Dear Mr.Downs:

Well, you must have heard enough words from the Chinese Government about what happened in N.Korea .So,maybe it's better to show you some hard-to-find opinions,which widely exists in China,espeacially in big cities like Xi'an.

Americans and westerners often consider China, N.Korea and Vietnam to be similar not only because the Chinese government helped them in two wars many years ago,but also because we all have the Communist Party which is quite different from yours. So, people will be easily reminded of China as soon as the other two countries are mentioned.

It was true that our 3 countries often took the same steps in the period of Chairman Mao .Yet a revolution took place in China in 1978 and after that we clearly understood that it was a world for development, not for wars or conflicts. Even though our so-called destination and yours are not the same, we can still work together to make the people have better lives. From then on, China, N.Korea and Vietnam separated in different ways.

Today, we Chinese, especially teenagers in big cities, have already regarded ourselves as part of the world. The news we read everyday and the study methods we have today are getting closer and closer to that in those countries like yours. Our way of development is getting farther and farther from what a so-called communist-Party country should be, and so do the government's policies.

To you Americans, the opinion above can be sort of ridiculous----How can a Chinese say his country is no longer like a communist-Party country! But it's true. If you keep an eye on the Chinese government's policies recent years, you may easily find how different they are from those of N.Korea.

Nowadays, a few American media blame China, for it seems that China hasn't made a contribution to the Parley and even have a little predilection for N.Korea. In fact,we are now trying to coax N.Korea back to the table because of the reality that N.Korea is becoming the menace to China!

Nobody can promise N.Korea and China can be friendly forever, there's no forever friendship between countries! For instance,China and Vietnam had a war together fighting against other countries in 1960's, yet quickly in about ten years,w e had a 'crazy' war ourselves(from 1978 on)and the relationship between us broke up.This caused quite a lot of little conflicts on the border.

Now,our Chinese are afraid that if N.Korea, whose leader is a little bit crazy, gets the nuke, It'll certainly do harm the Chinese' safety. Perhaps the Chinese development of economy will be prevented in a certain extent.

Now you can understand why China would like N.Korea to come back to the table----Because we must! The parley is a way to protect our people,and maybe the best way to solve the nuke problem in N.Korea. It's only a personal view on the N.Korea problem, but I promise it's the most applauded view in our class.

I can't appreciate myself with this E-mail for I haven't tried to write such a political article before. If you want some information more,you can connect to this website: www.phoenixtv.com It is not a website from the government but is enjoyed by lots of Chinese people, for it gives us the reality and is more free to talk about the current affairs.

Yours Sincerely,

Evangeline

She has taken on a daunting challenge with tremendous spirit and enthusiasm, and gives the impression of one who is completely at home - already! It seems amazing to me that it was only three weeks ago that she arrived at the airport. I asked her how things have been going so far:

MD: How well are you adjusting to life in America? What are the biggest differences between here and China?

WT: I think I got used to the life here very quickly. Most of the food here is tasty. People here are kind to me, which makes me feel at home. In China, there are many cars, buses and cabs in the street. Besides, many people walk. But most of the people here drive their own cars. People here prefer to stay at home after work, and stores are closed very early, but in China after work, people like to go out and spend some time outside. We Chinese prefer to sit together and have dinner in restaurants. Some people even talk business when having dinner.

MPA Mandarin teacher Want Tian gives first graders their own Chinese name

MD: You are working with all ages here. How do you manage to adjust your teaching style to go from lower school to upper school all in one day?

WT: This is only one standard for my teaching—enthusiastic, honest and fair. It works for all ages. There may be some difference of teaching methods among them. When teaching lower school students, I sing, play, and act with the kids. For middle school students, there should be more chances for them to think and ask. I just try to guide. For upper school students, they are quite independent. I would like to listen to their ideas and give them more challenges. It is easy to communicate with them.

MD: How are our MPA students different that students in China?

WT: Because of the different educational system, students in China have more homework and more examinations, which reduces their interest. Here, students are happy to learn what they are interested in. It is more free here. I didn’t have the experience to sit with the kids to teach, and it is fun. I feel I am a story teller and tell them interesting stories about China and the language.

MD: What did you think of Homecoming? What will you remember most from that day?

WT: Homecoming is new to me. In China, alumni also go back to visit school, but not every year. I think students here are excited about Homecoming and they are important part of it. I can feel their love for the school.

Members of the class of 2007 bring Homecoming Spirit to the class of 2020 (Pre-K)

I also had a good time on that day. Meeting kids’ parents and watching games was interesting. I still remember different colors on people’s hair and those girls running and playing soccer. They are great!

MD: Is there anything you would like the MPA community to know about you or about your experiences here so far?

WT: I am happy to be here and I get along well with my host family and people in MPA. I love the students here, with different colors of skin and hair. I hope they like Chinese.

To listen to Mike Downs' WCCO radio interview from Beijing, click here.

Or click here to read the summer blog "China and Beyond".

It is Tuesday night, August 29 and as we leave the airport to go off in separate directions - my wife and I back home, host parent Jon Cotner with Tina to the home in North Oaks where she will stay - I assure her that she need not feel obligated to come in to school Wednesday. Jon has offered to bring her in when and if she is ready.

Greeting party for Wang Tian, Tuesday night, August 29 - Minneapolis/St. Paul airport.

But it has become clear in those first few minutes that Tina is indeed not tired, running on the pure adrenaline and excitement of this grand experiment, and will likely be at school for the start of the day about ten hours later.

Sure enough, at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday morning (9:30 p.m. Wednesday Beijing time) Jon, kindergartner Stella and a very alert and ready Wang Tian make their way through the south entrance, finally launching the official start of the Chinese language and culture program at MPA.

Welcome to MPA, Wang Tian!

"It must be my lucky day! I was the second one in line. The lady in
front me is my friend who is also from Hubei and will go to Friends’ School.
When she was being interviewed, the official just let her take out one
document and asked her the earning in the place in the U.S and she passed. And then, it was my turn. I was ready to show the official every document I have. To my surprise, the official took a glance at the letter from IIE and asked whether it was the same program as my friend and the city I was going to. I couldn't believe when I got the pink note which means I passed. It was soooooo quick and simple. It was funny for me to be so nervous about it.

"This morning the training session began. I met some experts about teaching
Chinese to foreigners, including Hope Staab. Ioana Suciu also came. And Jeff
Bissell from School Year Abroad, Andrew Corcoran from Chinese American
International School, Feng Ye from Punahou School.

"I just finished training today. I am a little tired, but I am feeling
great. I should told you about it yesterday, but I couldn't get access to
the internet and too tired, so… I am sorry. Hope it is not late."

Not too late at all, TIna!

Arrival information will be posted here as soon as it becomes available.

I carried two books with me to China and made virtually no progress on either while there - too busy writing blog entries! Companion books of a sort, they are River Town and Oracle Bones, both by Peter Hessler. Readers of this blog who are interested in learning more about contemporary China will find these two books highly readable and informative.

I know this now because the North Shore provided the time to finally encounter them both. River Town traces the author's experiences during two years as a Peace Corp volunteer teaching English in the town of Fuling. Oracle Bones picks up the story as Hessler becomes a more established journalist, seeking out and publishing stories in, among others, National Geographic, the Wall Street Journal and finally as the Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker.

Having learned another language while living and working abroad for seven years, I found River Town to convey accurately the sense of a second personality that emerges when living through a new language.

From the book jacket of Oracle Bones: "In a narrative that gracefully moves between the ancient and the present, the East and the West, Hessler captures the soul of a country that is undergoing a momentous change before our eyes." Especially interesting to me in the context of MPA's Mandarin initiative is his exploration of the earliest writing, preserved on the Oracle Bones of the title and the implications for the development of language in China.

Back from the cooling breezes of Lake superior to the tropical climate of the Twin Cities, I open my email to find a note from Wang Tian announcing that she has an appointment, through HANBAN, with the US consulate for a visa interview on August 8th. Training for all the NAIS/HANBAN teachers will be conducted in China from August 10-15 after which all teachers will board commercial jets for their posts in the US.

Watch this space for details!

Artist's Point - Grand Marais, MN

“First, behind the ears,” the woman instructs, “ then the chest...now the front paws...now the sides...now the big butt.”

And it all means something important, especially the rubbing of the big butt, but I can’t remember what now. I dutifully rub as commanded. Amazing what one will do in a group on tour in a faraway land if the guide is convincing enough.

We have escaped from the punishing mid-day heat on the walls of the old city of Xi’an and moved into an exhibit room that our guide claims is only open 72 days of the year and how lucky we are to be here on this day. Lucky most are those who discover the AC unit in the corner pumping out wonderfully chilled air.

This infrequently open exhibit with the lucky rubbing lion shows pictures of buildings whose feng shui is good and some not. I have no pictures to prove this because the taking of photos is forbidden. Not sure why, but there it is.

According to Wikipedia, Feng Shui was the reason the Chinese invented the compass. “It has foundation texts, core theories and methods, and an impressive past based on archæological discoveries and the work of archæoastronomers.”

But the exhibit room is connected to a small store which, I suspect, is actually open more than 72 days a year, but I can’t confirm that. Buy any of a number of different sized and colored jade lions, each to bring a different good thing to its owner.

This is just one of the three or four times on our trip that we are taken to what appears to be a legitimate factory or exhibit that is - surprise! - fortuitously connected to a retail establishment selling products related to the exhibit. Buy a full sized terra cotta warrior at the factory that makes them (see photo under July 1 entry "Ghengis Can"). Or buy a silk comforter at the silk factory (OK - I did!)

The more cynical in our group assume that the "factory workers" are all part of a front, extensions of the retail operation. Perhaps. But everyone rubbed lion butt. Just in case....

"Harbin is a northern city of China. He once lived there and some of my relatives were born there, including my parents. Then because of the work, they moved to Hubei province, central part of China. Although I was born in Hubei, I am a northerner.

"In northern part, people can speak mandarin better than other parts. That's why my mandarin is good. And it seems that my grandpa is very happy to know I can live in a place similar to Harbin."

Back in May when our team of teachers and administrators began helping me to prepare for the hiring trip to China, I was encouraged to try and identify candidates who spoke Putōnghuà (Standard Mandarin). It sounded like a good idea, although I wasn't sure how I would be able to establish that, short of simply asking candidates and trusting in their answer.

The thinking was that since there are so many different dialects in China and natives of different provinces can be virtually unintelligible to each other when speaking local dialects, it would be important to hire someone who would teach the standard language.

Visit Wikipedia (the first coherent piece on this subject my Google search turned up) and read more about this.

But Tina's note got me thinking about regional influences and the underlying social, political and cultural forces at play in the evolution of a common language. I am certain there are thoughtful works of considerable depth and breadth on the subject. Perhaps Evangeline will uncover something about this during her offline humanities studies.

There is something of a parallel in this country, if on a less extreme scale. While Maine natives can certainly get along with their Arkansas cousins, the accents can be quite different, especially to the ear of a foreigner.

We didn’t talk like most people in Baltimore, where I grew up. With grandparents from Ohio, Illinois, Kansas/Colorado and upstate New York, my linguistic lineage was decidedly Midwestern, home of standard broadcast American English - our version of Putōnghuà.

After my final-term exam, the school divided us into science part and humanities part. Do you Americans also do this? I hope not!

A few days ago, we formed a new class. Unfortunately, the students in science part, like me, will not have history, politics or geography classes any more, while the students in humanities part will never have the chance of learning science lessons. I don't think it is good for us, for what we need is not only scores. It was true I chose science. That's because I want to make some contribution in Physics. But it never means I'll give up humanities lessons or even never touch them! IT IS UNFAIR, I think. I want to know the world more completely.

It's the reality in China and I can not change it. Yet I still want it to be better. At least let me get some lessons about humanity. Or, maybe I can do it by myself

By the way, what do you think about the things that happened in North Korea these days?

Sincerely Evangeline

*************************

Dear Evangeline,

I understand that you are disappointed about the fact that your choices for studying subjects in school will be more limited from now on. I realize that school systems throughout the world do things differently. The system you describe seems to put a high value on spending as much time as possible learning all that you can about a few specific areas, rather than trying to learn some things about a lot of different areas.

We have some schools in this country that really try and specialize in the way you describe. I think that can be very effective if you know exactly what you want to study and what you intend to do with it when you graduate.

Our school and probably most schools in America tend to expect students to study a lot of different things throughout their grade school years. This means that our students’ options to choose an area of focus remain open longer.

I am reminded of a former student of ours named David Siegel. David was the student at our school who first inspired me to keep a “blog”. He is working this summer for Google and is studying computer science AND philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. I am not sure what David would have chosen if we at MPA had required him to focus exclusively on one thing, as you are being expected to do.

But thanks to the internet, there is much that you can learn on your own about the humanities that will not be a part of your school program. And if you would like to communicate by email with some of our students here at MPA, I would be happy to introduce you to some who would be glad to be an email friend of yours.

Beyond that, perhaps you would be interested in seeing if your school would like to participate in a program called Challenge 20/20. You can read about that program at www.nais.org. It brings a school from the US together with a school from another country to try and develop solutions to some of the big problems facing us all.

Like the situation with North Korea. If you are asking me what I think, I would have to say that I worry about what North Korea is doing. Perhaps the missile testing is just a tactic to send some kind of message to neighboring countries and the US. I am afraid that the leaders of North Korea have closed themselves off from the rest of the world and do not necessarily see things as clearly as they should. Sometimes, ignorance can create a sense of fear.

On this subject, I think it is very good what is happening in your country now. There seems to be a real effort to reach out to the rest of the world and to try and work together. This is a very good thing, in my opinion. I am not sure that you are aware of why I came to your school, but our group was in China to meet and hire teachers who will come to our schools to teach the Chinese language to our students. Our trip was sponsored by a Chinese organization working for your government.

So your government wants to help our people learn your language so we can communicate with each other better. And when people can communicate better, they way you and I are right now, we can learn to understand and appreciate each other more easily. Then, perhaps, instead of sending messages with missile tests, we send them with emails. Or better still, in face to face meetings. Just like that nice talk we had at your school.

I hope to see you there again some day, or you here!

Sincerely,

Mike Downs

I was channel surfing in the Beijing hotel, bored with CNN Asia, uninterested in whatever HBO was running and out of English language options. Watching CCTV (Chinese Central Television Network) was a temporarily amusing puzzle, trying to divine what the content was.

It wasn’t until after the 30 second commercial ended that I realized what was different. One child. A comparable spot on American TV would have had two children, and probably a dog.

Naturally, the commercial spots reflect an idealized reality for potential consumers. And that reality can only include one child in China.

As I write this, the annual fourth of July neighborhood parade has just passed by our south Minneapolis home. It always starts with a fire truck from the local fire house and passes by in the late morning. As it appeared, I happened to be doing a google search on the One Child Policy in China (this obsession will pass, I feel sure of it...) so I was particularly aware, as I watched from the front step, of the ratio of young children to adults in this all-American scene.

And I wondered again what must be the unintended consequences of essentially mandating that the country be populated by only children, as has been the case in China since 1979. I thought particularly of the schools and the impact on the community of children in schools all across urban China, where the rule applies.

Now, some of my favorite people are only children, including our 21 year-old son. But any experienced school person can tell you that, if nothing else, the only children in the class tend to arrive, by definition, with a higher-stakes burden. They generally mean, literally, everything to their parents. This can make it more difficult, on occasion, for parents of "onlys" to see the normal trials and tribulations of growing up in the context of the long term learning process.

Perhaps the very fact that all are from the same experience base in this regard would have a kind of moderating effect. Or not. (see June 18 entry Sorting it Out for one Beijing principal’s perspective on the effects of the policy.)

I am explaining why something will not be available to me at school until this Wednesday, the 5th. I have no idea whether or not this is something educated Chinese like Wang Tian know as a matter of course. And if they do, how they view this particular period in our relatively short history.

If her sense of early American history is as limited as mine is of early Chinese history, it is quite possible that this holiday is unknown to her. One of the added benefits of having this visitor in our midst will be the opportunity to learn more about how we and our history are viewed and understood from the outside.

“The war of resistance against America and support for Korea,” is what author Peter Hessler tells us is the Chinese name for what we call the Korean War. In his book “Oracle Bones” he writes of visiting the Chinese town of Dandong on the border with North Korea.

At the bookstore in the Shanghai Museum, among the treasures I found for our teachers’ use this coming year was a fascinating book I ultimately decided not to buy. Now I regret it. But I had a good reason at the time.

It was a book of photographs essentially cataloging the dark side of China’s Cultural Revolution. These were very strong black and white images with an underground feel to them, certainly not what the official government-approved accounting of that period would have included. I took it as an encouraging sign that this volume was published and available in such a public institution.

But I worried that interested consumers of this book among, perhaps, some of our older students might see it as an opening to confront our new visitor, armed as they would be with the particular view through the lens of this photographer. I thought about what it means to be a welcoming host and what it means to be alone in a foreign country. I imagined what it might feel like to have my hosts in a foreign land confront me with some of the more difficult truths of my country.

But I underestimate our remarkable students whose capacity for respect and understanding across cultures is quite developed. And I underestimate our MPA teachers’ ability to properly contextualize such a cross cultural discussion. And I suspect I underestimate our visitor and her readiness to experience the freedom of thought and opinion which are founding values of the country whose independence we celebrate on Tuesday.

With NAIS delegation members from some of the older schools.

Helping Hand

Crossing generations, crossing cultures, Shanghai fifth graders and American heads of school meet on the stairs, travelling the same path for a short while.

Meeting on the Stairs - Shanghai

China blog will continue the sorting through the summer, sharing various images and observations as we approach the arrival of our visitor and launch of our Mandarin program, an outgrowth of MPA's Global Advantage Stragetic Goal.