Jimei University

Such a fun evening yesterday having a guided tour of Jimei University! Jimei (the distict of Xiamen that I live in) is known for its university, and so I wanted to visit the campus. Mandy, one of the girls I met at the English Corner, offered to give me a tour. We met up last night, and she brought three of her classmates with her. All four were so sweet to me, so eager to speak English, and so much fun!

Here we are outside a building that has a gym for teachers on the first floor, and dorms and classrooms on t the second floor. Mandy is to the left of me, and Lee and Annie are on the right. For the history lesson, Jimei has what's called a "study village" where kindergarten, primary, middle, high school, and university are all grouped in one location. This study village was founded by Tan Kah Kee in 1913. He is a very important figure in the history of Xiamen, and his work demonstrates the importance of education to the Chinese.

To see all of these schools, our tour covered a lot of ground, like a couple hours of walking. There were several beautiful lake settings, and we saw a lot of buildings that are over 100 years old...

This is the entry to the school. The two Chinese characters inscribed on the top are the schools motto: Honesty and Hard Work.

This is the schools auditorium, where important events like welcoming new students and graduation take place.

Luke and Lee are standing outside of their dorm, which is a beautiful old building. They told me it got a good washing last year, and that's why it looks so nice. Both these pictures show evidence that Chinese college boys do their own laundry!!!

The students all love the ornate carvings on the top floor of the building. A beautiful vestige of the past!

The campus has several beautiful, very old banyan trees, like this one that spans almost the entire soccer field!

Part of the tour was enjoying the beautiful lakes around the campus, with all of their ornate decor.  The tall building lit up in the background of both of the images below is Jimei High School. Doesn't exactly look like any high school I've visited before. We were there just as night fell. Very beautiful, but hard to get a good picture.  The sweet kids were using each other's shoulders like a tripod to help me:)

I was honored that these new friends invited me to dinner after the grand tour.  I was definitely ready to sit down, and the setting was perfect. We talked about food, families, typhoons, careers, and how hard it is to speak English. All four are students in the economics section of the university, so looking forward to careers in things like banking, security, and accounting. They started studying English at age 6, and continued for about 10 years. Their written English is much better than their spoken English, and they really want to improve their speaking. So having dinner together is a plus for all of us! I get to quiz them on everything I want to find out about China, and they are compelled to speak English non-stop.

We went to a little fish restaurant on a street close to the university. The street is jam packed with little restaurants.The delicious, fall-apart fish cooked with all of its accompanying vegetables was the centerpiece. But we also had wonderful greens, tofu, very spicy shoestring potatoes, and deep fried pumpkin patties that have sweet red beans in the center. I'm hoping I'll see these four at the English Corner in the next couple weeks. It's such a unexpected blessing for me to have the time and the opportunity to be mixing with university students.