singaporean girl would not get any
worse. Sijie’s high school friend Josephine
(Jo) was also studying in Melbourne so I got to know her as well. As it turned
out, renting a room to Sijie was a wise decision.
The three of us were not straight out from high school as we
have individually gone through tertiary education in different disciplines, and
being older, I have been working before I went to pursue my fine art studies. I believe we could connect well quite quickly as
we weren’t the typical bright-eyed busy-tailed late-teen Singaporean students, and there was
some sense of commonality in terms of maturity. It was also really nice to know
that Sijie was from the same secondary school I have attended, so we had some
common topics in our conversations.
Memorable road
trips to Cape Schanck, Bright and Mt Buffalo
The three of us went to a few places together but some of
the most memorable moments were the trips to Cape Schanck, Bright and Mt
Buffalo.
Cape Schanck was a scenic spot in the Mornington Peninsular.
We hired a cheap rental car and drove to explore various scenic spots in the
peninsular. Josephine reckoned she had the best ever iced-chocolate drink in a
café in Arthur’s Seat. Sijie was at that time obsessed with learning horse
riding and found out a horse riding stable in the Cape Schanck area. I was just
happy to be able to do outdoor drawing with my favourite 8B carbon pencil in the
outdoors. It was well before the Web 2.0 era, so we relied on folded maps, cell
phones that were purely calling phones, and SLR cameras that used 35mm negative
film. Despite the lack of technological
affordances, we had a whale of a time.
 |
| Sunset near Cape Schanck, Victoria, Australia |
 |
| The famous rock at Cape Schanck. |
 |
| My quick sketch of Cape Schanck done just before dusk |
 |
| Sitting on the rock, just by the edge of a stream down from Mt Buffalo. Sijie and Jo called me a 'big bear' because of my brown gloves |
The trip to Bright and Mt Buffalo was another great trip. Sijie and Josephine read from some travel magazine (hardcopy of course!) that Bright, a 5-hour train ride away from Melbourne, has an annual autumn festival and it was a little town planted with European trees. So it was a little orange and red bright spot in the autumn in the midst of a brown-grey Australian outback.
We were all mesmerized by the colours little ‘Bright’ town.
I was so inspired by what I saw that I composed a little poem in Chinese! I
have totally forgotten about it till Sijie reminded about the poem when I
visited her in Albany, NY, after all these years! It’s a pity I didn’t write it
down and the poem is lost.
The next day, we negotiated a special price with a local
taxi driver to bring us up Mt Buffalo. Upon arrival, we decided to head to the
Horn, the peak of Mt Buffalo. I brought along our drawing pads and Sijie even
brought her Chinese ink and brushes. We walked, sat and drew, walked and sat
and drew. That was such great fun, until lunchtime. Josephine was in charge of
carrying the bread and when we asked her to take the bread out from her bag,
she could not find it, much to our horror. She then realized she had grabbed a
wrong bag and all we had was a pack of Maggi instant noodles that was meant for
our dinner at the back packers’ lodge. We sat in the wilderness with no means
and equipment for cooking so we had to share the small pack of chocolate and
brazil nuts as lunch!
The climb up the Horn was memorable in many ways. I am a
little afraid of heights and was the slowest. Josephine and Sijie happily
negotiated they way up the giant boulder rocks while I was ascending in a
semi-crawling position. I was wearing my brown gloves and they gave me a
nickname ‘Big Bear’ as they said I had brown paws! The terrain got steeper as I
got higher and I had to tuck my large drawing pad in between the boulder rocks
so that I could use my both hands. Mt Buffalo is a rock mountain and the peak,
the Horn, is basically a stack of giant boulder rocks and there has no tree
trunks or roots to hold onto during on the way up. The paths at some points on
the verge were narrow. The drop was deep and it can be scary just looking down
even if it was not difficult terrain to climb. I was at times holding my
breathe along those narrow bends.
By the time I got up there, the view was spectacular! But
when it was time to descend, I looked down and my knees went jelly-like for a good
few moments. Somehow I managed to get down from the treacherous spots and I got
to thank God for that! I look at the photograph Josephine took of me and
realized I was not smiling too much when up on top of the Horn. Perhaps I was
subconsciously wary of the way down. Those were the things we’d do when we were
younger.
A Bridge Not Too
Far to Reconnect
We have not done such trips after we had completed our
studies and returned home. But we do meet periodically for gathering until
Sijie’s husband got a job in Texas. She did come back to visit family after her
son You Shin was born and I remember little junior was still less than 18
months when I first saw him.
After some 5 years, Sijie and family has relocated to
Albany, upstate NY. 4 months later I arrived in Maryland for my Fulbright
program. She urged me to visit her and initially I was hesitant because of the
Capstone Project schedule. But I decided that College Park and Albany was only
a few hours away from each other and I should just make the trip to reconnect
again. When I saw her after disembarking from the Amtrak train at Rensselaer, I
knew I made the right decision! It was such a delight to see little You Shin
when he got off the school bus!
Sijie took me to
Lake George, Cooperstown and Saratoga Springs. This time the roles reversed and
she was the driver and I did not even have to do the job of a navigator, as
there was a GPS! Despite the cold and extreme quietness of those towns during
the winter season, I felt warmed by the friendship we share. It was
indeed a very deep moment of ‘他 乡 遇 故 知
ta xiang yu gu zhi’.
From High School to
State College, Pennsylvania
From the idealist
art students to art educators
I met Junhui when I
was a senior at high school, in National Junior College (NJC) and she joined as
a junior. We were both in the Art Elective Program (AEP), a special art program
at secondary level. The program is very special to many of us as many went on
to be art teachers in Singapore. Junhui and myself are amongst them.
We were not close
friends at that time and it was years after NJC that our friendship grew.
Junhui taught art at a secondary school for a few years and decided to pursue
her graduate and doctoral studies in the US. Upon getting her doctoral degree,
she started teaching at a university in Ohio. We did not keep in regular
contact during the pre-internet era and I am totally sloppy when it comes to
hand written letters.
I cannot remember
when we had started to communicate more but her doctoral research in art
education and data collection took her back home from Illinois. She got the approval
to conduct research in the school where I taught and we started sharing
our views and thoughts about art education and teaching. Our views and opinions often differ but we
accorded each other with professional respect and that was one important factor
that contributed to the growth of our friendship. With the advent of email and
internet, we kept more regular contact and that helped.
The first collaboration
Despite knowing
each other for years, the first time we worked together was a workshop for art
teachers in the north zone in Singapore in 2010, when Junhui returned home for
her first sabbatical leave. She and I co-conceptualized the workshop and
together with a colleague, Pamela, we prepared all the materials for the
hands-on activities.
It was a very busy
time leading up to the workshop as I was also leading a few other initiatives
in school on top of my teaching load. The workshop was well-received and we
were heartened to see that it was a success. Despite the tiredness, I had so
much fun collaborating with Junhui and I believe she also had much fun.
3-way Reconnection in State College, Pennsylvania
When I received the
Distinguished Fulbright Award in Teaching Programs, I informed Junhui that I
would like to visit Professor Graeme Sullivan at Pennsylvania State University
(PSU). Professor Sullivan’s book is the key literature reference for my
capstone project. She initiated to join me at PSU as she wanted to visit her
doctoral academic advisor Professor Christine Marme Thompson, whom Junhui has
not met for over 5 years. Well, I was more than happy to be the excuse for
their reunion.
After 6 hours of
Greyhound ride from College Park (MD), I finally reached State College
(Pennsylvania). It was surreal, with two old high school mates reconnecting as
total strangers to State College!
It was a great
gathering of minds and hearts. Junhui joined me to meet Professor Sullivan and
we got much intellectual food out of the meeting and we both had a beautiful
dinner at Professor Thompson’s house in the evening!
Once again, the
feeling of ‘他 乡 遇 故 知 ta
xiang yu gu zhi’ was like a
warm flow of water down a stream within my heart.
Journeying on to South Rim, Grand Canyon
A few months before
we met in State College, we have decided to travel to see Grand Canyon. I
visited West Rim Grand Canyon about 20-years earlier on a package tour and we
were given only less than 2 hours to view the Canyon after hours of bus ride
from LA. I was disappointed and vowed to return someday, but I was never really sure if that would
happen. Junhui had wanted to see the Grand Canyon but despite spending nearly
20 years in the US, she had never made the trip. My Fulbright stint became the
perfect opportunity for both of us to realise our dreams of seeing the great
wonder of the world!
We met in Las Vegas
and continued to South Rim, together with another friend and her family. It was
a breath taking experience! Well, to see Grand Canyon with two great friends
after a 20-year wait, it was worth it! I am really blessed.
I used to just
memorize these 4 phrases …:
久汗逢甘霖, 他乡遇故知, 洞房花烛夜, 金榜提名时
…… but had little
appreciation for them. I now have a deepened appreciation of the work of 洪迈. Indeed, these experiences do bring about an
inexplicable elation.
