Last July, after weeks of nervous anticipation I went on the Shijiazhuang Foreign Language Education Group (SFLEG) internship programme along with 3 other students from Pembroke. What a wonderful experience, I can barely remember what I was even nervous about! From the beginning we were welcomed by our lovely school contact Jinduo (who was all smiles even despite a long delay which I caused for everyone in arrivals!) and treated to an experience like none I’ve experienced arriving anywhere before – whisked away to the hotel and restaurant for a wonderful meal.

In retrospect the first night set the tone for a lot of the rest of the trip. We were treated with such kindness and patience from our hosts, treating us to a luxury stay not just in the quality of our accommodation and food but in the excited joy with which they embraced us into their culture. From food (too many delicious things to recount!) to activities (karaoke, dumpling-making, calligraphy…) to learning about language and customs (hǎo chī and bǎo le were frequent – and necessary! – phrases), I feel so lucky to have not only experienced China, but been invited into it by such warm hosts. What struck me more than anything was how our guides Jack and Jamal, and indeed many of the people we met, made us feel so at home. It was like we were just mates on a night out rather than tourists in a foreign country!

As for the actual teaching, it was incredibly enjoyable and rewarding! The first few days we were given off to adjust to the (brutal) jetlag, prepare our lessons, and be given tours around the school, which was a very impressive site! I was very lucky to have been allowed to teach the same class jointly with my friend Jaimie Farquharson, which made our ambitious plan more feasible. We both study Classics, and so our plan was originally to teach the students about the Romans and Roman theatre before guiding them within groups to put on pieces of theatre based on the stories of 5 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Actaeon, Arachne, Teiresias, Icarus and Echo & Narcissus). I say ‘originally’ because our plan underwent severe revision after our first lesson. The issue we encountered was that, due to different teaching practices in China and the difficulty of learning in a foreign language, the students were not very confident working in the way we had anticipated. To resolve this issue we altered our lesson plans to be more restrictive while leaving space for the students’ creativity to shine. Instead of leaving lessons free-form, we assigned the students to groups based on one of the different stories and turned each lesson into a different workshop – one day the students wrote poetry, the next the students painted or drew on pieces of paper, the next they decorated and painted masks and, finally, they decorated and painted blank togas, all based on the story they had been assigned. We also devoted two lessons simply to introducing the students to the stories properly, inviting them into ethical discussions about the morality of characters’ actions within the stories. In the final showcase, students were invited to stand up in their groups, wear their togas and masks and present their poems and paintings.

The workshops worked out brilliantly, they were a great opportunity to share each other’s culture through discussions on the nature of Chinese, British and Roman models of poetry, painting, costume and theatre. but what struck me most about the format of our classes was how much the students enjoyed the differences between workshops. While some preferred to grapple with the meanings of the stories, others engaged much more with writing poems or shone once a paintbrush was in their hands. I can still remember the warm feeling of pride at seeing our students skip their mid-lesson break to keep painting, and I will never forget the pure joy and excitement in students’ eyes as we went around passing arts & crafts supplies for decorating masks. It felt like we had created this wonderful space where students could express themselves and share that expression with one another. But more than anything I think what will stay with me is the enjoyment I felt from getting to know the students – the shy ones, the cheeky ones, the curious ones – and encouraging them to stand up in front of their peers and be proud of what they had created.

Once we had completed our term of teaching, we spent the next few days being given a tour around Beijing, funded by the school! This was a wonderful opportunity to visit some amazing sights whilst learning about their rich cultural and historical background. My highlights included seeing the Great Wall of China, the Forbidden Palace and the delicious Peking duck we had on our first evening. But for the trip as a whole my highlights had to be the various different temples which we visited – seeing a site of worship completely different to the any I am had to been to before was a very exciting and eye-opening experience which I will never forget. After the final days spent with SFLEG in Beijing, we waved goodbye to our tour guide Juliette and adventured into our own adventures in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong, all of which created unforgettable memories that will stay with me for a long time and would never have been possible without the help of the school and programme. I want to extend a huge thank you to all the wonderful people who made this possible and went above and beyond to give us such an amazing and personal experience – to Geoff, Jinduo, lucy, Jack, Jamal, Principal Li, Juliette, and many others! But especially to my 3 companions Jaimie, Alice and Louise, without which the trip would never have been the same.