A Chinese Sports Day

Sports Day in the calendar in a Hong Kong school is a much anticipated affair, mainly because it means two days off teaching and usually an extra day’s holiday to recognize the hard effort staff and students have provided. For me, it was just another part of a long list of misunderstandings and being oblivious to what was going on around me, but a fun couple of days nonetheless.

Prior to the day proper I get my usual couple of emails all in Chinese. I usually ask my neighbour in the staffroom, Mr Put, to translate them for me or to give them a quick glance. Actually, his job assigned by the panel chair (HOD) is to read all the group emails first and then translate them for me but as he never reads his emails, it is up to me to decide whether any may be important—I try and do this by looking at dates and if my name is there. My name sticks out likes dog’s balls because the rest are written in Chinese characters—I always ask in this case as I assume this may be important. More often than not it’s not—they just like announcements here. On one particular email it had my name and the dates of the sports days so I requested a translation. This translation came back at that I’m assisting in using the starting gun. I got very excited because that meant loading cartridges, gunpowder on the hands, and I could fantasize about being a gangster or cowboy shooting in the air in celebration. One morning I heard my name in the midst of an announcement in Cantonese during a class and I looking pleadingly for a translation, but the kids would have got it more wrong than the teachers who told me later that my name had been left off the programme advertising ‘activities’. Sadly the translation stopped there, and I couldn’t shed any light on what ‘activities’ meant.

My colleagues are very caring and considerate and many of them asked how I was planning to get to the stadium, as it was held in a purpose-built venue. Many offered bus numbers and trains to take. Brian, the organizer and head of PE, had already given me some maps with a bus I could take to Tsing Yi (pronounced Ching Yee), an island not far from the school.

On the appointed day I went to the designated bus stop but had to wait about 20 minutes, I must have just missed the previous bus. Unfortunately, instead of going directly to the destination like my school bus, this one meandered around the place going to as many stops it could. Instead of taking 25 minutes like my usual bus, it took an hour to travel a similar distance. I got to the bus stop and terminus and had to look for the sports ground which was well signposted but 30 minutes late. I had many calls from concerned colleagues worried that I might be lost. I eventually made it in time to see the Chinese flag being paraded around the ground. I’m just disappointed I missed the female militia in miniskirts and boots.

The first races are the hurdles and I am excited about the starting gun, we go over to get ready and I am handed the gun, which is actually just an air horn connected to a microphone that trips the timer. I was gutted but tried hard not to let my disappointment show. My job was to start the races but sounding the horn and dropping a red flag (note the symbolism). Some student helpers did the “on your marks, get set…” then I fired, I mean, pressed the button. I thought the 'on your marks' was some kind of universal expression, much like OK and 'testing' when they speak into a microphone and it starts cutting out--you'll hear a whole lot of Chinese and then, "...testing, testing.." but I later found out that they had taught the whole school the English race start for my benefit.

Later in the day, Brian informed me that I was running in the 100 metre C grade final. I thought this was the activity that I was entered into. This would be easy, I thought. When I was a kid I always was in the 100 metres final at high school. What does one do in this situation? Let the kids win because it wouldn’t be fair if the teacher beat the kids? It was the C grade so they couldn’t be fast and I didn’t want to show them up.

Later in the afternoon it was time to have the finals, and it was time. I lined up with the racers, some of whom asked if I was nervous. I had an interview with one of the senior students over the stadium loudspeaker. I reached my mark, got set and the horn went off. All the boys raced ahead of me leaving me chugging away on the track. The kids in the crowd cheered, or laughed at this bald, middle-aged man being thoroughly thrashed—these kids were fast! I was embarrassingly slow. I think my time read 19 something seconds—I think I used to do it in 14 seconds at school—not hugely fast, but respectable.

The kids were pretty good about it and I thought that’s good, it’s over. But no, the ‘activity’ hadn’t been run yet as I was to find out the next day. Day two, a Friday, saw more finals and the relays. The bonus too, was that it was only half a day so we could have a three and a half day weekend as Monday was a holiday. The kids all had T shirts of different colours for their form classes and all their entries went toward a grand prize for the form class with the most entries etc, which encouraged a lot of participation. The relays were also run as an interclass competition with each class sitting together in the stands chanting slogans creating a fantastic atmosphere. After the relays I was dragged over in front of the stand to be in the egg and spoon staff relay. We were in three teams, representing the three school houses. Brian was in my team and brought up my race the day before. He said some thing which sounded like. “You just need to get fitter”, but what he actually said was, “you fatter, when you first come you have no stomach.” I put it down to all those yum cha lunches. I vow to cut back on BBQ pork. For the race we couldn’t use eggs because they would mess up the track so we had to use ping pong balls. They are quite difficult to keep on a spoon I can tell you. We seemed to do quite well but I’m sure we had an extra team member because we managed to come last.

Jo and the kids came for a visit and managed to see the awards ceremony, which they do with a podium and medals and there were short speeches. The kids loved the sense of achievement and the ceremony. This included me as I was brought up to receive my bronze medal for coming third in the teachers’ relay!