About a month ago, I blogged about the decision that we were trying to make regarding whether or not to sign on as substitute teachers. The more we thought about it and the more we talked about it, the more certain we became that we didn’t really want to do that. Then the answer came, as they often do, in an unexpected way. In a matter of a few days, I was approached by two different friends and asked if I had ever considered tutoring.

Beginning tomorrow afternoon, I’ll be sitting down at my kitchen table twice a week and helping a junior high boy with Science, Social Studies and occasionally some Language Arts. Next semester, I might also be helping a high school boy with English. I have a feeling that I’ll find it much more rewarding than trying to make sense out of another teacher’s hastily put together plans and spending my time in front of a classroom full of unruly kids who think that having a substitute teacher means not having to work! Perhaps my classroom days are over but once a teacher, always a teacher and I’m looking forward to this new challenge.

Friday evening was opening night of A Christmas Carol. Though a couple of weeks ago we may have wondered if we could pull it off, the performance was excellent. With a cast of almost 30 people ranging in age from 4 to almost 60 and technical wizardry far beyond anything we’ve attempted in the past, it has been a major undertaking but all the hard work most definitely paid off. The audience was entertained and we had fun. What more could we ask?

In addition to my small onstage roles, I was also busy behind the scenes. Quite possibly my favourite part in this year’s production has been helping dress Marley’s ghost for each performance. A large part of our cast is made up of teenagers. While I love them all, a few have very special places in my heart and one of these is Christopher who plays the part of Scrooge’s long dead partner. Before his scene, I help wrap him in chains and make sure the string of eerie blue lights woven into one of the chains is turned on and that his lapel mike is working. When he comes off stage, I help get him out of all of this paraphernalia as quietly as possible. While he’s onstage, I simply stand back and marvel at the wonderful job he does. This is no easy task for a young man with Asperger syndrome and I am so immensely proud of him. Many of the cast members, including several young adults, are former students of mine and I have so enjoyed being involved in this project with each of them.

Saturday morning came very early. The alarm went off at 6:20 and we were on the road less than an hour later heading for Edmonton and the funeral of my old friend, Sunny Ling. (For his story, see my previous post.) I am so glad that, in the middle of this very busy weekend, we took the time to go. With the exception of the immediate family, we were the only mourners present. I realize that had Sunny, at almost 94, not outlived most of his peers and had the funeral been held locally, there would probably have been more people in attendance but it still seemed very sad.

It reminded me of what isolated lives some people live in our midst. Almost every small prairie town in Canada has a Chinese restaurant operated by a family much like Sunny’s. They contribute to the local economy and send their children to the local schools but they never quite become part of the fabric of the place. I was led to wonder how many of these families hold weddings and funerals to which no one comes.

Attending the funeral definitely involved stepping outside our comfort zone; perhaps another reason why no one else was there. Though it took place in a funeral home, the ceremony was conducted by five women from one of the Buddhist temples in the city. Two of them were robed nuns with shaved heads. It was conducted entirely in Chinese but was followed by a brief eulogy in English. The ceremony itself involved the burning of incense, a fragrance so familiar to us after our year in Asia, as well as much kneeling and bowing on the part of the family and the chanting of many prayers by the nuns. Afterward, we went to the cemetery for a brief graveside service. Rather than taking our own vehicle, we were invited to ride in one of the funeral home limos. Offerings of food and drink were left beside the grave. We were surprised to learn that, according to custom, the men of the family couldn’t go to the cemetery or join us for the lunch that followed at a restaurant in Chinatown. Two friends of the family did join us there, including one who worked at the funeral home. Lunch began with a dish of pork and jellyfish. Richard and I had only eaten jellyfish once before when Sunny and his family took us to another restaurant in Chinatown for dinner several years ago. Clearly it’s a favourite of theirs but it’s one of the few foods that neither of us enjoy. The flavour is okay but the texture is definitely that of rubber! Out of politeness, we managed to choke it down, however, and then went on to enjoy many other delicious dishes.

As soon as lunch was over, we headed for home arriving just in time to put on our makeup and costumes and hit the stage for our second performance which went just as well as the first.

Yesterday began as every Sunday does with church. Immediately after the service, we were back at the hall for a matinee performance. Once again, it went very well. We usually find that our Sunday matinee audiences tend to be quieter than our evening ones but this audience was particularly responsive which gave the tiring cast a real boost.

Two of our cast members were fighting the flu in the days leading up to opening night and were still struggling with loss of voice during the first couple of performances. It wasn’t until immediately after yesterday’s performance that I succumbed, however. I could feel it coming on throughout the day but it didn’t hit with a vengeance until evening. I don’t know if it’s H1N1 or seasonal flu but by 9 o’clock last night, I lay on the couch wrapped in a blanket and suffering from a fever and chills. By this morning, after eleven hours in bed with a vaporizer running, the fever and chills were gone but I was left with a badly congested chest, a nasty cough and a headache. Fortunately, echinacea, prayer and a day of rest have done wonders. I don’t remember the last time I spent an entire day in my pyjamas but I seem to be well on the way to recovery. We don’t have another performance until next Friday evening so I should be fine by then and ready for another very busy weekend.

Ling Cong Xin, better known as Sunny Ling to his Canadian friends, died on Sunday exactly two months short of his 94th birthday. Sunny and his late wife came to Canada in 1987 to live with their daughter and her family in Lougheed. For several years, I had the privilege of being his ESL tutor.

When I met Sunny, his knowledge of the English language was already, in some ways, as good or better than mine. He had an extensive vocabulary and his understanding of the mechanics of the language was superb. Pronunciation was his biggest handicap and a real source of frustration for him. Sunny was, however, a lifelong learner who never gave up trying to improve his ability to communicate with those around him.

In addition to improving his English, Sunny had another dream. In China, he had been trained as a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine as well as an acupuncturist and it was his desire to become a certified acupuncturist in Alberta. He took the three part exam in 1993, passing the practical and oral tests but falling just short of a passing grade on the written portion which was a timed test administered only in English. In 1996, he decided to rewrite the test and we spent many of our tutoring sessions working on the required vocabulary. Again, he fell short. It was soon after that that the registry, recognizing that Sunny would have passed had he used a translator or had more time to write the test, decided to make an exemption in his case and invited him to come to Edmonton to personally accept his certificate. Though he never accomplished his dream of opening an acupuncture clinic in Lougheed, it was indeed a proud moment for Sunny. He was 84 years old at the time.

When Sunny received his certification as an acupuncturist, he was interviewed by our local newspaper and a feature article appeared. I had been trying for some time to convince him that he ought to record his memories and experiences but he had always been reluctant to do so. As we read through the newspaper article together he expressed frustration over the fact that he felt that the reporter had not understood everything he had told her. I once again told him that he ought to tell his own story. The following week, he asked if I would help and so began one of the most exciting projects that I have ever had the privilege to be involved in. As we worked together week after week, it was like sitting across the table from a living history book!

The son of Chinese parents, Sunny was born in Indonesia on January 16, 1916. He remembered carefree childhood days going to the crowded market with his mother each morning, climbing trees and playing with his friends. In 1924, his parents decided to return to China where his father would join his uncle and build a family business in Canton (present day Guangzhou). The trip across the South China Sea was a rough and terrifying one for young Cong Xin but he quickly adapted to life in China where he and his parents were surrounded by relatives from both their families.

It was here that Sunny began his formal education first attending a small private school near the family home and later, a prestigious boarding school for teenage boys. Though Sunny’s father had only had about two years of formal education, he was a self taught man who recognized that his homeland was changing and he carefully chose a school that he hoped would help prepare his son for life in the new China.

In the years that followed, Sunny lived through some of the most tumultuous decades in China’s history. He spent his first year of university in Shanghai. During that time, the presence of Japanese military personnel became more and more noticeable and when the school year ended male students were asked by the government to spend their summer vacation taking military training. After two months at a military camp outside Shanghai, Sunny returned to Canton to continue his studies there. At first life was peaceful but soon the Japanese swept through China and in the fall of 1938, Canton was captured. Most of the students and teaching staff of the university and medical school that Sunny was attending packed up and moved inland together. Travel was difficult. In order to slow down the movement of the Japanese, the government had asked people living near roads and railways to destroy them. The only option was to travel on foot. Over one thousand people set out walking all the way to Hong Kong. This is normally a trip of approximately 75 miles but a much longer, less direct route was taken in order to avoid the Japanese forces. From Hong Kong they traveled by boat and train and eventually donkey until they reached the relative safety of a small town in the countryside near Kunming. Here those who survived the trip lived and studied wherever they could find space in residential homes and temples. Sunny remembered staying in a Buddhist temple where the wind whistled through the walls. Regular classes were not held but the professors continued to guide the students as they completed assignments and wrote essays using reference books that they had carried from Canton. Much of what they learned had little to do with academics, however, and much to do with survival. The young men learned to hunt and they ate whatever they could get their hands on including snakes and wild pigs.

During this time Sunny completely lost contact with his family who had escaped to Hong Kong. Several years passed before they were reunited and it was only then that he learned that his father had contracted a serious disease and died less than a year after they parted.

In 1940, Sunny traveled by bus to the city of Chongqing which had become the wartime capital of China. There he wrote an examination and, along with approximately 120 other youths, was accepted into a training program designed to prepare them to help build up China which was by this time in political and financial ruin. Every Monday, Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the Nationalist Party or Koumintang, came to speak to the students. Sunny recalled him walking amongst the students offering words of encouragement. It still boggles my mind that week after week I sat in a coffee shop in a tiny Alberta town and listened to a man who had personally known a historical figure like Chiang Kai-shek whom I had only read about in textbooks!

After completing his training, Sunny worked for the government taxation bureau. Life in China continued to be difficult. By the time the war with Japan came to an end, the Communists, under the leadership of Mao Zedong, had gained control of large areas of northern China. Fighting soon broke out between the Communists and the Koumintang over control of the rest of the country and in 1949, the Communist forces defeated Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist forces and took control of mainland China. Sunny fled to Hong Kong and worked for a time as a journalist writing newspaper articles about what was happening in China under the Communists. Later a series of these articles was compiled and published as a small book which was of particular interest to Chinese refugees who wanted to know exactly what was happening in their country.

Returning to China, he found that life had become even more difficult. People who expressed anti government opinions were imprisoned or killed. It was illegal for people to organize for any reason. Food and other necessities were rationed and all travel required government approval. For Sunny, a former official of the Nationalist government, finding a way to support himself and his mother was the biggest challenge. He tried many different jobs from raising chickens to teaching school, eventually learning the book binding trade. During these years, though he did not establish a formal practice, Sunny was often called upon to treat the illnesses of family, friends and coworkers.

During the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, many of China’s intellectuals were imprisoned or forced to leave the cities and take menial jobs in the countryside. Sunny, who had by that time a wife and young daughter, was forced to leave Canton in 1967 and move into the countryside. I had hoped that we might continue writing his story up to the point when he made the decision to leave China and come to Canada but when we reached this point in it’s telling he began to claim that his memory was failing him. I believe that reliving the memories simply became more than he could bear. He also expressed a genuine fear that if some of the things he told me about were ever published, the Chinese government might even today make life difficult for relatives still living in that country.

Before the Communists took over, while Sunny was working for the Nationalist government, he had occasionally traveled into the countryside to get away from the city and enjoy the scenery. It was on one of these trips that he befriended a Buddhist monk who taught him the ancient Chinese martial art of tai chi. Tai chi combines gentle exercise with deep breathing and has many benefits including improved flexibility and reduced stress. Sunny continued to practice tai chi on a daily basis for the remainder of his life. At one point, he taught me the basic movements. Sad to say, I didn’t keep up the practice and have forgotten the moves but his example was one I haven’t forgotten and it helps me stick with the exercise routine that is part of my daily life.

Several years ago, when his body began to fail and he needed more care than his daughter, who operates a small town motel and restaurant, could provide, Sunny moved to a Chinese seniors home in Edmonton. I remember when I visited him shortly after the move, how frustrated he was by the fact that most of the residents there were content to spend their days playing cards and watching TV. Sunny wanted to keep on learning and was happy to report that he’d found a new ESL tutor! Learning calls for painstaking effort, he once told me, and even in his senior years, he was a man who was willing to put in that effort.

On Saturday morning, I’ll be traveling to Edmonton to attend his funeral. I have no idea what to expect. It may be a Buddhist service and it may be conducted entirely in Chinese but I want to be there to pay my respects to a man who became a very special friend.

It’s twelve days until opening night of the Flagstaff Players production of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. We’re a long way from being ready but I have no doubt that we’ll pull it off. In order to do so, though, we’ll practically be living at the Sedgewick hall for the next two weeks!

This afternoon was costume call. We met at the hall to go through our “tickle trunks”* and figure out what everyone will wear. Tomorrow afternoon, I’ll join the director and another cast member at Mopsy Tucks, a costume rental place just down the road in Lougheed, to see if we can fill in the gaps. I also have some sewing to do; mostly minor alterations.

On Wednesday, immediately after the community gathers at the hall for the annual Remembrance Day ceremony, we’ll begin constructing our set. We have a crew who are ready to move in and put it together. As usual, I’ll be there with hammer or paintbrush in hand to do whatever I can. The stage itself will be an elaborate one with several different levels but the backdrops and props will be quite simple.

It always amazes me how a play begins to come together once the set is in place. When we have walls instead of lines of masking tape on the floor, the whole thing becomes much more real and we usually move pretty quickly from hesitant and nervous to confident and ready.

Most of the cast have memorized their lines and we’ll be prying reluctant fingers from the last few scripts this week. Once we’re onstage without the scripts, we can work on voice and character development. Then the play really begins to come to life.

Richard and I have very small roles in this year’s play. Because we were away for three weeks this fall, we weren’t able to take on as much as we have in the past and have found it a little harder to get into the spirit of things. Now that the deadline is fast approaching, however, I’ll be living and breathing A Christmas Carol until the lights go out at the end of our final performance and I’ll be loving every minute of it.

*Those of you who aren’t Canadian might not know what a “tickle trunk” is but the term is familiar to anyone who grew up or parented children in Canada within the past 40 years. The name comes from Mr. Dressup, a popular children’s television series that was produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation from 1967 to 1996. The show, which aired every weekday morning, starred Ernie Coombs as Mr. Dressup. Each day, one segment of the show featured his Tickle Trunk, from which he would get a costume. It might be an animal costume, or a policeman’s or fireman’s uniform, or some other outfit in which he would dress up and play whatever role was suggested by the costume. The trunk must have been magic as it always had the right costume, in the right size, neatly folded at the very top. I can only wish that our “tickle trunks” were as well equipped!