Rain or Shine in Hong Kong

GRIP: The OPEN Classroom

Cover photo: Post-storm views from the Star Ferry

If I had a nickel for every person who warned me about the inclement summer weather in Hong Kong, I’d be able to buy a third umbrella. Their words had merit, though—navigating puddle-ridden sidewalks has become second nature, and my appearance at the office most mornings is hailed by the squeaking of my brand-new, still-charm-free Crocs. Before experiencing my first summer in Asia, I thought monsoon season sounded poetic. Even with the joyous atmosphere of summer, the emotional dam still needs to break; vexations and sorrow don’t just disappear with the snowmelt. Pouring rain in July is a good reminder that not even the sun is relentlessly happy (blame my Southern Californian naïveté for assuming otherwise).

Following my illogic, I almost ended up trapped in Shenzhen during a typhoon. Weather alerts have pinged my phone so often these last two months that it became a boy-who-cried-wolf situation, and I chanced a last-minute, 16-hour day trip to mainland China. I waded rather than wandered between futuristic skyscrapers and street stalls that remained stubbornly open even as wind dangerously whipped at plastic tarps covering weighted-down tables. My eyes grew red from blinking away water droplets, and my curtain bangs plastered themselves against my brow. Despite all this, I managed to cross the border back into Hong Kong just in time to dry off and prep for the next day’s classes.

Trying to outmaneuver an actual typhoon only mirrored the quiet exhaustion waiting for me at my desk. I’ve always been extra introspective during gloomy weather, even though rainy days were rare growing up. Those grey afternoons, combined with rereading angsty coming-of-age fiction to prep for middle school literature courses, brought out some of my more negative thoughts. I grew frustrated one day at work when I couldn’t remember the name of my second-grade teacher—whom I remember fondly, but can’t recall why thinking of her hazy face brings warm memories.

The beauty in my transient teaching gig is that I get to work with so many students, since each class spans just one week. However, if I couldn’t remember the identity of a mentor I had for over nine months, how are the children I see for a week in their jam-packed summers supposed to remember the curriculum we journeyed through? I knew the work wasn’t futile, but I couldn’t help feeling demoralized knowing I’d probably already faded from the memories of the fourth graders I had bonded with over aerospace facts and Greek mythology.

I read once, though, that a raindrop can travel across the world through air currents—water evaporating from the Red Sea can find its way to a downpour in Vancouver the next week. Looking at the rain gathering on the windowsill of my classroom, my mind wandered back to the idea of rainstorms as a mosaic, with each droplet coming from unique, singular moments in a person’s life. I’m not sure what my students will remember from our classes—maybe how to structure their paragraphs, brainstorm a villain’s backstory, or random facts about Great Depression-era Hoover Carts (from my mini-tangent stemming from To Kill a Mockingbird).

This summer, torrential weather wasn’t the only shock coming from Southern California. A high school friend who transferred from a prestigious Hong Kong school had relayed horror stories about late nights doing countless extracurriculars and studying for exams. My high school environment had a similar competitiveness, but to a lesser degree. Everything had a formula: creative writing was trained only to craft the perfect college essay; afterschool activities were structured down to the minute; and earning top grades trumped gathering knowledge. Coming to Hong Kong, I’ve seen the same hyper-standardized expectations, but starting in primary school rather than freshman year.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve had conversations with a senior colleague about teaching methodologies. One snippet has stuck with me ever since: many students now are being taught to pass a class, not how to write. School worksheets often punish students for writing more than necessary. A kid could have a full-score paragraph, decide to elaborate, and be knocked off points for a slight spelling or grammatical error in their elaboration. This disturbed me immensely when I first heard about it, but I realized then that I hadn’t quite been doing enough to teach my kids writing rather than passing.

I had been trying to forcefully sort which droplets of knowledge would fit in each student’s mind, rather than letting the rain fall as it would and helping them navigate the current. Storms are violent, passionate, and wholly uncontrollable bursts of energy in a world that increasingly values convenience, efficiency, and control. To mention Southern California one more time (it’s relevant, I promise), we famously suffered from a drought throughout my childhood—proof of how rainstorms can be utterly necessary. No one would tell rainclouds where to land, only appreciate the droplets having traveled all across the world to accumulate in this one spot, in this one moment—like serendipity.

It seems only fitting that my final day in Hong Kong was blessed with a rainstorm, both when I dragged my suitcase through the puddle-ridden sidewalks that marked my morning commute for the past two months, and as my plane took off. I know that I bring with me my own new droplets—from my coworkers, and from every student I’ve had the joy of working with.