Maple Leaf Educational System...

The Girls Campus

Our apartment is about a five minute walk to the girls campus (where Kristen works). Some mornings, getting up at 6:00 and trudging through the fog, snow or bitter cold wind, the walk seems a lot further! The campus is huge, and the buildings feel monumental. The girls campus is particularly spectacular in a dirty sort of way! The main office building is on one side of a huge coliseum type archway four or five stories high. The main school building has a five story circular atrium with a skylight at the top, granite and marble floors and a brick facade. Even the sidewalk paving is made out of ceramic tiles. It is impressive, despite the signs of shoddy workmanship that you tend to see here and there: unlevel basketball courts, chipped tiles, uncaulked bathrooms etc. Hey, the entire campus was built in under six months (from ground breaking to final touches) so really, what can you expect!

The Boys Campus:

The boys campus is much older, with two main teaching buildings of five stories each. The older building is pseudo-modern on the inside, with crazy staircases, wrought iron banisters painted pink and white and the wierdest layout one can imagine. The newer building is institutional, but big, in the Chinese style, with twelve foot ceilings in the classroom and wooden paneling.

Both campuses have large squares, where every Monday all the students and teachers gather to sing the Chinese national anthem, the Canadian national anthem and the Maple Leaf School song while flags are raised and the best and brightest kids in the school give speeches. Its like standing outside waiting for a hockey game that never materializes. Most of the teachers (and the kids) end up just talking quietly and trying not to freeze their sensitive parts off. Paul sings along.

The students have some choice of uniforms- blazers and collared shirts are available- but the majority wear green and gold track suits with "Maple Leaf School" on the back. Its wierd seeing thousands of students all standing around in rows, wearing shiny green and gold tracksuits and trying to keep warm while listening to the tinny whine of a loudspeaker blaring the school song with its Chinese words and folkish tune. Its disturbing, and slightly amazing to see that some of my stereotypes of China do, in fact, have some basis.