Another opportunity to be in China and I am so thankful. I will have much to tell you in the next few days while I reflect on all that I saw and experienced. The trip began in Beijing-my first time to visit this important governmental city. I could not believe that I was standing in Tienamen Square. I stood there and remembered those days in 1989 when this place became known to the world. This spot has been important for Chinese history for several thousand years and continues to be a place that is honored and remembered for many many reasons. I joined the massive crowds as we walked around this place and remembered. In the next few days, while still on Asian time, I hope to reflect on all that I saw and note it here. I spent 15 days in China on this trip--four in Beijing, 10 in Guangdong province, and 1 day in Hong Kong before leaving to return home for Christmas. I met with so many Chinese young people, listened to their plans for their future, their love of their country, visited high schools, public and private, and colleges and universities. I know of their desire for excellence in education. A thirst for knowledge is a part of their past and will be an important part of their future. I have many impressions. More to come.
The large lecture hall at the Shantou Jintai Middle School was filled with middle school students. They had been sitting for almost two hours. And they were very restless. Polite but restless--they were small children. As a representative of Wake Forest University and in alphabetical order, I was the last of ten speakers to take the lecturn. I stood up to speak, the final presentation of a long morning. I knew that that I would have to work very hard just to keep their attention for ten more minutes.
I began my presentation by saying in Mandarin, "Wo shr laushr" ( I am a teacher). And the room quietened. No hushed talking in the back of room, no moving around in the chairs. They were so very quiet. You could almost hear a pin drop. Those three words quietened the room. They did not know me, but they knew the role of TEACHER! I did not need fancy powerpoints, no introductory joke, no cute story to catch their interest at the beginning of the speech. I just simply said, almost in passing, that "I am a teacher." That was enough to quieten the entire room filled with tired, restless, middle school students who had been sitting for several hours and were ready to move on. Something happened when they heard the word "TEACHER." What was it?
What is in this Chinese culture that would pay that much attention and respect to the title of teacher? What is in the Chinese cultural world view that mandates when the teacher enters the room, the students must stand in respect. I saw it in Taiwan in the late 1970s while visiting schools in Taipei. The students were sitting at their desks waiting for class to begin. The teacher entered the room after the class has settled. And every single Chinese student stood with head slightly bowed when the teacher entered the room that morning. The students stayed in attention until they were acknowledged. Then they quietly sat down. And the learning began!
So in this spirit, I stand up from my chair with a slightly bowed head this day to honor Mrs. Wilson, my first grade teacher who taught me the love of reading and how to appreciate the smell of books; to Mrs. Davidson, who helped me think about leadership; to Drs. Ralph McLain, Allen Page,and Roger Crook, who took my adolescent mind to a collegiate level; to Dr. Alan Culpepper, who helped me learn to write. To Dr. Jennings Waggoner, who opened the world of higher education to me and reintroduced me to his alma mater, Wake Forest University, and to all teachers everywhere.
And the Master Teacher placed this honor in right perspective: "You call me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you (John 13:14-15).
Think of that kind of world where students bowed to teachers, teachers washed students feet, and then students washed the feet of one other.
Martin Jacques, author of When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order, claims that even during the "Maoist period, Confucian values and ways of thinking continued to be influential, albeit in some subterranean form, remaining in some measure the common sense of the people" (New York: Penguin Press, 2009, p. 200). Jacques believes that Confucian ways of thinking are currently being revived "and scrutinized for any light that they might throw on the present, and for their ability to offer a moral compass" (200-1). First brought to light in imperial China through the life and teachings of Confucius and his disciples(551-479 BCE), these ancient thoughts appear to be the bedrock assumptions of culture both past and present in China. historical past. Two important continuities--the parental role of the state and the central place of education-- are maintained, regardless of the political structures of dynasty, republic, or communism. The bedrock philosophical assumption of Confucianism is a strong optimistic anthropology, namely that people are basically good (which goes against the grain of a more western, Augustinian view of humankind) and if brought up with proper parental guidance and education, children will have the appropriate responses for a harmonious family and society (199).
And I think that I saw it. Confucius was still speaking even in 2010 in China. At the Shenzhen Foreign Language School in the Guangdong Province, students learned in an atmosphere surrounded by aphoristic sayings of Confucius. Beautiful plaques on the wall said that education really mattered. The one that first caught my attention was the one in the conference hall where we first met the Chinese educators and some of the students. I looked up and saw these words: 'jyau sywe shang jang" translated means "teaching others teaches yourself." Others stated, "The spring wind brings up (educates) all things" (chun feng yu wu) and "Though growing up through mud and dirt, be not polluted" (wu ni bu ran). The spirit of learning has not been stamped out by the fierce cataclysms of political and social change. The opening words of The Analects of Confucius, a collection of brief aphoristic fragments compiled years after the death of Confucius, attest to the importance of study, and the importance of studying abroad, providing inspiration for 21st century China and our own United States of America.
"The Master said, 'To learn and at due times to repeat what one has learned, is that not after all a pleasure? That friends should come from afar, is this not after all delightful? (The Analects, Book 1.1)
I have been to China--to Da Lu (the Big Land), to Jung Gwo (the Middle Kingdom. I traveled around the Five Economic Zones of the Guangdong Province, north of Hong Kong, and was truly spellbound. Riding in the bus across major highways with clever clover loops, traveling down small country roads flanked with green patches of vegetables and tea plants, walking down city sidewalks filled with people rising to work with the strength of the tall buildings in the morning horizon, my thoughts stayed in motion. I visited high schools, huge campuses with residential housing for students and apartments and cafeterias for teachers, as well as smartly-designed classroom space. I have many impressions. And the words are now coming.
The first one to share with you is the imbalance of trade. Yes, I saw the shipping containers at the port filled with exports ready to come to the West. I saw the increased wealth taken from our American cities---the evidence of high priced cars and luxury apartments in the furniture manufacturing district of Foshan. And yes, I compared that vision with the one that I know well in Martinsville Virginia where acres and acres of furniture manufacturing sites remain empty, once-vibrant shopping malls are now parking lots filled with grass, and the people who depended on a good living making furniture at the factory are without hungry and without work. Yes, I thought about all of those inequities as we traveled through the province. And I remembered what T. Friedman said when he spoke on Wake Forest University's campus a few weeks ago, "For China, we are roadkill." The imbalance is obvious. But who can stop that? For those industrial sites, although running at top speed now, will begin to slow when those Chinese workers demand a higher standard of living as they move into the middle class. And the production cycle will move to Vietnam, Indonesia, and other places with a cheaper labor pool. But the inequity between our two countries was more troubling than just empty or full manufacturing sites.
They have our industries and our industry. And we are lagging way behind. Simply stated, while we have been exporting our industrial age to China, we could have been importing their industry, their hard work ethic, their desire to learn, their willingness to work at menial labor for the good of their family, their hunger. That desire that we as Americans used to have has also gone off shore. And that is my lament.
For this is what I saw. I saw Chinese young people in the Guangdong Province, thousands of them, wanting to come to the United States to study. No, they did not want to come to taste the good life, to simply buy a new car and an American house. Those ambitions are being fulfilled in their own hometown because the so-called good life is coming to them. The streets are filled with Mercedes and signs of increasing wealth are everywhere. These young people who came to the information sessions and listened to the presentations are wanting to come to the United States because we still have some of the best universities in the world. And these students want to learn. They want to improve their mind, to increase their understanding of how life works, to gain skills in medicine, business, and some even in the liberal arts. They were hungry to learn. They were motivated to study. They wanted more.
What if we could import that? What if we could in trying to balance the trade between the two countries say we will give you our textile industry if you will give us your industry, your willingness to study extra hours in the evening, to sit through a class and not complain about the reading assignment, to actually understand that learning is hard work and takes great discipline but is essential for the well-being of an individual and certainly for the development of a country.
China, you now have our industries; in return we want your industry! We want our young people to be as hungry to learn as yours are. It is only fair.
I am on my way to Guandong Province, China. I will be visiting five major cities in this most exciting area: Guangzhou, Foshan, Shenzhen, Shantou, and Zhuhai. I will be visiting high schools in each of these areas, meeting with bright, young Chinese students who are looking to USA universities and colleges for their collegiate preparation. I will be telling the story of Wake Forest University to educators, parents, and high school students. This opportunity enables me to weave an early thread of my life back into these years. From 1977-1981, as some of you know, I lived in Taipei, Taiwan and spent a lot of time learning a challenging language for most Americans--Mandarin Chinese. And now, after all of these years, I am able to use those language skills in my work in higher education. Those years I worked with Chinese friends in congregations and worship centers, challenging others to consider the power of faith and spirituality in their life and work. I am still about this process after all of these years but with a different focus. I am delighted to be thinking about the power of education and the opportunities for transformation that learning can bring about. Education can bring about change and can create common opportunities and colloboration for a successful future for both China and the United States. I am delighted to have this opportunity. I will try to provide impressions of this most interesting culture and their place in this ever-changing global market.
When I tell people I went on a pilgrimage to Ireland, they often ask what that means. What is the difference in a tour or just plain old trip and a pilgrimage? For most of us the word “pilgrimage” evokes a picture of visiting a holy shrine at a certain season, perhaps to pray for blessings. However in early Celtic Christianity, a pilgrimage was different. Early ascetic monks would leave home, exile themselves from family and friends, on pereginatio pro Christo, or wandering for Christ. From Ireland they went out into various parts of Europe, as well as to remote places in or around their homeland. They sought out places of solitude where they devoted themselves to prayer and contemplation to become closer to God and develop their relationship with God. They often took with them small communities of twelve others. As Oliver Davies tells us in Celtic Spirituality, “It is these wandering Irish monks in [self-imposed] exile who were responsible for bringing Christianity to large areas of western and central Europe.”
When, just over a month ago we set out on our pilgrimage to Ireland, we were going with particular sacred sites on our itinerary, but in another way, we were participating in a bit of pereginatio. Life is metaphorically called a journey, and sometimes it takes curious, unexpected twists and turns. We may find ourselves wandering about a bit in order to find where we need to be, just as those ancient monks did. So, when we left for Ireland in September, with an itinerary, we also had a mindset of being on a bit of a wandering around. Within the structure of the planned pilgrimage there was a place for individual time, silence and contemplation, and an openness to whatever might be evoked in us by our surroundings. The journey was not just about seeing places, but also about what we experienced, which often came in unexpected ways.
Pilgrims through the ages have taken time away from their day-to-day lives to make journeys to sacred sites, to renew something within them, to rededicate themselves spiritually, or to seek blessing or healing. The real challenge is in the rest of our lives when we aren’t officially on pilgrimage. That is to live with the idea of all life being a sacred pilgrimage in our minds. What would that mean? First, an openness to the unexpected. Balancing our to do lists with time to be present in the moment and conscious of what is going on around us that we might normally rush past and tune out. It may mean creating a space and time for being still and open.
This morning I lit a candle and meditated for a time. In the quiet I heard sounds that are around me all the time but that I normally do not hear. The steady rhythm of a clock nearby, a bird outside, a dog somewhere in the distance. There are times when I willingly tune out these sounds as distraction, but today, hearing them gave me a sense of being a part of a larger whole. For those moments instead of being busy manipulating objects around me, trying to be in control and accomplish something, I was still and calm, feeling in sync with the rhythms of all that surrounded me. When I take time to meditate like that, my day generally goes better and I am less frazzled at the end.
On the pilgrimage in Ireland we had quiet times to be open to what I experienced at home this morning. The real challenge has been to come home, create space for and keep the mindset of pilgrimage alive as we resume our normal lives. Pilgrimage doesn’t have to end. (The picture below, unlike those above that were made in Ireland, came from my own back yard.)
Another opportunity to be in China and I am so thankful. I will have much to tell you in the next few days while I reflect on all that I saw and experienced.
The trip began in Beijing-my first time to visit this important governmental city. I could not believe that I was standing in Tienamen Square. I stood there and remembered those days in 1989 when this place became known to the world. This spot has been important for Chinese history for several thousand years and continues to be a place that is honored and remembered for many many reasons. I joined the massive crowds as we walked around this place and remembered. In the next few days, while still on Asian time, I hope to reflect on all that I saw and note it here. I spent 15 days in China on this trip--four in Beijing, 10 in Guangdong province, and 1 day in Hong Kong before leaving to return home for Christmas. I met with so many Chinese young people, listened to their plans for their future, their love of their country, visited high schools, public and private, and colleges and universities. I know of their desire for excellence in education. A thirst for knowledge is a part of their past and will be an important part of their future. I have many impressions. More to come.
I have been to China--to Da Lu (the Big Land), to Jung Gwo (the Middle Kingdom.
I spent two weeks in early January with 22 students from Wake Forest, Emory, Yale, Wesley Seminary, Southern Lutheran Seminary, and the Washington National Cathedral
