CANTEEN AND LIBRARY BUILDING FOR THE LIANGMENG SCHOOL COMPLEX
Puan City, Guiyang, China
cooperation with Sausan Haj Abdo
I have so much things to tell you today about my day at school. In the morning, we had a language class at the library as any other Thursday. There’s one shelf with many books covering a whole wall and a lot of place for us to sit and play. The light comes in mainly through glass bricks in the ceiling. We were sitting in a circle on the floor on fat pillows, reading an old book and Miss Zhou made everyone some tea, as usually. But I couldn’t concentrate at all, I was thinking about Chao, a boy from an other class, whom I met the other day. So I was just laying there on the floor and looking down through holes in the floor to the canteen. I could smell the freshly cooked rice. Suddenly I spotted Chao having a snack with his class. I noticed his chopsticks had felt on the ground. It was fun to watch him crawl on the ground trying to find them. Thanks to the holes it felt as if we were together, even though we were on different floors. My dad said that the holes in the floor and in the walls were made for ventilation, although I think they provided something more than that.
During the lunch it was sunny, so everyone went to eat outside, but I didn’t want to. I found myself sitting alone in the canteen at a long table, staring into the open kitchen, still thinking about Chao. I barely even touched my meal.
When I went out, I saw Chao with his friends playing football in the court. They closed the double door in the canteen, so they could kick the ball against the wall. One day our teacher told us about how people from the village made this house and the bricks on their own. She said that, this way it was much cheaper and they got some reward. And because they wanted to have something from them in the building, they mixed in the clay and the mortar the coal ashes. That’s why the building is black. I don’t really understand that, but at least we can draw on the walls with a chalk.
Chao noticed that I was looking at him, and he asked me to go with him on the roof. That was the first time I was there. It was blue, same as the stairs and the wooden doors. That’s the same blue as my grandma’s special dress that I found in the closet last week. The view from the roof is so unique, I’ve never seen something like that from any window of the school campus. Then it started raining and the water run down the stairs to the court. We were holding our hands, the blue roof underneath us was like a water level with sky reflecting in it. It almost felt as if we were in heaven.
PS: Every morning I go to school I see the building from a distance, I imagine it’s a huge piece of coal, it reminds me of my father who have to mine the same coal everyday. It seems so fragile, yet firm as if it was standing there on the edge of the court from everlasting.
I would say it is a house with secrets. It wants you to discover them by it by letting you look through small holes in the walls and floor. It wants you to know that behind every barrier, there is always something. You can only figure it out by crossing the boundaries.
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