May 12

This morning we had an hour-long bus ride (big surprise) to go out to The Sun Village. This is a children’s village for kids whose parents are in jail. There are currently 54 kids living in the village with ages ranging from five to seventeen. It was started by a prison guard after she talked with many prisoners and said that their biggest concern was who would take care of their children while they serve out their sentences. We first took a tour of the village from one of the supervisors of the village. The kids live in small houses with a bathroom, a large common area, and a few rooms with sets of bunk beds. In the village, there is a gathering room for larger events with a stage. This was where we went after the tour for a short performance from a group of the children. They then asked us to perform something and a wave of slight panic washed over our group. A few people stood up and started to play charades with some of the older kids who spoke some English in front of everyone. Then the rest of our group got up (myself included) and performed an inspirational rendition of Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes.

After our incredible act, we went to play with the kids. We had been looking forward to playing basketball with them, but the court was otherwise occupied. So instead, the kids took us over to the ping pong tables. When it was my turn to play, I did fairly well. I was able to compete pretty closely with the majority of the kids. There was one kid who was obviously better than the rest though and he beat me. Oh, and he was twelve. We kept playing ping pong for quite a while and they eventually brought out a couple of balls to throw around. We taught them how to throw a ball like a football and played an unorganized version of monkey in the middle with a few monkeys. One of the smaller kids was especially energetic and hung on whoever had the ball but would not catch the ball if you threw it to him. He preferred to play defense and would just swat the ball down if it came his way.

In the afternoon, the group went to visit the Great Wild Goose Pagoda. The Pagoda is a Buddhist temple and library where monks used to translate Buddhist texts from Indian into Chinese. The architecture was not very similar to the traditional Chinese building in the Forbidden City. The Pagoda appeared smoother than the more harsh, sharper lines of the buildings we had seen in Beijing. It was also a simple brown color that was more peaceful than red and yellow. In some of the buildings surrounding the Pagoda were sculptures of the Buddha and Avalokiteshvara, who has 1000 hands, each with an eye. The hands are to help people, while the eyes are to see through people’s hearts to see if they are good or not.

To end the day, people went into the Muslim Quarter to barter for souvenirs.