First Chinese Class, Group A

[Professor Xia Yang]

Professor Yang's classroom was rather spartan in decoration. 36 desk-chairs were arranged into a perfect 6 x 6 square formation, two chalkboards flanked a large, simple desk for the professor, the walls were pasty white with a few pronunciation and pinyin posters taped on, and a shelf near the back of the room held a few books in Chinese.

The windows were open, letting a nice breeze into the room.

There were still 10 minutes until class began.

[Mellianne Joss]

Mellianne entered the classroom early. She was eager to learn Chinese. But then, she was always eager to learn languages. She walked up and sat at one of the desks in the front, taking out her notebook and a pencil.

[Jane Ebonwood]

Chinese. That was a new one. Back home all you could get at a reguular school was Spanish, and maybe French. Then again, this wasn't a regular school, and she was far from home. Two appealing qualities.

Jane opened the door and took a seat somewhere at the side of the room. She wanted to start socialising and just be normal, but she wasn't sure how people would feel about talking to a person(a monster, she corrected herself) with no face. So for now she was staying away from other people.

[Mellianne Joss]

Mellianne noticed someone entered the room behind her, as she was keeping a look out for any of her friends, and she smiled at Jane. Her hair was in her face and she pulled it all together and put it in a pony tail, with the blue streak escaping it easily, showing her elven ears.

[Jane Ebonwood]

Jane was pleasantly surprised that people actually wanted to talk to her. Normal people, too! Well, Elves weren't normal but they weren't demonic or undead. She moved over to the seat next to Mellianne. Even this close, the hood managed to keep her face hidden. "Hi. I'm Jane... Ebonwood." She hesitatetd for a second where she almost said her real last name. "It's nice to meet you."

[Beia Meiling]

Beia trotted into class with a bounce in her step. She finally got to learn her native language, as mother only taught her a few words and legends. She approached a desk in the front row, and sat down.

[Mellianne Joss]

Mellianne grinned at Jane. "Hello. I'm Mellianne Joss. It is a pleasure to meet you. Do you like it here so far?" She turned to Beia. "Hello to you as well." So far, no friends, but she always did like meeting new people.

[Jane Ebonwood]

"Yes... there's many interesting people here. How has your experience been?" She didn't add that things would be a lot better if people weren't so tempting a meal.

Jane didn't like the new person. There was something vaguely demonic about her... but she didn't seem overly threatening, so she was alright for now. Suddenly, it occured to her that some people might be able to sense her, like she could them. She panicked for a moment, hoping that there was nobody like that here. Of course, it was hard to tell that she was panicking, except that she seemed more tense.

[Professor Xia Yang]

Yang, carrying a cane and a small laptop bag, walked into the classroom himself five minutes early for class. He sits down, hanged his cane off the back of his chair, and wolfed down a piece of bread his wife had baked at home from his bag and pulled out a pack of instant coffee to be literally poured into his mouth as a powder and gulped. He sat back for a moment and pulled out a novel called "Fist of the North Star". He flipped open to a bookmarked page and began reading for the remaining five minutes.

The bell rang five minutes later and Yang put his novel aside. He takes a piece of chalk and wrote 杨侠 on the chalkboard before turning to his class. "Hello, boys and girls," he said in loud, cheerful, British accented voice, and with a big smile on his face, "to Chinese class!"

"I shall be your Professor," he pointed with his thumb to the chalkboard, implying that the characters were his name, "you may call be Professor Yang!"

"Before we start the class, though, why don't you all introduce yourselves?"

[Jane Ebonwood]

Jane raised her hand as a sort of "hello" gesture for a second, but quickly put it back down. The sleeve of the robe had fallen slightly, revealing some of a cross shaped burn scar. She covered it up quickly, hoping nobody had noticed. "Uh, I'm Jane Ebonwood. Not much else to say, really." Well, that was one thing out of the way, at least.

[Professor Xia Yang]

Yang looked at Jane and nodded with a smile. Jane's caution about her scar, however, was misplaced; her very presence alerted Yang.

'Very little qi coming from her body,' he noted in his mind, 'probably undead in some way... this may prove to be interesting.'

"Welcome to the class, Jane." He greeted back with a smile.

[Beia Meiling]

Beia tried to remember the proper Chinese custom for greeting a teacher. She only vaguely remembered, but could fill in the blanks with what came naturally to her. She stood up, her posture rigid, "I am Beia Meiling, Gate Guard in training" She bowed before sitting back down, her large green eyes gleamed with pride.

[Mellianne Joss]

Mellianne shrugged. "It was alright. A few incidents, but nothing real big. Though one student did shot another one in the foot. She didn't last long though. But other than that, nothing real bad happened." When the professor came in, she smiled. "I'm Mellianne Joss, sir."

[Professor Xia Yang]

Yang nodded and greeted Mellianne with a smile, taking note of her elven blood after reading her qi in his mind.

[Professor Xia Yang]

Yang blushed a little when Beia bowed. Placing his fist into his open palm and extending it to Beia before bowing himself, he said "there's no need to be as formal as to bow, Beia, but I appreciate the gesture."

'Non-human qi again,' he notes in his head, 'and this qi is rigid and focused: has been trained.'

[Beia Meiling]

"As you wish sir!" Beia said, happy to have a laid back teacher for once. Though he was stared at her for a bit longer than needed. 'That is a tad creepy...'

[Professor Xia Yang]

Yang dusts himself off a little and continued with his introduction after hearing from everyone.

"Now then, first of all, some ground rules. Number one, I believe that the best way to learn Chinese is to learn like in China; therefore, I will expect you to greet the professor the Chinese way. When class begins, you all stand up and greet me, then I greet you, and then you sit down."

"Second, anyone that is late will have to wait for the first ten minutes outside the classroom; I don't not want tardiness to interrupt the class, and I will let you in when the first ten minutes has passed. If you are even later, then you might as well not even come to class."

"Thirdly, since this is a long class, you will receive a 5 to 10 minute break every hour. Rule number two still applies."

"Fourth, you will be expected to bring your textbook every class; we will be using them every class, after all."

"And finally, any homework assigned will be due at the beginning of the class the homework is due on. Late submissions will not be marked down - because they will not be marked at all."

Yang takes a deep breath.

"Other than that, though, I hope you have fun!"

[Professor Xia Yang]

"Now, then, let's begin with class. Open your textbooks to Chapter One, please; we'll start with learning about China itself..."

"... but first, let's see what you already know," Yang said, "who here knows how old the Chinese civilization is?"

[Mellianne Joss]

Mellianne oppened her book, but blinked at the teacher and shook her head. She knew nothing about China besides the American version of Chinese food. So, actually nothing.

[Professor Xia Yang]

Yang looked over to Beia.

"What about you?"

[Beia Meiling]

Beia raised her hand, "4000 years."

[Professor Xia Yang]

"Excellent," he said to Beia.

"Now, I hope you all know where the capital of China is."

[Jane Ebonwood]

"Beijing." Jane said, opening the book to chapter one. It seemed the teacher was quite strict. Well, she could live with that. Besides, the class was long, which gave her something to do during the day.

[Professor Xia Yang]

"Correct." Yang said and walked over to his blackboard. He pulled on a string which brought down a map of China. Taking a pointer stick, he pointed to a small, inland dot near a bay in the northeastern part of the country. "And this would be where it is."

"Now then, as you can," he said and circled the part of the map that was China with his pointer, "China's a pretty big country, so there are a lot of dialects in Chinese, many of them completely unintelligible to each other. What you will be learning in this class will be Mandarin Chinese, the official government dialect and lingua franca of China."

"Now then, I'm going to be putting some notes up on the projector." Yang released the map back up and pulled down a projector screen. "The lecture is going to contain information you won't find the book, so I suggest you take some notes too." Yang took a peek at the clock: 30 minutes left until the first break. Perfect.

[Destiny Valencia Everett]

Destiny peeked into the room, waiting until the teacher was busy with the projector screen to sneak in and find a desk. She hoped she wouldn't be noticed.

[Professor Xia Yang]

Yang toyed around with his projector a bit, pretending that the machine was uncooperative with muttered curses under his breath.

And entirely aware of Destiny's tardiness.

"Piece of sh*t," he muttered quietly as he "tried" to turn on the machine.

[Destiny Valencia Everett]

For a moment, Destiny watched the professor fiddle with the projector; then she slipped into the closest desk and reached into her school bag for a notebook.

She'd forgotten the notebook; but had apparently managed to pack a calico cat. Frowning, she put a finger to her lips and tried to silently communicate to Tigger that she wished the cat would stay quiet.

Tigger, who had been licking at the crumpled hamburger wrapper in Destiny's bag, looked innocently up at her as though to say, "Who, me? I thought every cat had a right to travel by school bag!"

[Professor Xia Yang]

"Ah, there!" Yang cried out, "it works!"

And as he said, soon there was a PowerPoint presentation right on the screen.

中华历史
The History of China

"Alright, then, let's get started." Yang said. He pressed a button and the screen switched over to the next slide.

"The origins of the Chinese civilization is kind of fuzzy. Legends say that the Chinese civilization is at around 5000 years long, while the Shang Dynasty sets the absolute lower limit at around 4000 years ago..." And the professor continued on.

[Beia Meiling]

Beia raised her hand, "Isn't the capital Shengjing?" she looked quizzically as she asked. She knew Beijing was a major city and have been the capital before, but had it moved back to there?

[Professor Xia Yang]

Yang looked at Beia, a little bewildered at his student's interruption.

'Shenjing, Shenjing... that's Shenyang now...'

"Well," he said, "it's true that Shenjing, now known as Shenyang, was the capital of the Qing. But that was for less than a decade and the Manchus had not even officially claimed the Mandate of Heaven yet."

"... that, and that it was over 300 years ago that that was true..."