Promenade on Beijing Lu

An Australian writer visited Kunming on an AEF study tour and the extract Promenade on Beijing Lu is about some of his first experiences in Kunming, the capital city of Yunnan province. Kunming is often called ‘Spring City’ by Chinese people, because it is believed to have a climate which is always spring-like. ‘Lu’ is one Chinese word for ‘street’.

Learning area

English: Years 9–10

Outline

Students read and discuss Promenade on Beijing Lu and complete various written and oral activities. This extract would be a useful counterpoint when students are reading other literature which deals with being a stranger or outsider, or with commonalities and differences in human experience.

Activities

1. Have students read the extract Promenade on Beijing Lu.
2. Clarify any unfamiliar vocabulary. Possibilities include: promenade, Lu, voracious, mufti, mannequins, Spring City, monopoly, regalia, temperate, naivete.
3. Ask students to suggest adjectives which describe the general mood of the extract and discuss responses.
4. Use the internet to locate images of Kunming. Compare these images with the written description. If time permits, ask students to collate a set of images which support the text.
5. Discuss the concept of ‘soft driving’ and ask students where (if ever) they might have experienced a similar phenomenon and whether traffic in Australia is ever ‘soft’.
6. Re-read the fourth paragraph with students. Discuss whether ‘the voracious appetite of youth to learn and experience innocently’ is or is not ‘forgotten in our media’ and whether it was more characteristic of the 1960s. (Students could ask their parents about this.) This topic could well provide a topic for argumentative writing or for a class debate.
7. Ask students to define characteristics of the images on the film billboards which accompany the extract. Draw attention to the author’s contention that they speak ‘a universal language’ and discuss ways in which they are similar to and different from corresponding images in Australia.
8. Broaden the discussion to consider the extract as a whole and define what else the author finds familiar or different from his previous experience. A simple writing task would be to outline and discuss similarities and differences.
9. Discuss the emotions of the author as the extract comes to a close.
10. An ‘imaginative’ writing task would ask students to put themselves in the place of one of the Chinese ‘promenaders’ and write about their observations of the Australians in Beijing Lu.
11. As an extension activity, students could role play an Australian ‘promenader’ walking and talking with an Chinese ‘promenader’ about what they are seeing as they walk.

Related resources

Section 6 of Manh, E 1998, Sharing Fruit (book is out of print), Curriculum Corporation, provides a range of prose and poetry in which people from Asia find themselves in Australia and Australians find themselves in Asia.