Hal Z. Zhao
NSHSS Ambassador Scholar/Student Council
Georgia Institute of Technology
This late summer, I grasped an unique opportunity, as part of a program in the United Nation’s intention on celebrating the International Year of Youth, to travel to China in order to promote cultural exchange between the United States and China along with learning innovative methods to preserve our united world heritage and make real progress possible in the future, starting now with the 21st century.
Sponsors for this trip included United Nations, Embassy of the U.S. and China, major World Non-for-Profit organizations; and multiple municipal organizations headquartered at Beijing for this international conference, known as the 2011 Global Youth Development Summit. This conference was held at the Capital University of Economics and Business in Beijing and hosted by the Educational Association of China Tomorrow (EACT).
For the summit, I discovered through the variety of speeches motivating young people to make real impacts that, unlike many summits I have attended previously, the youth responded back to the speakers which greater enthusiasm than ever. The comments they provided were engaging and the questions they asked posed great challenges towards the speakers. It was fascinating to note that many of these students had backgrounds which linked directly to why they cared about global sustainability and why this world meant something more to them than to many of their other peers sitting back at home. I was also extremely pleased to network with many of these students and speakers of high caliber to understand their individual past and relate to their multifaceted interests. At the same time, I noticed many students taking notes while the speaker panels were going on. It pleased me to know that even for students who may not be fond of talking in front of large groups, they were learning throughout this whole time and taking something out of this conference.
The next part of the program involved the participants to travel to many places in China, both rural and urban, to immerse in the culture within while teaching the locals there about the American culture. I found this to be an incredibly unique experience. As a Chinese American, I have visited China multiple times in the past to see places and visit relatives. However, every time I have been in the past has been with my parents. Whenever I would be visiting China in the past, it literally felt like I went into this complete opposite universe. It was more or less a feeling of being apart from all I knew about my life back here in the United States, including my friends, teachers, and other associates. However, coming to China this time along with other American students participating in the same program really felt different. Regardless of how immersed in the Chinese culture and away from the American culture I could get, I could always glance over my shoulders and see another American colleague going through the very same. I felt both at home in the States and, at the same time, in the land which I always knew as where my ancestors and relatives reside. This was the two worlds conjoined, which was a realization unlike any other. I also got to know most participants on a more personal level throughout these three weeks, and I have gained many valuable friendships through this trip.
During these three weeks of the volunteer action plan and sightseeing China, I believe that one of the best experiences was living with other Chinese families at home-stays and getting a taste of welcoming hospitalities unlike any other. Thousands of miles away from our own families in the United States, to be brought in for a week with another peer and his or her own family can make anyone feel at home and secure. At the home-stays, I felt that exchanging cultural values, both within the household itself, or at a designated place as part of the program, was the single most important goal that needed to be mutually established between the American student and his or her host-family.
As for myself, I got the opportunity to experience two wonderful home-stays, one in the city of Shijiazhuang and the other in the city of Dalian. The two home-stays were incredibly different yet similar in many ways. The first home-stay in Shijiazhuang, I got to meet a host-brother who was just a few years younger than me. This brother spoke very few English and I had to communicate with him through Mandarin Chinese most of the time. However, throughout the week of cultural immersion and English instruction at the No. 15 High School in Shijiazhuang, I saw drastic improvement in my host-brother’s English, along with the English ability of the other students in the same class that my team taught. During the week I spent in Shijiazhuang, not only did I get to know my host-brother really well, but I also had the chance to meet his hospitable family whom I had dinner with every night of the week. Now a week later, the host-family I stayed with in Dalian also treated my appearance with welcoming embraces. My host-brother this time was similar in age to my first host-brother, but his English was proficient enough that I could communicate with him in English almost the entire time. My host-brother in Dalian had a best-friend whose mother was also the Dalian program manager in this Cultural Exchange Program with EACT. Together, my host-brother and his friend took me around the entire city every night to see the best that Dalian has to offer. Instead of having dinner with the family every night, I had dinner with my host-brother’s friends, whom I got to know really well during just those few days. More importantly however, I provided my host-brother and his best friend important information about American high schools and colleges, since both of them will be coming to California this coming fall to study. I felt that the Dalian cultural exchange program really helped my host-brothers get the most out me, and for me to get the most out of Dalian (one of the most western cities of China) itself. For both home-stays, I kept an open-mind about what to expect and I think that the families I was placed with could not have been arranged any better than how they were.
As a result, this entire trip and cultural exchange program has changed my life unlike any other. With so many supporting organizations in the background for this event, I really felt that this is solid proof that people in our world are becoming more aware of the power of the youth to carry our future.
Finally, it has always been my firm belief that the people with different perceptions of truth and of different background, culture, religion, etc. will pray for a better future for both themselves and the general public. This event has not only confirmed the belief but also proved to me that we can accomplish these goals through simply just acknowledging each other’s presence at this moment and then try to discover more on each other’s pasts. As my colleagues at the Global Development Youth Summit have done it this summer, so can any of us follow and perfect this excellent example into the promising future.