The mentoring of children in an orphanage, this, is just one particular case, translated…
Hill from Guanxi just went on to his first grade of middle school, he got accepted into the arts program, his favorite subject. Since his elementary years, he’d shown outstanding artistry. In the fourth grade, while other children are still copying the cartoon characters to draw, Hill could already make these characters to carry his own sense of flair, and the character he copied looked like he’d drawn them first.
The Compassion Home’s teachers asked the children to make a mural of one of the school building’s walls, looking at it, there was, a group of dragon riders that’s not the least bit resembling the cartoon characters, the Doraemon, the sun, the flowers, the grasses, made by Hill. He’d used brash colors, although he’d not had the skilled artistic measures, but, his picture makeup is thought-provoking.
His handiness was also shown on his being able to put together simple mechanical things. Hill often found the parts of toys or household appliances, and, after he’d worked on them, the motored small cars all went on their own ways. Hill was also very generous, he’d not kept all of his own crafts to himself, after he’d made each and every toy, he’d given them to the younger children in Home.
Each and every year, I’d taken the time to Guanxi to visit, bearing witness to the coming of age of a couple of children with the artistic talents, including Hill. In 2014, an art teacher and I took Hill and four other elementary school graduates from Guanxi, taking them on a trip for a whole month, to travel in China. On the way, we’d performed mimes, so the kids can get a different way of connecting to the world, and see how it works. They all also kept track of the goings-on of our shared trip with their sketches, drawings, as well as diaries too. In a month’s time, Hill made countless number of drawings, it’d made the art teacher who came with us on the trip awe at his skills.
And still, as he got into the middle school years, Hill started rebellion against authority, showed a lack of interest in the scholastic, became truant, and would spend long hours in the net cafés, not turning home in the evenings, starting to smoke, everything you can imagine. I’d tried consoling with him, it’d only driven him farther away from us. Once I’d taken the advantage of the time I had in Shanghai, and made a special trip to Guangxi to visit with him, and, the two of us spend a happy day with the kids from Home, and Hill also opened up about himself to me, and promised, that he will, work hard, to conquer the difficulties he’s facing right now.
But, right after I left, as his curfew came, he’d not, returned back into the school. The school and the teachers from Home couldn’t find him, but that was, when I’d found him, logged on, at a computer in a net café. I’d sent him a message, grilled him hard, but, he’d only replied, “I don’t want to talk to anybody right now!”
For his three years in middle school, Hill was lost in the internet, and the computer online games, and, he’d stopped the once so excellent artistic side of him. Six months before his midterms exam, I’d told him something harsh, “If you don’t want to study, then you must go to work, find a way on your own, we respect that, but you must, show that same respect back to us too. Financing you these couple of years, it’s not for you, to waste it all away, especially on these useless things, if you don’t want to study anymore, then, we give the donations to other children who want to work hard in school!” Six months later, Hill was able to make a very high mark using his outstanding performances on the exams, “Mr. Yao, I feel so proud”, he’d told me.
This summer, Hill and another child, Ping, who also accepted the sponsorship from a couple of kindhearted people in Taiwan, we’d discussed both their future plans. Hill told me, that he had it with the suppressive ways of living in the middle school years, but he’d not wanted to start working now. I suggested that he could think about the art majors in the high school education programs around, following, we’d, visited a couple of the art academies around Guanxi and Nanning. Walking within the walls of these schools with the artistic atmospheres, I saw how Hill’s eyes lit up, and I think, I know what he is going to do next in his life.
A month later, Hill got into a government sponsored art school in Liuzhou. And the texts he’d sent me now, are mostly about the creations he’d made in his courses. “Mr. Yao, I drew this today, doesn’t it look like it was, out of the hands of a master?” “Shameless you! You can’t say that about your own work!”, I’d jokingly replied back, thinking to myself, there it is, the Hill I’m familiar with again.
This is how, this man mentored these children in an orphanage in China, and, he’d used the authoritative measures to help these children see the flaws in their own ways, hoping that by offering them the unconditional love and support, somehow, the child will, find his way back onto the right tracks of life, and, thankfully, this young boy had, and, that, is how much love, concern, and cares that these children needed, and they were, able to find it, in this man.