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 For more than five years, Middle School teacher Laurice Hwang has taught the story of Red Scarf Girl, a memoir set during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, to her fifth graders. This summer she got to see China firsthand with the author herself, Ji-li Jiang. This wasn't an official professional development excursion but a spur-of-the-moment trip that teacher Laurice fell into on her own. She knew from Ji-li Jiang's website that the author organized group tours to China. "The fifth graders read Ji-li Jiang's book every year. When they finish the book, they are always curious to find out more about her," she explained, "so we look at her website and write her letters."
Last spring Laurice included a letter of her own inquiring whether space was still available for Ji-li's summer 2009 trip. "It was kind of a wild hope, and I wasn't really expecting her to reply, but a few days later I got a phone call from her asking if I was serious about wanting to go." Ji-li also explained that she could spare Laurice the extra expense of a hotel room by sharing a room with her. It was a golden opportunity so Laurice bought a plane ticket. "I don't think I've ever made a decision about traveling that quickly before." She admits she was a little intimidated about sharing a room with a famous author whose work she admires, "but she's so down-to-earth, friendly, generous, and funny, and such a lovely person, that I got over it pretty quickly."
 "There were ten people in the group from all over the US," said Laurice, whose family is from Taiwan, "mostly people involved in education. We got to swap a lot of curriculum ideas and book recommendations. By the end of the trip it almost felt like we were a family," she said, adding that Ji-li was like their surrogate mom. "She was so thoughtful and accommodating and wanted us to have a great time and took really good care of us, ordering the food at every meal, helping people bargain in the market, letting me borrow her camera when mine ran out of batteries."
The trip, Laurice's first to mainland China, wasn't all about sight-seeing. She explained that Ji-li is "totally fearless and always wants people to know the truth." Their travels took a serious turn when the Urumqi ethnic riots between Uyghurs and Hans broke out in northwestern China resulting in nearly 160 killed and nearly 1700 injured. "Ji-li kept trying to find out information about what was going on there, even though reports were being censored," she said. "While we were watching the news on TV sometimes the screen would just go black and a few seconds of the news would be missing." Social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook were also blocked. "I had heard about this before, but experiencing it in real life was kind of disconcerting," she said.
 In her quest to show all sides of life in China beyond the tourist attractions, Ji-li took the group to visit a school, hospitals, an elder care center and a home for children whose parents are in prison. They also visited a few families in their homes. "Ji-li loves people," Laurice said. "Wherever we went she was always talking to people, asking them questions, trying to find the 'real story,' finding out about their lives. She got us invited to lots of places tourists wouldn't normally get to go."
In the end such experiences confirmed some of Laurice's assumptions about China ("a lot of people live there; Beijing and Shanghai both have populations over 17 million, and the Chongqing municipality has a population of about 33 million people") but she also discovered many little surprises along the way, like the fact that not everyone in China owns a bike. "Even though there were a lot of bikes with people carrying all kinds of craziness on the back, there were more cars than I expected." She was also impressed by the modern skyscrapers and the scale of new construction. "Manhattan looks tiny compared to what's going on over there."
She was also struck by the city-dwellers' seamless balancing of tradition with modern living, particularly in Beijing, where the ancient Forbidden City sits in the middle of town and is surrounded on all sides by the hustle and bustle of a thriving city. "Regular people hang out by the Temple of Heaven and barely notice it," she said. "When you go to the antique market, you see statues of Chairman Mao right next to statues of the Buddha." On the other hand there was Shangai, which "seemed like a city that was never looking back to the past. Ultra modern, ultra clean, with lots of rules."
Laurice was also impressed by the strong sense of community she observed in China's cities. "When we went to the park in the morning there were groups of people all over the place doing activities together--tai chi, ballroom dancing, playing hackeysack, singing, playing instruments, playing dominoes, practicing calligraphy." She was struck by the fact that these groups included lots of senior citizens. "I liked how the elderly people seemed to have a more active and public life than what I see in the U.S."
 The Chinese people's organizational prowess seemed to apply not just to social activities but to the work ethic as well, she said, pointing out a particularly memorable encounter. "When we first got to Beijing a bunch of uniformed people came on the plane and took everyone's temperature before we were allowed to get off." They were checking for swine flu. "Can you imagine the amount of organization required to take the temperature of every single person coming into the country?...Not to make sweeping generalizations, but I feel like the Chinese have a great history of getting big projects done by people working together cooperatively."
Lest you think she bypassed the major attractions and only sought the offbeat, Laurice also visited the Great Wall, the Terra Cotta soldiers, the Great Mosque in the Muslim quarter of Xian, and took a three-day trip down the Yangtze River to see the Three Gorges Dam. In Shanghai the group also saw where Ji-li lived as a child during the Cultural Revolution.
Despite her action-packed schedule, Laurice considers her two-week stay a mere whirlwind tour. "Something that I am starting to understand is how huge a country China is, and how diverse it is," she said. "I barely scratched the surface. I definitely need to go back." |