Chinese Youth Say|Yang Bo: In Sydney, restore an authentic "Yunnan"
He is a Bai nationality in Dali, Yunnan, who moved to Australia for love;
He serves as an international student liaison officer at the school, from studying to eating, providing assistance to Chinese students in every detail;
He also formed the Yunnan Ethnic Art Troupe to bring the colorful and authentic Chinese minority culture to Sydney...
In this issue of "Chinese Youth Talk", Yang Bo from Sydney talks about his "double-sided" life.
The following is Yang Bo's narrative:
I came to Sydney for love.
I am from the Bai ethnic group in Dali, Yunnan, and my wife Victoria is an Australian girl.
In 2011, I officially moved to Australia, and it is now ten years.
Yang Bo (right) and his wife Victoria (left)
At the beginning, I didn’t realize how difficult it would be to move to Australia. We both started a new chapter in Sydney with excitement like a "honeymoon", but soon the trouble came: we ran out of money. NS.
I must find a job that can support my family as soon as possible.
Originally, I wanted to work in my own line of TV production, but due to various reasons such as lack of personal network resources and insufficient work experience, I encountered a wall in the interview one after another.
In order to gain a foothold, I finally put away my dreams and chose to compromise with life.
I have met many Chinese friends in Sydney. During the exchanges with them, I found that many children from Chinese families will lose themselves for a long time after they come to Sydney, especially those children who came here when they were in high school. The pressure of life, study, and social life are both great.
Helping the children of such Chinese families through the "lost" period and letting them find their way as soon as possible is what I really want to do, and it is also the help these children need to get at this stage.
This has enlightened my career plan, so I found my current job.
Now, I work as an international student liaison at a middle school in Sydney.
To put it simply, my job is to build a "bridge" between the school, students and parents, so that parents can better understand their children's development in the school, and the school can more accurately understand the needs of students and parents.
Take campus life as an example. Australians have relatively simple lunches, such as sandwiches.
Although the school has a cafeteria, there is no Chinese-style "three dishes and one soup" dishes.
Many international students cannot adapt to a meal of sandwiches in a short period of time, especially for students from China, sometimes they do not have enough or not to eat at noon.
After class, they will go to nearby fast food restaurants to buy high-calorie foods, such as fried chicken legs, French fries and a glass of cola. They unconsciously form a habit of overeating, and some foreign students who have just arrived in Australia will quickly gain weight.
Problems like this need to be solved by teachers who are responsible for managing campus life.
In addition to popular science Australian-style healthy eating, we also need to adjust the canteen recipes according to the needs of students. Each week, the school canteen will have different hot food recipes specially prepared for Asian students.
In addition, many of the international students attending secondary schools in Sydney live in local families, and their host families will be responsible for their meals.
Outside the classroom, we will also communicate with the student’s homestay guardian and feedback questions.
After communication, the children's meals will be improved.
Outside of work, I very much hope to spread the excellent Chinese culture and art to Sydney.
Therefore, with the support of my fellow villagers from Yunnan in Sydney, I formed a non-profit community cultural and artistic group mainly composed of ethnic minorities in Yunnan.
At the beginning of its establishment, we called the "Family Association Art Troupe", and most of the members were born in Yunnan.
Today, we are called "Australia Sydney Yunnan Ethnic Art Troupe". I serve as the artistic director. The members come from all walks of life, including international students, businessmen, white-collar workers, nurses, etc., because of the love of Chinese ethnic culture.
We hope that through performances, we can convey the romantic and simple beauty of Yunnan to Sydney, which is also highly tolerant, so that more people can feel the charm of Yunnan and contribute our own strength to the cultural exchanges between China and Australia.
The large-scale cultural activities we participate in mainly include: Huaxing Arts Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival Gala for Overseas Chinese, New Year Lantern Festival, etc., as well as various festivals organized by the local government of Sydney each year.
In terms of style, we pursue a full of ethnic customs, so that the audience can feel the warmth and charm of Yunnan.
Before the epidemic, the art troupe's daily rehearsal was generally once a week, and there was no rest throughout the year.
In order to participate in a rehearsal, some members have to take a bus and then transfer to a train. The commuting time is more than two hours, and it is early morning when they return home after the rehearsal.
The coordination of rehearsal time is my biggest headache, because I don't want to affect everyone's normal life and work too much.
In the first few weeks of the performance, I will increase the rehearsal time or concentrate on training depending on the situation.
In this special period, everyone rushed to the rehearsal hall after get off work with a bite of bread.
Fortunately, everyone really loves Chinese national culture and the stage, so they worked hard to participate in the rehearsal, without complaints, and worked together to complete one performance after another.
Actor scheduling, rehearsal schedule, costume and prop design, production funding, etc., I do all the affairs of the group by myself.
For every performance, every program, whether it is the depth of the work, or the costumes, props, music, and dance language, I will try my best to present the traditional national customs to the audience.
For example, "Wedding Flower Waist" is like this.
Once when I was struggling with a program planning case, I saw a live photo of a member of a group member holding a wedding in China. There was a picture of a mother wiping her daughter's tears. I was moved.
I thought at the time, would it be a surprise if the marriage customs specific to Chinese ethnic minorities were brought to the Sydney stage?
"Wedding Flower Waist" program
After some discussion, we decided to draw materials from the marriage custom of the Yi nationality's Nisu branch about crying for marriage.
When the member returned to Sydney after the wedding, we started the rehearsal of the "Wedding Waist" program. I chose her as the protagonist of the show, the bride, and let her appear in her true colors, which was very contagious.
After the show takes shape, the next step is to design clothing.
In order to better restore the amorous feelings of the Nisu branch, I asked my friends in China to go to the stockade to find local Yi people to sew performance costumes. The shirt weighs more than 3 kilograms, and there are heavy headdresses.
I think it is a very beautiful experience to "wear the real history" during the performance.
At the 2018 Sydney Lunar New Year Lantern Festival, we performed "Wedding Flower Waist" on the outdoor stage.
Before the performance started, when we were preparing in the dressing room at the backstage, a girl knocked on the door and said that she saw the program list. She was very curious to see your "kidney", whether it was fried or garlic, we laughed. The nervous emotions vanished in an instant.
After the performance, she ran to the dressing room again to say goodbye to us. She said: "Your waist flower is delicious and full of ingredients. It's so good to cry. Give you a thumbs up!"
Something happened during the performance. For some reason, our music suddenly cut off after playing for a minute, but the well-trained and cooperating members did not stop the dance. We continued in the silent beat. After the performance, the audience all stood up and high-five to beat us.
All the actors were inspired by the audience's beat and moved to tears.
At the 2019 Mid-Autumn Festival Gala for Overseas Chinese, when all the actors finished the curtain call and everyone was busy taking photos, an overseas Chinese who had been in Australia for decades walked to the stage and said to us: "Your "Hani Song" made me cry My eyes are filled, I am so touched, thank you for allowing me to return to my second hometown, Yunnan, during the few minutes of the show. The design of the "Snatch the Girl" at the end of the show made me laugh again. It is really endless aftertaste."
"Song of Hani" program
Later, we learned that this overseas Chinese had spent an unforgettable time in Yunnan. He has not returned for more than 20 years.
Perhaps this is the meaning of the team members' hard work to participate in community activities.
We love to sweat on the stage and the passion when the spotlight hits us, but we hope to spread the Chinese national culture to Australia and the world.
We have "Hua Xing", just like a drop of water melting in the sea, bursting out with surging power.
In the ocean of "Hua Xing", there are many "small water droplets" like us. Although everyone performs differently, they all shine with the same light of serving the community.
Hundreds of boats are competing with each other, and it is the time to ride the wind and waves.
The various performing arts troupes of the "Hua Xing" have worked together to make a hundred flowers bloom together.
With the help of the "Hua Xing" platform, we hope that the charm of Chinese culture can be spread all over the world, "with our heads up in full bloom, and the fragrance of the clouds floating in the sky." (Source of the manuscript: China Overseas Chinese Network WeChat public account ID: qiaowangzhongguo Author/Editor: Dai Chen )