Outward Development 

On the Saturday two weeks ago, we went to Zhao Qing, an inland city of Canton, for Outward Development.  It’s an activity that companies usually attend in group for better teamwork and fellowship. The spot for this activity is usually chosen in a distant island or seaside. The party of the company will be led by a coach to combine together for fulfilling a set of meaningful but challenging group tasks, and games.

We finally arrived there after a long bus ride. As I remember I didn’t have great expectation for fun or what not. Actually, I felt rather bored. One of the reasons is I had gone through a similar activity already for my previous job. What adds to the boredom was that my body hadn’t recovered from the lacking of sleep the night before.

After we got off the bus, an ugly-looking ferry carried us to go to the island. After that, we gathered and took bicycles to go to the spot where we got “trained”. We did quite a few items in the morning, which aren’t really worth mentioning. After lunch, we did the long-anticipated “4 meters wall climb-over”.

Basically, it’s a 4.2 meters high vertical wooden wall, 34 persons need to climb over it without assistance. I hadn’t guessed out the proper way to climb it without ladders, or strings for a group of people, until the coach gave us the instruction.

There should be a leader to oversee the whole process. Some strong guys should be arranged at the bottom to support the weight of people that is at the middle of the wall and of people climbing it. And then some other strong guys should climb the height of two persons to reach the top, so later they can also help pull the climbing people. It’s by no means an easy job. There’s safer militant way for every single moves, like standing, supporting, lifting, and pulling. Everybody sweated like crazy, exhausted and thirsty, not wanting to lose the game and become another failure in few others.

I was, in most of the time, arranged at top of the wall. I felt too exhausted to continue pulling the stretching and struggling hands/arms below. Honestly, I didn’t feel their hands were my colleagues’. The hands and arms were like reaching from somewhere full of desperation. Probably, it’s really not wise to mention this association. But that’s how I felt. People from the bottom need to tramp on others and to be “pulled” by upper people, so as to get somewhere “overlooking”. Isn’t it true in China that people struggle like this?

Teacher Fung