April 26, 2009

Dragon’s Heart Charity Trip: Second Day in Erdos

This morning we set off at 9 o’clock, traveled in a car for two and a half hours and went to Wushen Qi.


Wushen Qi is located in the south-west area of the Erdos grasslands and is the southernmost point of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, situated in a zone between the Inner Mongolia Plateau and the Loess Plateau. Wushen is derived from the Mongolian name Wulaxi which is a type of net used for hunting animals, and Wushen is the person who uses the net. Wushen Qi originated from the name of the tribe that lived in the area. Wushen Qi is a very well known region in Erdos for breeding and raising livestock. Recently over the past few years, the agriculture and farming industry has started to develop in the region. Since 2000, the numbers of livestock raised and farming productivity have greatly increased. Also in 2005, over 80 billion tons of coal was discovered in the region and they are now actively developing the mining industry.


The main reason for visiting Wushen Qi was to attend the plaque revealing ceremony for the Wushen Qi Experimental Primary School. Just like on my previous trips, I received a very warm welcome from the school principal, teachers, students, and local residents. I saw them all waving at me enthusiastically and I heard them calling out my name. Even though I’ve been through incidents like this many times before and have previously experienced their warmth and passion, the feeling of visiting these schools again still makes me very excited and happy. I believe that this is the benefit of doing charity work. Each time I do charity work, I have an unexplainable feeling of happiness and gratification. Usually people say, “Giving is more fortunate than receiving”, but I say that “giving is much happier than receiving”.


The Inner Mongolia Wushen Qi Experimental Primary School is an educational institution that teaches in Mongolian. The school has set up three main categories namely general knowledge class, technology class, and arts class. Over 20 additional subjects are branched off from the main categories and these subjects are called activity hobby groups. Take a look at this - they have a dancing group, the sanxian (three-stringed instrument) group, fine arts group, mathematics group, Mongolian chess group, archery group and many more.


The reason for coming here wasn’t just to attend the plaque revealing ceremony for the school, I also brought along some school bags and uniforms to give to the children. In the future, I will remain in close contact with the school so I can see what other things that they’ll need and then I can continuously send the supplies to them. There are a lot of other schools asking me to go visit them and attend each of their commemorative events but there is only one Jackie Chan and I still have many places around the world to go to. I honestly don’t know when I’ll be able to go back and visit the teachers and students at each of the Dragon’s Heart Schools that have been established. However, I can promise them that whenever I have time, I will go back and visit them as often as possible.


I really wanted to take a good look around the school buildings to see if there were any other areas that needed improving or if there was anything else that the students needed, but there were just too many people crowding around me. Even thought I felt very reluctant to leave, I had no choice but to leave because I didn’t want to cause any unnecessary accidents. While I was in the car, I was non-stop waving at everyone to say goodbye. Maybe because the students, teachers and local residents don’t get to see me very often and they hoped to spend some more time with me, they kept chasing after our car, asking me to sign autographs and take photos. I was really worried that they might have an accident. So, as I said goodbye to them, I also shouted for them to stop chasing and to be extra careful. We had a difficult time departing from the sea of people at the school grounds but we finally managed to make our way out of the crowds.


After leaving the school, I went to a press conference and was interviewed by the local media.

Reporters asked me what kind of feelings I had during my two visits to Erdos. Well, what I felt was that the area is continuously improving. Anyway, the way I look at China is from my own point of view so it might be different from how other people look at the place. Fifteen to sixteen years ago when I first visited China, the feelings I had towards China compared to the feelings I have towards China right now – wow! – the difference is like the distance between heaven and the deep sea. The first time I visited China and saw the airport, customs and policemen, I saw customs officers at the airport sitting to one side eating lunch and wearing their hats crookedly. I thought, “Is there some sort of mistake? Why is it like this?” But now, as time has slowly past by one year after another, I can see that the airport and customs area as improved a lot. I guess you can say that it’s getting close to international standards now. The impression that Erdos has given me is that it is in the process of being improved. The environment is very beautiful and it doesn’t have problems like in big cities such as air pollution and traffic jams. It feels clean and tidy, and it’s also very comfortable being in a place like this.


As everybody already knows, although I’ve been visiting Erdos, I’ve still been busy preparing for the May 1st concert, making phone calls and maintaining contact with staff and crew members in Beijing. The day of the concert is getting closer and closer but there are still so many lose ends that are in the process of being organized. When reporters asked me who I’ve invited to perform as guests at the May 1st concert, I know that many artists from different places will be participating at the event and the ones I could remember off the top of my head include Joey Yung and Charlene Choi from Hong Kong; Rain and Super Junior from Korea; Jonathan Lee and Emil Chow from Taiwan; Sun Nan, Steven Yoo Seung Jun, New Seven Little Fortunes, Xiao Shen Yang and Zhao Ben Shan from China, and many others. I honestly feel a little embarrassed; there are just too many people taking part and I can’t remember all of them. But I can tell you that I’ve invited over 100 artists to participate in this charity event.

After the interview, I quickly rushed to the airport and caught a flight back to Beijing.

Overall, the activities I did during the Dragon’s Heart Charity Trip over the past two days have been the same as the things that I’ve done on previous trips. But each time I take part in these events, I always have this unexplainable feeling of joy and happiness. The feeling honestly comes from the heart. Of course, I truly hope that the young children will achieve pleasing results but I also hope that the children are happy and are able to study happily. I believe that everyone was born with a useful skill in life. It doesn’t matter if you don’t achieve the best results, as long as you try your best with study and serve your country when grow older, that’s the most ideal result that I truly hope to see.

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