Xian Trip

I recently went on a seven day study trip to Xian, China, organized by Lianhe Zaobao. I went along with two other journalists and a colleague from SPH's Cultural Industry Promotion team. The whole group comprised of 106 primary and secondary school students, teachers, parents and others.

The role of the journalists is to guide the students as they try their hand at news reporting, during the trip.

Besides being mesmerized by the grand images of the Emperor Qin Shihuang's warriors and horses at Xian, there is one other place which left a deep impression on me.

It was this small, run-down village school, supported by the Hope Project that aids poor students in their education.

As we entered the school, little cute children with pink, rosy cheeks, lined up, clapped and welcomed us with their chants of "huan ying, huan ying, re lie huan ying" ("Welcome, welcome, we warmly welcome" in Chinese).

The adults stood behind and around them, looking on with interest.

The children had prepared for a performance and while we sat around, waiting for the programme to start, a group of kids sitting in front of me caught my eyes. There is just something about them that make me couldn't take my eyes off them.


During our short stay at the school, I managed to talk to this little girl whose name is Xie Shuang. She told me she studied in the school and described how she would come to school early every morning, go home for lunch, take a short break, then return to study again. When I asked her if I could take a picture with her, her whole face lit up. As a friend took my camera and was about to snap the shot, Xie Shuang automatically raised the victory signs. Such an innocent and adorable move! I was tempted to follow suit as well!

After that, these two pretty girls came by and stood shyly in front of us. I talked to them and took a picture of them as well.

The mood was peaceful and amiable, that is, until our gifts came into sight.

Like I mentioned earlier, this is a village school which is rather poor, and does not have much facilities. Someone once described the students in another such Hope School as "having not seen a toy in their whole childhood days".

We knew that the children lived in poverty, so most of us brought gifts for the children, but what came along was totally unexpected.

It started off with a parent taking her gifts out and giving them away like Santa Claus. The children then crowded over, pushed and jostled, as they reached and grabbed the gifts. Some of our students were scratched and nearly pushed over in the confusion.

The children had their eyes fixed on my bag as I was about to take out a plastic bag full of erasers. In the end, the bag of erasers was snatched out of my hands by some tiny hands, dropped and scattered to the ground. In less than five seconds, they were all snapped up and gone.

The images of the children snatching the gifts away stuck deeply in my mind.

It was an awful sight, to see the young ones fighting for things like erasers, pencils, sweets and colour pencils.

And what made it worse was that we were the ones who made it happen.

I do not know if I was too shocked or too ashamed when it happened, because it was only much later that I realised I did not take a single picture of the ugly sight.