How are you?

It is 2:53 am in Lexington, Kentucky, USA. I start my new day in my travel latter than yesterday for about 20 minutes, since an American Chinese teacher will come to pick up me 30 munities latter than yesterday.

If saying, in my the other travels in USA, I met more people in universities, this time, most of people I met from the local public schools. If saying in the other travels, most of American-Chinese friends I met from Taiwan, this time, I have touched more American Chinese friends from Mainland.

An interesting phenomenon that I found in my session in the Kentucky World Language Conference was that in the more than 30 American Chinese teachers, only 3 men, almost all of the teachers were females. Since then, I started to pay more attention to observe their lives. Then I found:

First of all, most of them have good and high education backgrounds ? master or doctoral degrees, some of them married Native Americans; some of them came to USA by technology emigration.

Secondly, they could or they had had comfortable lives in China, but they chose to come to USA; under a quite heavy work or even life pressure, like the little bees, be busy from opening their eyes until close their eyes, but they are in happiness and have good achievement feelings.

Thirdly, some of them are the mainstay in some organizations, stand some important work, they are still keeping the Chinese traditional virtue, as good wives, kind mothers and excellent career women.

-- Dr. Huajing Xiu, Maske, the director of the Confucius Institute at University of Kentucky, had her doctor degree in Oxford University, knew his American husband in England. In the short touching of us, except I found that she has made the work in Confucius Institute vibrancy within a quite short time, I did feel that something she most proud is her children and family. I was so impression on how she was in a hurry to pick up her children and went back home to cook for her family members.

-- Mrs. Lei Xuelian, one of the earliest Chinese language teachers in Lexington, has a master degree and studied opera in Vienna, knew his American husband in Austria. She will go to Hollywood to develop herself soon, but she still work with a quite responsible style. Meanwhile, she does not forget to perform the duty as a wife and a future mother. : -)

-- Mrs. Zhao Shanli, one of the most responsible high school teachers, works on 6 levels’ classes in two schools. She has a master degree in Beijing, came USA from Canada by Technical Immigration. With a huge passion, I do found that in her little boy, there is endless love to her work and family members.

Here is her work schedule yesterday:

-- At 8:00am, she picked up me to her school. (She could not find my hotel, so that she was later for about 30 minutes.)

-- At 8:30am, we rushed into her classroom before about 1 minutes of the belling was ringing. During I was hanging up my paintings, she went to another classroom to offer her lesson to one of one of her classes.

-- At about 10:00am (I did not make sure), she rushed into my classroom to have the Chinese traditional art demonstration with me together.

-- At about 10:50am (I was confused about it), in a hurry, we cleaned the classroom and then she led me to another classroom to have another demonstration;

-- At about 12:00 (I did not know), in a hurry, we cleaned the classroom and sat into her car, she drove me to another school that was taught by another Chinese language teacher.

-- At about 12:15am, we reached the school, before going into it, she drove me to have a simple lunch somewhere. During we ate, we got at least 3 telephone calls from Mr. Zhou Yiran from the school. For my demonstration in his school should be started at 12:50am.

-- At about 12:40am, we reached the school, she went to her another middle school soon.

-- At about 2:00, we met each other again in an art classroom in her another school, with an art teacher together; we had a new Chinese art demonstration.

-- At about 3:00pm, we had another Chinese art demonstration for her another class.

-- At about 4:30pm, she drove back her house, to pick up her son and sent him to a base ball training place.

-- About 5:30 pm or 6:00pm (I was totally confused) ,we reached a Western style buffet restaurant to have our dinner.

-- At about 6:30 or 7:30pm, she sent me back my hotel, copied the data from my camera, then she went back home...

Can you imagine? When I worked with her in so hurry, I did even feel shy to tell her that I needed to go to the washroom.

On the road to go here or there, she told me that most of time, she worked until 1:00am or 2:00am. And most of time, her breakfast and lunch were eaten in her car during she was waiting for the green traffic lights, since she has another baby who is just 12 month old.

To be honest, after working with her for whole of the day, in my heart, except it is full of respect, admire to her excellent jobs in the school and at her home ? her students could speak very good Chinese; her son is healthy and lovely, what I was thinking, why she gave up her comfortable life and work in Beijing and be happy to live in this kind of hurrying life?

Her answered: “ Here, there is a system that can arouse my motivation to work and to develop myself, such as, now I am preparing for my teaching qualification, there are a special group of 3 men from university,
high school and somewhere else to direct me, check up my work and to help me to grow up, meanwhile, the high school also haves meetings for my things specially. This is not something you want or not want to do, this is something has been fixed up by the law. ”

When I listened to this, not only have I had some new understanding about American education system, to know why here, has the most advanced education level, but also, I could not help thinking, when we often worry that we could not attract those most talent people, when we are
talking how to stay them in the company or in an organization, it is really not only the thing to give them a high salary, a comfortable working condition, maybe, we have to think how we should found the best suitable system to help them to develop their talent and dream?

Ok, it is not early already, with the observation and thinking, right now I would like to share some new paintings by my American students, then to work on another 5 demonstrations in another 2 schools.

This letter will be sent to you from my computer system automatically. If you would not like to get it, please write to me, I will delete your email address from my mail list.




I am just a student on Art of Painting, Music, English and Management, to work on the web site in my free time. I would really like to do a few things with what I have learned to make this little web site to be an Electronic Bridge of Inter-Art & Cross - Culture Exchange, Chinese Language Learning & Friendship Making. To help the others while to improve myself.

I would like to appreciate you for your understanding, directions, supports and help.

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, you are welcome to write to shirley@ebridge.cn or leave your message on Message Board.

Shirley Yiping Zhang
Sep 29, 2011(Chinese Time)