New Year’s Market

The security guard wishes me a happy new year as he waves me through the gate of Wuhan Primary School. It’s the last school day of 2018, and the occasion is marked by a school-wide market, in which the students can sell their old toys to their teachers and each other for cash. The campus is decked out for the occasion. The path towards the classroom buildings is lined with trees. This late in the season their leaves have all long fallen away, but for today’s event the students have hung the branches with handmade red lanterns and decorated soda bottles in which they’ve written their wishes for the coming year. A few students have forgone the bottles, and simply written their dreams on scraps of colored construction paper. Although reading Chinese characters is a struggle for me, I reach out look at a few of them. They translate as:

I hope mom can give me a baby brother!

I want 100 on my next English test! I’ll study very hard!

I’m trying to be a good girl, but it’s very difficult. Give me strength to insist!

Good Good Study, Day Day Up!

“Shannon!”

Two of my students, Phoebe and Kitty, come running to me. Phoebe, a short twelve-year-old who looks like a six-year-old, is clad in a Jedi robe and wielding a plastic lightsaber. Kitty, true to her deliberately chosen English name, has a cat ear headband. Kids are encouraged to wear cosplay to the New Year’s Market, and they rarely disappoint.

“Are you thirsty?” asks Kitty. “Come to our shop! We have coke! Just two yuan!”

“Very—” Phoebe pauses, searching for the English word. “Re-fresh-ing.” Phoebe claps her hands at each syllable, like we do in class when we’re practicing pronunciation. I think I hear Kitty call her a dummy (or, more precisely, a “stupid egg”) in Mandarin. Phoebe giggles, taking it in stride.

I hate Coca-Cola, but I’m fond of my students, so I let them lead me towards the main field. On the way, we pass the fountain at the front of the school— colorful pencils twisted into Olympic rings. The pool of the fountain, which never has water, has been occupied by a group of third graders who have set up their shops there.

The field, with its neon astroturf, is so covered in children selling toys that we have to step carefully. There are kids with shops spread out on blankets covering every inch of the running track. A few “super students” have been rewarded for their high grades with the chance to sell their wares at the podium at the front of the school, where the Chinese flag flies, red and yellow against the blue winter sky. Several kids have come up with innovative market strategies, like bringing in rented cotton-candy machines. When we pass by them, the air smells sugary sweet.

“Where’s this coke?” I ask Kitty and Phoebe.

“In the observatory.”

“You’re kidding.”

The observatory, where a telescope is set up in preparation for an imaginary scenario in which the kids are at school at night and the city lights are dimmed, is on the seventh floor.

“Come on!” says Kitty.

I have to follow. There are several ways to go up and down the floors of the school. There is a rock climbing wall. There’s also a rope net with a weirdly chubby Spider Man statue beckoning the kids to climb upwards. There is a yellow slide that kids can take from the third floor to the first. All of these things have been put into place for children who don’t have nearly enough time to play during their rigorous program of study. The kids get ten minute breaks to move between classes, so snatch up moments of joy and excitement while getting where they need to go.

Unfortunately, the school does not have an elevator, and I’m not one for climbing up the walls. We take the stairs. I huff and puff my way to the top, pushing my fat, asthmatic body until my heart races. I feel like I’m trying to scale Mount Everest, and all for my least favorite drink in the world!

However, by the time we reach the observatory, even a glass of bubbly soda that usually gives me hiccups sounds good. Kitty pours the brown liquid into a minuscule paper cup, like the ones that doctors use to give patients their medicine. I rummage in my purse for some money to give the kids. I don’t have any one yuan coins, so I hand them a five.

“You don’t need to give me any change,” I tell the kids. “You walked all the way up here with me when you could’ve been selling more soda to more customers. It’s a lot of work.”

Phoebe hands the five yuan note back to me. “You also worked hard to climb those stairs. You needn’t give us money. Here, give you another coke.”

Phoebe and Kitty give me two more complimentary cups of soda before it’s time for me to go and check out some of my other students’ shops. On the way out, I look down from the top of the steps at the school’s sprawling campus. In this moment, I feel so lucky to be have been given the chance to live and teach in Wuhan.