Shimenkan

Late this August, I will be travelling to Shimenkan with Cici. This is our general idea about our upcoming research trip to Stone Gateway (Shimenkan). Shimenkan is the home of the Miao minority people, which have held a very low status for generations, even amidst other local minorities. We have two main goals, local education and historical Christianity cultivation.

1. Local education.
- We will investigate the issues of poverty-stricken families needing their children at home to work rather than at school, endangered schools, and the quality of rural teachers. We have friend there who is a local teacher and devotes a lot of time and money to local charity work, she is already identifying families in particular desperation and making a list for our investigation. We will organize financial support in this field, using the resources of both OCEF (Overseas Chinese Education Foundation) and SJA, depending on potential funding.

2. Church Growth
-Furthermore, we plan to record local Christian history by contacting local church people (Miao Christians) particularly those persons belonging to the older generations. We will bring Stone Gateway stories and history to life to showcase Christianity in this area.

- We will investigate what is left of the church now, what sort of influence Christianity has on the community, and the possibility of creating a budget in order to build a new church.

- In order to raise money to support both the growth of the church and educational system, we will examine Miao handicrafts, such as Miao embroidery, in hopes that by selling local goods here and abroad, the community can rely on itself to create a better life for it's youth.

- We particularly plan to begin a women's class to learn the characters of the Miao written language, along with Christian vocabulary from the Bible or hymns. It is important to emphasize that classes will also be aimed at sanitation, childcare, family, health and agricultural practices.

We will investigate and survey the possibility, cost and requirements of the abovementioned projects. Many donations and volunteers are needed. This program should exist mainly on donations from abroad and the kindness of foreigners, as the program should be done in a covert manner in order to stray from political and social problems amass in China (beginning that it is such a sensitive subject).

Soon, we will open a webpage in both Chinese and English introducing Stone Gateway to the general public with general facts and information—not only concerning the village, but also the projects aiming at raising the living standard. Through the website, one will also be able to donate money toward the current projects and the overall local economic, education and spiritual development.

We are so excited to think about the come trip and all that might be allowed to develop. We feel strongly lead (almost pushed!) to focus on Shimenkan. Please join us, there is much work to be done and we welcome you to join us.
peace:: Cici and Cammie

please see for more information:
http://www.gydpx.org/yb/wn/smk/
and
http://www.guanhaitong.cn/features/stone%20gateway/000.htm

The following is a translation from a Chinese link of a friend of Zheng SiSi (Cici), Hong Bo, who is the leader of the organization Ge Sang Hua (named after a common flower in Tibet). Ge Sang Hua organizes education-related support for Tibetan children. This post was written a few days ago about Hong Bo's trip to Yushu in Qinghai province to visit sponsored children, this May.



This photo is of a mother and child. You might not be able to imagine how they are suffering. The mother's voice box has been destroyed so she cannot speak clearly. When we visited her family she became distressed because she was unable to explain the family's situation to us. She has no husband, and her daughter no father.



When the mother opened her coat, we saw that she had two raw horrific sores on her leg. Despite her vocal disability, she was able to communicate that she had no idea what had caused the open sores, and had no money to seek medical care.

I couldn't bear seeing any more, I doubled over as if my heart had been cut in two. The only thing I am able to do for this small family is to record their story and publish it on our website. The daughter we sponsor is the one hope and joy that keeps the mother strong and alive.



Next, we visited another sponsored child's family. All three generations of women have lost their husbands to the various effects of poverty. The child we are financing and his mother live a bitter and hard life. The grandmother is elderly and trembling from sickness and the mother's children are still young and in school. The mother has never had a father-figure; she has never been to school and she has no husband. In this area, many single women raising families often leave government forms void of the children's father's names, rejecting the possibility of child-support preferring to bear the hardship of raising a child on one's own because the possibility that the child could belong to different men looms dauntingly. In this manner, many of the children we sponsor have no "official" fathers.


This is not unusual in Tibetan culture. In many Tibetan songs, most lyrics praise mothers but seldom fathers. I believe Tibetan women suffer more than we, Han people, can imagine. We cannot compare their strength and endurance of hardship to our own lives.

Tibet is such a beautiful and mysterious land. We believe that the lives of the children Ge Sang Hua sponsors will be much happier than their mothers' and grandmothers'. We know knowledge and education change change children's futures for the better. We hope for your prayers, thoughts, efforts and support.

There is this television show in Japan (also broadcast throughout southeastern Asia and introduced to me by Ying) called Pankun and James about a trained dog and monkey that are videoed while trying to complete daily human tasks such as exercise training, shopping for a cake, delivering grandpa's lunch, finding their trainer in the theme park etc. The chimp is prepped beforehand, given the task and shown directions, his job is to keep the dog in line and using it as a sort of pack animal to carry whatever is needed in a little harness. Invariability the dog and monkey make multiple humorous mistakes while completing or attempting to complete the tasks. The dog runs after a ball dropping the birthday cake to the monkey's dismay. The monkey makes the wrong turn at the fork, etc. It is funny and cute--in that special television way that only Japan can produce.

Since we watched in January with Ying, Jackie and I have realized how similar our lives are to the dog and monkey show. We have our own series of shows...dog and monkey try to take too many groceries home and the bike breaks, dog and monkey try to navigate flight times and are usually off by two hours (or days) one way or another, dog and monkey try to teach and one (we take turns being the dog and monkey) falls THROUGH the desk while teaching 40 Chinese students the electric slide to Shania Twain, dog and monkey attempt to make cookies that either turn out ridiculously buttery or have corn starch in them instead of flour, dog and monkey try to negotiate their contract with no support and no understanding of the actual agreement, dog dyes monkey's hair the wrong color, the dog and monkey try to get to Xitong (i.5 hours away) and end up in a Ningbo suburb (5 hours away), dog and monkey endeavour to plan activities for a 7 year-old's birthday with a serious hangover etc.

In this way, Jackie and I make light of our daily fumbles. You wouldn't believe I have lived here for two years, though something tells me life at home might be the same way, I am not sure it is exactly China that bring out the dog and monkey in Jackie and I. I can't believe our visitors have actually trusted us with their lives and belongings. The monkey and dog really do do their best when company is present. Otherwise, at least once daily, Pankun and James are mentioned in reference to one of our mis-guided acts.