IShoudl Have Been a Rock Sar- The Yellow Submarie in China

A Yellow Submarine in China

In March of 2004, I traveled to China as a part of a teacher and student exchange.
My fellow teacher was Betty Gibbs. We chaperoned 10 Sapulpa High Students on a trip that took us to Beijing and then on to the city of Chengdu in the foothills of the Tibetan plateau.
We took off one week before spring break, expecting to be away for 3 weeks. We used spring break in order to make the time out of school minimal. Each of the students had applied and also taken an 8-week course in Chinese at OU Tulsa under local High school Chinese teacher Susie Tattershall.
So, when we left, we were nervous and elated. The long plane journey was enough to squeeze and jitters out of a person by the time we reached the mainland of China. It was kida cool to watch the airline map as we traveled, arcing over the arctic circle and then south along Siberia into China.
In Beijing, we met Shaoyan, a tour guide I had met before when traveling with teachers in 2001. She took us through the Forbidden City and to see and scale the Great Wall right outside the city. Later groups would travel a little more expensively, but this was the 1st and we were on a shoestring budget. The experience would be new for both the receiving school and us as well.
Lie Wu High school in Chengdu is located in a city of nearly 11 million. A Mid sized city in China! Imagine! We were met late by a contingent of Chinese teachers and students who took us to a local hotel, just minutes away form the school. We hadn’t known what to expect. We thought we would immediately be taken to separate houses, but instead the school decided to house us the first few days with the hotel. Not bad and it helped ease some of the fears of the kids as to who and what they might expect.
On our first full day in Chengdu, we got a preview of something that was surprising to we typically uptight people from the Midwest. The school held a dinner for us and the teaching staff at LieWu. At the dinner, the principal stood up and serenaded us. After him, some of the Chinese kids came in and sang to us.
The odd thing was, I couldn’t imagine any principal from any of our schools singing to a group of Chinese visitors. Apparently, this was not an unusual thing. It turns out that these people broke into song, or karaoke without any fear of embarrassment of ridicule. Onb the other hand, most of the Sapulpa kids I knew would have been way too self conscious to do the same.
It did have an effec5t on our kids too. Luckily, the group I took was made up of some choir kids and performers. At a school assembly in our honor, they also sang song, sang karaoke and danced, much to the delight of the Lie Wu students and staff.

The thing that meant most to me was one day in English class. I was invited to teach the classes while Chinese instructors watched. Now, these classes are a bit different than US classes. There are about 65 kids piled into a class that is mostly lecture oriented. With that many kids, it is hard to do any sort of one-on-one or group work.
I started with some role playing things using kids from the class, who reluctantly played the parts of buying or selling pizza in English. Finally, they began to warm up a bit to the idea and we finished the class with some question and answer, especially about life in Sapulpa, Oklahoma.
During the exchange, one girl raised her hand and asked, “Will you sing for us?”

I was caught by surprise. Singing is not what I do. When I was a young kid, I could lie to myself and think I sounded like Paul McCartney, but now I know I have no range, no rhythm or ability to carry a melody. Maybe that’s being too tough on myself, but I haven’t sung in public in who knows how long.

Panicking to get out of the situation, I said, “I am not a very good singer, but how about you sing a song for me?”
Immediately, 5 of the girls stood at their seats and started to sing a song by the Backstreet Boys. They even had the hand motions and dance steps down. It was a spontaneous performance that was met with thunderous applause after it ended. It was pretty cool to see this American pop song performed flawlessly in a Chinese upper school classroom.
The little dark haired girl was not to be dissuaded. “Will you sing for us now?” She asked again.
I felt trapped. I began to sweat. Those old fears of ridicule and public display of ineptitude washed over me. I was much more suited to playing air guitar than to singing in front of people.
But, I had an idea.
“Let’s do a song together and make it part of an English lesson,” I said. “I will write the words to the chorus of a song on the board, and I will sing the verse to you, and we will all sing the chorus.”
Apparently the little Chinese girl was happy with this, nodding her head enthusiastically. And, so with approval of the class, I turned to the board and began to write the words..”We all live in a Yellow Submarine…”

Nervous, and nearly weak with shyness, I explained to the them the rhythm of the chorus and then, stood tall in front of the board and in a quavering voice, began to sing “In the Town Where I Was Born….” It seemed to take forever, with the smiling faces of the class and visiting Chinese teachers all on me, to reach the end of the verse, “…beneath the waves, in our yellow Submarine!”
The n I pointed at the chorus on the board and led the class though the chorus several times. At first, we were out fo sync, but with each attempt, pour voices melded better and better. Each time, they sang louder and louder and at the finish, the class applauded each other and me.
I was jittery with excitement. It was a kind of rush to sing in front of so many people without critique and without rejection. There was only a joy on unity and acceptance, and it seemed, an appreciation that I would sing for them.
There, in western Chine, to a class of 65, I, a shy Oklahoman, sand a British pop song form the 60’s and we all blended into one joyous group for a few precious moments.
My words are poor in an attempt to relay how much those moments meant to me. Surely, there is a song somewhere that says it better than I ever can. Music, so universal and so much a part of our worldwide psyche, spoke through each of us in that 3rd floor classroom. Music isn’t some distant, different thing form any of us. Even with my poor power of singing and my even poorer power of musicianship, I was music for a few moments.