The idea of naming each of the 5 classrooms has been brought up a long time ago. We came up with loads of ideas, such as countries’ names, numbers, flowers, festivals, etc. But none of them can give us the feeling of “yes, that is the name we want!!” We want the name to be easy, related to Chinese culture, at the same time the students can use them in their daily life. One meeting, we came up with the idea of Chinese historical places, such as the Great Wall, the Forbidden City. We tried to find some famous historical places in the south, but most of these places are in Beijing. None of them were in Guangzhou. So we were stuck again.
One day, on the bus back home, one idea strike me like a lightening. Why don’t we use the 5 elements? In Chinese it is called “wu3 xing2” which is a basic component of the unique Chinese culture. The five elements are wood (mu4), fire (huo3), earth (tu3), metal (jin1) and water (shui3). Each of these elements symbolizes a particular category of things or motions. They are the basic substances necessary for life. At the same time, they are promoting and restricting each other. Aren’t them the perfect names for the rooms? I was very excited about my thought.
The next day, the first thing I did was to tell our Center Manager my idea. He agreed and so did the other teachers.
So now if you walk into our office, you can walk in the shui3 room or the jin1room. That’s the whole story to name our rooms. Do you have better ideas?
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