6th Grade Sound Wave

Chapter 4 – First Day

  After going through immigration and collecting luggage, the girls were out of the airport. They followed their conductor to the carpark and onto the travel bus that would be transporting them for the 7 days they were in China.

  The bus took them to their hotel, The Super 8, where they would be staying. There were 60 girls in the choir, so there would be 10 rooms of 6 girls. Mrs Jenkins, the pianist and the page-turner would stay in a room together.

  Lizboa, Baixue, Cynthia, Evelyn, Alexis and Alice went to their room. Lizboa had a card in her hands. As they came to their room – 204 – Lizboa violently turned the handle, but the door was locked.

  “Oh, man!” said Lizboa. “It doesn’t work! We’ll have to find the staff then.”

  Alice and Alexis were suppressing their giggles. “The card in your hands – you stick in that slit under the handle. Then the door will be unlocked.”

  Lizboa did as they said, and sure enough, the door unlocked. “Magical!” exclaimed Lizboa. “It’s so cool!”

  They went inside the room. There was a small desk and chair, a small armchair, three double beds, a wardrobe and a large luggage rack. There was a bathroom, of course, which consisted of a bathtub, a sink and a toilet.

  Lizboa fell straight onto a bed. “Oh, it feels good! The bed is wonderful!” she cried.

  Cynthia was horrified. “Lizboa! You’re in dirty clothes but you lay down on a clean bed. No one would want to use that bed anymore. Also, I’m going to complain to the school after the trip. How can we share beds?”

  “Well, Cynthia,” said Evelyn. “I must say I’m looking forward to sharing beds. It’s just like a mega sleep over!”

  Lizboa and Baixue wanted to share a bed. They liked each other a lot. Alexis and Evelyn, the twins, wanted to share too.

  “What?” screamed Alice when she heard that the twins were to share. “Then I shall have the – the honor – of sharing with Cynthia!”

  Evelyn could tell that her sister did not want to share with Cynthia, so she offered to share with the disliked girl, and left her two sisters to share.

  The girls had the morning to settle down and unpack a bit before going to the hotel lobby to assemble and go to lunch.

  On the way over, the girls huddled around the windows of the school bus, and admired the city of Beijing.

  “It’s such a vibrant city!” exclaimed Lizboa. “Look at all these skyscrapers!”

  “What I find hard to believe is that this advanced city is also the home of so many historical sites,” said Evelyn.

  “I love that funky building! It looks like a trapezium figure that shows up on our exam papers!” said Alexis.

  “I confess I had no idea Beijing was such a dynamic city,” said Alice. “Why, I thought it would be a tame version of Los Angeles. But now it seems like Los Angeles is a tame version of Beijing!”

  “Home,” whispered Baixue. “I’m home!”

  Their discussions came to an end, for they reached the Chinese restaurant that they were to have lunch at.

  The girls sat around the circular tables, and stared bewildered at the round, glass plate in the middle of the table.

  Confused and muddled, the girls turned to Baixue for help.

  “What’s that round plate?” asked Evelyn.

  “The waiters put the food there, and you can spin it around so you can get the food you want,” replied Baixue.

  “What are those long sticks we have?” asked Lizboa.

  “Those are chopsticks. In China, we don’t use forks and knives. We use chopsticks to pick up the food and put it in our mouths,” said Baixue. “We do use spoons, though, for some dishes like soup.”

  “Forgive me if I may be very stupid – but why are there two extra pairs of chopsticks in a different color?” asked Alexis.

  “Those are the communal chopsticks. In China, we share the dishes. We use the communal chopsticks to pick up the food from the large dish and put it in our bowl, then we use our own chopsticks to eat it. That way, we don’t eat each other’s saliva,” said Baixue.

  The first dish came – a large plate of long, brownish things that looked like worms. “What are those?” asked the girls.

  “Those are pig ears,” said Baixue. “This dish is a traditional Peking dish. The full name is cold pig’s ears in sauce.”

  Cynthia was horrified and went white. The girls tried to use the chopsticks to eat the pig’s ears as Baixue had taught them – but they couldn’t! Lizboa dropped her chopsticks on the floor three times, Alice dropped a piece of pig’s ear on her white pants, and Alexis held the chopsticks the wrong way! Baixue couldn’t help it. She laughed, but she continued to help the girls. “Why not request forks and knives for this meal,” she said. “And we can practice in our room tonight.” The girls welcomed this idea with enthusiasm.

  The next dish was a dish with black, squiggly, sour things. “What are those?” asked Cynthia, spitting one out into a tissue. “They’re absolutely horrid.”

  “I find them quite delicious,” said Alice. “I wonder at you not liking them!”

  “Just let Baixue answer,” snapped Cynthia.

  “Well – they’re called Yun’er. They’re basically edible fungus,” said Baixue. “My mother knows how to make them. You soak them in vinegar and some other things – then they’re ready!”

  “Gosh – that’s disgusting! I feel sick,” said Cynthia.

  Then each girl got a bowl of white rice.

  “That’s rice?” exclaimed Lizboa after trying a bite. “Are you sure of it? The rice we have at school never tastes as good as this!”

  They had a large plate of dumplings next. “Those are mutton, those are pork, those are vegetarian,” said Baixue. “You dip them in vinegar before you eat them.”

  The girls loved the dumplings. They were positively delicious.

  After lunch, they went to a school in Beijing where they had borrowed the hall. They rehearsed there for the afternoon.

  The girls were not in good humor, for they were all going through a wave of jet-lag. They yawned constantly, and Mrs Jenkins suddenly said, “Do you see how beautiful your tone is when you yawn? Keep up that tone for singing!”

  In fact, Mrs Jenkins herself was fighting hard to keep awake. When she dismissed the girls for a short break, she sat down to rest. Her eyes suddenly gave way to the drowsiness, and she dozed off to sleep, her head leaning comically against her music stand.

  Alexis saw this, and nudged the others, and soon everyone was laughing at Mrs Jenkins. Alexis crept quietly up to Mrs Jenkins, and poked Mrs Jenkins suddenly with a very convincing toy snake.

  Mrs Jenkins awoke with a scream, and said to Alexis, “What was that, Alexis? I thought it was … it was a snake!”

  Alexis cheekily took out the snake again and dangled it under Mrs Jenkins nose. Mrs Jenkins realized that it was a trick, and picking up her dignity at once, she snatched the snake from Alexis and said, “That will not happen again, Alexis. These rehearsals are the few precious times we have to improve ourselves before the competition. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Mrs Jenkins,” replied Alexis meekly. “May I have my snake back, please?”

  “After the rehearsal,” answered Mrs Jenkins, “providing there are no more disruptions.”

  Alexis kept her word. She eagerly wanted her snake back, for she still needed it to use on Cynthia!

  They had dinner next. Cynthia criticized the garlicky plate of fried green vegetables. She said they were a failure at refined cuisine.

  “It’s funny,” said Lizboa. “When we’re at school, and we don’t finish our broccoli, you scold us about how broccoli is good for us, and that we shouldn’t waste food. The same applies to this!”

  “Yeah, but,” said Cynthia, “broccoli is a normal vegetable. These green vegetables are disgusting!”

  “It must have escaped your notice,” said Alexis. “That broccoli is green too!”

  Cynthia went beetroot red. Baixue requested
a pair of wooden, disposable chopsticks from the restaurant where they had dinner. The other girls had no idea what for, but they made no remark about it.

  That evening they had nothing planned after dinner. They could rest in their rooms until it was time for bed. ‘Lights Out’ was at 10:00, and they had about two hours till then.

  In their room, Baixue took out a board game – a Chinese board game. Inside, there were different colors of marbles. She took out the marbles, put them in a cup, and took out the pair of wooden chopsticks.

  “There!” she said. “You can practice using chopsticks by picking up the marbles from the cup. It’s challenging – but I’m pretty sure you’ll be able to eat with chopsticks tomorrow if you can even take one marble out!

  Lizboa tried first. In the beginning, she flipped the cup over and caused a catastrophe, but later she got the hang of it, and began taking the marbles out skillfully, one by one.

  The other girls tried too. In the same way, the failed at first, but then succeeded.

  Cynthia was last. She was sure she would shine, and thought the other girls complete idiots!

  Here is a faithful narrative of what she succeeded in doing: she broke the wooden chopstick, dropped it in the cup, tried to dig it back out, flipped over the cup, sent marbles over the floor, stepped on a marble, fell down and knocked over Alice’s luggage.

  “Oh, no!” exclaimed Alice. “My luggage! It will take ages to pack it all back again.”

  “What a wonderful show you put up for us, Cynthia,” said Alexis, sarcastically. “But perhaps next time you could stage your shows with less inconvenience to other people.”

  “I’m sure Cynthia didn’t mean to knock over Alice’s luggage, Alexis,” said Evelyn.

  “I didn’t,” muttered Cynthia. “But I would have gladly done it on purpose, seeing this is the way you treat me.”

  The rest of the evening was spent tidying up Cynthia’s mess – but of course, they also sat around and chatted.

  By the time it was 10:00, they were all tired and went to bed.

  * * * * *