From Hawai‘i to Hunan
Opening Minds in the New China
    

Li Wang

October 15, 2003

     It’s 6:45 a.m. and we can barely keep our eyes open on this already steaming hot mid-August day. My girlfriend, Monica, and I had just flown from Shanghai and made it through a gorgeous, but rough, six-hour road trip to Baojing in western Hunan. We were sent on a one-week assignment by UH associate professor of political science Kate Zhou to teach conversational English at Baojing Ethnic Middle School. Established in 1938, the magnet school’s students are mostly ethnic minorities — Tujia and Miaozou.
     Mr. Alan (the English teachers adopt English names) greeted us outside of our hotel and walked with us up the dirt road to the campus. Taxicabs and motorcycles beeped, diesel trucks pushed through, bicyclists carrying massive loads strained up the street. Storefronts gradually opened and vendors hawked breakfast buns and fruit. People lined the intersection looking for work and unkempt dogs foraged for eats. You can’t look away when poverty surrounds you.
     Fighting off the dust, we entered a courtyard to find students in blue camouflage lined up for military drills. We finally made it to the teachers lounge, where chain-smoking male faculty members filled the small office with a gray haze. One teacher, dressed in a white tank top and gray dress pants, sat in front of a small desk fan in an attempt to cool off. He offered me a bottle of cold water as I sat on a tiny wooden chair. The few elegant female teachers somehow remained dry while the men dripped with sweat.
     After the second bell, I walked down the hall to meet my students. They stared at me through the bar-lined windows and erupted with applause when I entered the classroom. I felt like a movie star.
     More than 60 black-haired 16- and 17-year-olds, sitting in neat rows, watched intently as I looked for chalk. I wrote “Mr. Wang” on the board and heard chatter spread throughout the room. I may look like them, but I was clearly an outsider.
     I started by asking each student their name and what they want to be when they grow up. Most could understand basic English and quickly caught on. One student told me he wanted to be a boss.
     I pressed him: “What type of boss do you want to be? A factory boss?”
     Frustrated, he blurted out in Mandarin, “I just want to be a boss!”
     I switched to Mandarin, too, and asked, “What type of boss?” The room went into a frenzy as the students realized that they were facing a foreign teacher who could understand their Chinese whispers.
     Throughout the week, we played games, simulated ordering in a restaurant, sang songs, talked about soccer and practiced pronunciation. The 45-minute sessions breezed by. At week’s end I found I had bonded with the students in both of my classes and felt wistful about leaving. There was so much to teach.
     Despite the fact that many children couldn’t afford books and told me it made them sad to be hungry, they hold great pride in their school and were eager to absorb English and stories about America.
     In Baojing, the average household may earn less than US$300 a year. With school tuition and board costing almost $400 a year, many rural farmers go into massive debt to educate their children.
     Most kids eat only two meals a day, mostly rice and vegetables. One lunch a day costs about 35 cents, so the school is initiating a lunch program, thanks to Education Advancement Fund International.
     “Right now, what we really need is for more people to come,” said Zhou, founder of EAFI. “We need more English teachers.” Although she has been working with rural Chinese communities for years, Zhou formally established EAFI in 2002 to aid Chinese minorities and rural children. She also hopes to establish an independent school.
    
Kenny G and Mystery Powder
     Upon arrival, Monica and I joined our “foreign friends” Danny, a fisherman from Kaua‘i; Kevin, a South Carolina native with a wry sense of humor; Duncan, a gentle soul from Tahoe; and Peter, a devout Christian whose ancestral roots are in Taiwan. Signed up for six-month teaching gigs, these instructors brought us up to speed on the local customs and classroom rituals.
     We convened each day in the foreign-teachers’ lounge for announcements and the ultra-spicy Hunan cooking of Su Jun, Zhou’s nephew and a professional chef. One day our main conduit to the school, a Baojing teacher named Karen, tried to explain where Peter may be stationed.
     “It is only a little bit far,” said Karen.
     “What does that mean? A few miles?” Kevin asked.
     “I think that Peter will buy a bicycle,” responded Karen.
     Kevin called this type of poetic phraseology “Confucian b-sides.”
     Baojing administrators and teachers had little experience in dealing with American teachers. Mr. Alan had the unfortunate task of conveying announcements to us. Out of nowhere, “You will have lunch with the headmaster in a half-hour” or “We cannot purchase the tickets because the transportation department does not have any availabilities,” were some of the surprises that we heard. We listened to Kenny G (the Chinese love him) and polite puking (“Excuse me, but I must vomit”), made a roadside stop for eel (rice-paddy worms, basically), played basketball in the pouring rain, visited the town “pharmacy” (“take this powder twice a day”) and witnessed some teachers being scolded for hanging out with “some girls who do bad things.”
     Everyone in Baojing was a gracious host, showering us with fresh fruit, buying us water on field trips, cooking us fabulous food and making sure we felt safe. (If you’re a man, be sure to toast with beer at meals and watch out for the baijiu, or Chinese moonshine.)
     The headmaster, Mr. Wo, teacher Alan and administrator Eric eagerly sought recommendations to improve the English program. To anyone who wants to teach in Baojing: Expect the unexpected and be patient.

Lessons from Dr. Zhou
     These days, Monica and I often have Sunday dinner at Zhou’s Kapahulu home with her husband, David Burns, and son Neil, 11, who is a student of Monica’s. Oftentimes Zhou’s father cooks a full Chinese dinner of dumplings, ribs, peas, Chinese pancakes, leeks and other delights. The Sunday after we returned from China, the mood was lively and upbeat.
     “I want to see pictures of the students,” Zhou said. “I want to see their faces.”
     Zhou smiled as she flipped through the photos. She wants the kids in the countryside to have the same higher-education opportunities as their urban counterparts, who aren’t required to score as high as rural students on college entrance exams.
     “I have a favorite expression, ‘Trade with us or trade places,’” said Zhou, ever smiling. “If you do not want to trade with us then you try to live in our shoes.” It’s a sentiment that she conveys to people against globalization.
     “Of course, there are bad things that come with globalization. But it’s not right to tell a poor Chinese person that he cannot have air conditioning, while we sit here with air conditioning. If it causes more pollution, then so be it. We will all die together then. It’s not fair for one people to have modern conveniences while others must continue to suffer,” Zhou said. “This is the voice of the poor. Everywhere I go in China, the poor people tell me that they are ready to trade, ready to open up to the rest of the world.”
     Although she says she is “a spoiled city kid from Wuhan,” Zhou was homeless for two years when the government jailed her parents in 1966 during the Cultural Revolution.
     “The Red Guard came to our house and burned everything, destroyed our apartment, right in front of our eyes,” recalled Zhou, who was 10 at the time. “They considered my parents to be bourgeoisie. My father was an intellectual, a college professor. My mother dressed very nicely and the government didn’t like that. My parents were not like just other members in an army of ants. To this day, that is why I am messy — I have deep psychological scars that make me think that dressing nicely is a bad thing.”
     After she and her sister were reunited with their father, they were banished to Jingsha, Hubei. There, Zhou walked five miles a day to attend school, surviving on one meal a day. Still, locals did whatever they could to help her family.
     “That is why I have a soft spot in my heart for poor people in the countryside. When we were struggling, nobody from the city would help us. But the people in the country were so nice,” she added.
     “You ask, ‘Why am I helping   Baojing even though I am not from there?’ That is a good question,” said Zhou. “My grandfather, who I never met, is from Baojing. In China, you glorify your ancestors, so that’s why I want to help students there. Besides,   I have relatives there who can watch out for corruption.” Her half-sister Yasheng oversees the construction of an orphanage, a project that has been stalled by the government. (Many children in China are abandoned due to the one-child policy.)

“Nixon Saved Me”
     Zhou decided to major in English at Wuhan University, where she first read the Declaration of Independence. The document inspired her to come to America.
     “You know, Nixon saved me,”
     Zhou said. “After he came to China in 1971, my family was allowed back into Beijing.”
     In 1986, with the police on her tail, Zhou barely escaped China (and probably wouldn’t have succeeded had her brother not known some customs officials in Hong Kong, among other factors). She arrived in Texas despite the Chinese government’s desire to keep her from studying in the U.S.
     “I have had many nightmares where a big black car pulls up and takes me away somewhere to be interrogated. It was not easy to get out of China,” said Zhou.
     She slept on floors while earning her master’s at Texas A&M, and earned a scholarship to Princeton where she received her doctorate. She joined the UH Political Science Department in 1994.
     “Before 9/11, I wrote to Condoleezza Rice, and told her that the key to fighting terrorism is through education,” said Zhou, a staunch Republican who attended the 2000 Republican Convention as a delegate. “If we go into the Middle East and they learn from us, they will learn to not hate us. We would undercut terrorism at its base level.”

Chinese Quandary
     In the People’s Republic of China, a substantive level of English proficiency is required to enter college, and a new emphasis on oral English was established three years ago. Zhou tells me that people who grow up in the countryside have little exposure to English texts, television or the Internet.
     “Most people there have never seen a foreigner,” she said. And that’s why more foreign teachers can make such a difference. Many of Baojing’s English teachers struggle with the language themselves.
     “In the past 20 years, the Chinese government has seen the benefit of becoming more open. In the past it was easy for authorities to tell us that the whole world lives in hell and only China lives the good life. Now people know that’s not the case,” said Zhou.
     The result is a country very much interested in global integration. “One big barrier between China and the rest of the world is language. A lot of dot-com people from India are doing well, while China lags behind. China does very well in manufacturing, but it wants to catch up in other areas.”
     Besides English teachers, Zhou added, “We also need people with other types of skills, maybe organic-food production or, of all things, plumbing. We need architects to help the community preserve traditional Tujia or Miao architectural styles. We need donations, maybe some new basketball hoops, old laptops, musical instruments.”

Cultural Exchange
     As with Hawaiians, preserving their culture is an issue for Hunan’s minorities. “There are many similarities between the groups,” said Zhou. “Both groups love music and are talented singers. The kids need help with a choir and we hope to start a ‘ukulele club.” In the Baojing people, Zhou sees the aloha spirit — although they don’t call it that.
     “This new generation of Chinese people is much more open,” continued Zhou. “We encourage people of Hawaiian-Chinese descent to go. We want to open this window. People from Hawai‘i can teach them a lot about eco-tourism.”
     Hope Staab, director of Punahou School’s Wo International Center, which will send 20 students to Baojing next summer, said, “The kids, they have these Chinese stereotypes in mind. But when they spend time together, they realize that they have so many things in common. Teenagers see that friendships can be made across the world … and they’ll no longer believe what the governments are telling them.”
     Zhou underscores the theory: “Chinese kids grow up to believe that Japanese people are bad. When they come to Hawai‘i, many of them become good friends with people of Japanese descent and when they go back to China they tell people that Japanese people are really very nice.”
     Three students from Baojing — Xiang Yu, Peng Bo and Geng Chao — came to Hawai‘i last summer on the cultural exchange program. “Peng Bo sees what is here and tells me that he is grateful to Punahou and grateful to the American government,” said Zhou. “He sees what someone like Steve Case has done for his school, he tells me that when he becomes the Steve Case of China, he will give all his money back to his school. And Peng Bo is so smart. If he has the opportunity he will seize it.
     “These kids know what types of sacrifices their parents have to make for them to get an education. When they see foreigners who have come to help them they are shocked and think, ‘I can’t believe you have come so far to help us.’”

     To learn more about teaching opportunities in China and other ways to help, visit www.yifei.org.

China ITINERARY
     Beijing, Shanghai and Zhangjiajie
    
     On their first major break during their six-month teaching stint, the foreign English instructors and their local colleagues went to Beijing. It was chef Su Jun and teacher Karen’s first time in the big city.
     On our two-hour journey to Jishou, where we could catch a train, Mr. Alan sang a beautiful song about two sad hearts kept apart. The trip wasn’t easy. Carburetor problems meant we rolled into Jishou on one gear, swerving to avoid oxen and other hazards. Although Jishou town was only slightly bigger than Baojing, everyone was excited to see the shops and bustling activity. We stayed overnight, dining on pig ear in an outdoor garden, to rest up for next day’s 26-hour train ride.
     In Beijing we stayed at the Grand Hyatt at deeply discounted post-SARS rates. Right next to the Wangfujing shopping corridor, the hotel had easy access to everything: The Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square … Starbucks. For $50 we engaged an all-day cab to take us to the steeper-than-imagined Great Wall. The structural feat has many sections to explore, and we figured if Badaling was good enough for Bill Clinton, it’s good enough for us. The Summer Palace, the emperors’ playground of temples and gardens, is a must-stop to take in its tranquil willow trees and lily ponds. Another highlight was the Green Tianshi Vegetarian Restaurant with its fake, crisp Peking duck.
     We first arrived in China through Shanghai where we spent a half-day roaming the city, which seems to be growing faster than a teenage Yao Ming. We hurriedly toured the Bund district and found solace in the People’s Park at the end of the strip.
     From Shanghai we flew to Zhangjiajie in Hunan. Before we took off for Baojing, we made sure to take the cable car up to see the jagged mountains of Wulingyuan Scenic Area. Look closely for the monkeys.