"Katya, Vika, Ksyusha, Huang Lin and Zheng Xiaopeng!" responded Zheng Xiaopeng, the famous young hero in China's after-quake rescue work, in the warm-up session before his first class in a Vladivostok-based children's care center.
A Russian teacher chats with two students during a class in a children's care center in Vladivostok, Russia July22 2008. [Xinhua]
According to the rule of the game "Remembering names", Zheng, like every participant, was in turn to tell correctly the name of all the other students who had spoken before him, as well as the name of the teacher and himself.
Zheng, together with some other Chinese students from quake-affected areas, was sent to Vladivostok in Russia's Far East for recovery.
The interesting game, said teacher Katya, was to help all students get acquainted with each other as soon as possible.
Actually, this group of pupils and middle school students are from different ethnic groups in China. They hardly knew each other, due to a fairly short time they had spent together.
So, in the game, it was no strange for a player to forget his or her friends' names. Sometimes, if lucky, they could read from others' name cards. But, for those with no name card on, the answerers in turn could do nothing but wish an "Er...Er...Er" might get them through.
Of course, their unconfident murmur would bring them no "pass card", but the laughter from all classmates and teachers.
At last, Yang Zhichuan, a Qiang-nationality student from Qushan Primary School in Beichuan county and the last one of the game, succeeded in calling correctly the names of all the 25 students and three teachers in the classroom, and won himself a big hand.