Throughout the whole Christmas time, I prisoned myself in the library of Chinese University. Nobody put me into a jail. I made myself do it and it was a really enjoyable imprisonment which I would keep doing it if time is allowed.

I was moving in between two libraries there. One is at the main campus while another one is in Chung Chi College. Towards the end of my holiday, I got a strange discovery which made me both excited and annoyed.

If you are graduates of Chung Chi College students, you should be familiar with what kinds of books you can find most in Chung CHi library. They are books for music, education, religion plus literature on the whole floor. Literature includes all kinds of literature like English literature, American, Oriental and drama.

Since I have experienced the difficulties of finding books on drama educaiton, I was strongly curious to find out if I could find any of those here in a local uni library. The previous night, when I was reading my friend's blog, I found a book she read -- 'ethnodrama'. So I typed in the words "ethnodrama"  to search if they have the books. Actually I did not have any high expectation!.

What surprised me most when I looked at the screen was that the book was there and it was in the Chung Chi library. I could not believe my eyes and I blinked my eyes for many times to make sure that that was not my halluncination.

Off I went to pick the books. Originally I thought it must be put in the bookshelves of education. To my surprise, I found them on the book shelf of  AMERICAN LITERATURE. That was really mysterious. At first I could not make any sense why it would be classified as American literature. But then after I flipped through the pages, I started to sort out the reason with my detective mind. This book was published by an American publisher and its title has the word -- 'drama'. Accordingly, it 'definitely fell into the categoary of the American Literature. I should not have been surprised actually.

Looking at the book in hand, I really couldn't help laughing. On one hand, I was excited to find out books of drama education can be found in local universities. As far as I remember, you couldn't find any of these books four years ago (the time when I was studying there). That means at least some people in this place really have vision to see the interest or even importance of applying or research drama educatioin in Hong Kong.  On the other hand, I felt a bit annoyed and upset. I could see how igorant those people at univsersity see this field. When they have limited knowledge on this discipline, they will just casually put them into a catergory they can classify.  They don't even try to understand what it is before doing the classification. If one is careful enough, he/ she can just turn to the first page of the book and there will be key words to tell what the book is about.

Another interesting thing I found when I read this book was that there were just no more than 5 people having borrowed this book (of course, including me). The first and second people  who borrowed the book were those from Lingnan University and IEd through  an external loan system. There are not many people who know and even borrow this book. The fact is that the book was published in 2005. Two years already but just 5 borrowers.

Driven by curiosity, I tried my another luck to see if I could find any other related drama education books in the library. I searched work by Gavin Bolton and Jonothan Neelands. Again, to my surprise, I found quite a number of Bolton's book as well as Needlands' ones. They were classified into English Literature. The most ridiculous thing is that I found 'Structuring Drama' which is a handbook for drama practitioners and teachers.  But you could only be found on the shelf of English Literature. Don't know how Jonothan Needlands may feel if he knows where his book is put at a local university.

At that moment, there was a line ringing my bell and my heart, saying to me-- 'One day you (these books) will have your own book shelves in this place!'.