Wu Yuan Trip with Heart to Heart

 

As you might know by now, from reading previous posts, Heart to Heart does about three trips to the local communities where the heart patients originate, in order to continue building the relationship with the local authorities who provide the list of children who need heart operations, to visit former patients and aguge their recovery, and to sometime create elementary school libraries from donations received from corporations, organizations and individuals. Even though I have plenty of opportunty, you would think, to join them on all of these trips, I only ever seem to make it once per year.

so here is the story of the most recent Heart to Heart excursion into rural China. It was dark and semi stormy Tuesday morning when we left; the rain managed to wait until we had mostly loaded the bus with the hundred or more travel bags of donated clothing, toys, and  toiletries for the children and the communities they live in. The bus, driven by our usual and capable criver Mr. Hu took us from Shanghai to Wu Yuan in about 5 hours or so. We had the usual black car full of local dignitaries escort us the last few miles into town. Since we only had three ex-patients to visit, and two library schools to open, the trip was short and somewhat leisurely. This means, we started with lunch.

Luckily all three children (although the last one is a teenager of 18 years of age) hae done well post surgery.  This has always been my experience; I wonder what effect this would have on the trip if the children were not well.  Unlike our visit to Anhui province last year, this area seems to have a bit more economic abundance, and as a result, the children's homes were solid and furnished and well maintained. In fact, the last home was a spectacular vintage house in a remnant of an old village site in Wu Yuan. It had a traditional courtyard, was made of wood and had housed several generations of the patient's family. It was surrounded by a village of similar houses and structures and was filled with students and their easels, all expressing their interpretiations of the area.

The best part of the trip is easily the school visits. Weprrepare carefully with loaded bags full of treats for the children;  I try and refrain from buying candies prefering instead to give pencils and notebooks, and small toys. My fellow volunteers remind me that they are children, and they supply them with the sweet treats. We usually begin our visit with some speeches from Christine (she is the founder of Heart to Heart) and the principal and sometimes a representative from the organization that donated the money for the library. We are always greeted warmly and treated to tea and are usually surrounded by the books that the donations. purchased (see photo).  Then we are usually let loose in the classrooms and then the chaos reigns- well it is usually pretty orgnaized chaos. It is hard to imagine being a child sitting in a frigid rooom (sometimes with glass in the windows- but no heat) and having this group of women who are unlike anything that you have ever seen, who are handing out candies and toys- more than you might get for any reasons. For them, I am sure that the classroom visits overshadow the books that can now be accessed. But not for me. I lack enough imagination to see a world where there is childhood without books. A group of us became serious about creating one of these libraries, and collected enough donations to get one started a couple of years ago.  I think that it might be time to do it again, maybe in time for a trip this fall. Now if we could just do something about getting some glass inthe windows of the dormitories, and some new towels, I might be even more satisfied.

The rest of the story about the trip is about the food (not so glamorous this time, but plentiful- I may never want another one of those rice cakes though), the social downtime- we all bring a bottle of wine to have at the end of the day in the privacy of the hotel room- and  the ride on the bus.  There is sometimes a little shopping too- there were not too many places to shop, but some of the women managed to buy   "stuff".  Most notably: there were twenty of these hand made stools on the bus on the way home ( you should have seen the craftsman- I think that he could hardly believe his luck- for a photo, have a look at Kathryn's wesbite- she bought one or two !). It turns out that it is a local specialty to make stools with intricately carved seats with a metal pan below it to hold the coals to warm you nether parts in the winter. Many of us thought that these might be of some use when we return to our respective countries of origins- many of which are cold in the winter. They are pretty, but a bit challenging to use in our Shanghai apartments.