Yeye Goes to China - Guanxi 关系

I'll play if you'll sing

Mon, 26 May 2025 19:26:00 GMT

I was recently told that I was a very interesting person. I thanked them for saying that and just sort of passed it off without asking for an explanation.

A few hours later, upon some reflection I thought about what was said to me. I repeated that statement in my mind and thought., “No, I’m not that interesting.” I’m kind of boring, even though I’ve experienced some very interesting events in my life. I thought, there are smarter people than me, more accomplished, more creative, and better at almost anything I do.

I’m not necessarily beating up on myself, I have excelled at almost nothing! I’ve done a lot of things personally and professionally, but never am I put in the top tier of talent when gathered with like-minded or others with similar career paths. While I may not consider myself particularly interesting, I have been blessed to encounter unique opportunities that result in noteworthy experiences.

In the summer of 2016, after I had arrived in China for some travel over the summer with my students from Harding, I got a phone call from one of the Harding employees, a Chinese man named West Ling who was recruiting for future Harding students that summer. He knew I was in China, and he asked where I was at the time? I told him I was in the Hunan province, but I was still traveling about the country, “Why, what's up?

“I was hoping you might come to Guangzhou. I have a group of students that perhaps we'll be coming to Harding University next year and I'd love for you to speak to them. Do you think you'd be able to do that? I didn't need much of an invitation to do something like that and I jumped on it. He then said, I can't pay you anything money-wise, but I have budget money to put you up in a nice hotel for a couple of days and buy all your meals.

That’s all I needed to hear, “Yes, I can do that for you." I then arranged to show up in Guangzhou a few days later and to speak at the Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. After meeting up with West Ling the day before and checking into my hotel he said he would come by and get me in the morning and take me over to the campus.

As I walked into the classroom, I saw a whole room full of faces that had their eyes directed right at me. They watched every move I made and listened to every word I spoke. I wanted to help them break the ice, and the tension, so I turned to them said in Chinese, “Ni Hao, Ni Hao Ma” very loudly as I walked into the center of the room and started shaking hands and meeting as many of them as I could before class was supposed to start.

As I made my way down the center aisle shaking hands, making eye contact, and chatting with as many students as I could I stopped and came to one young lady who seemed very anxious to meet me. She stuck her hand out first to shake mine. She said hi my name is Nikki, my Chinese name is Chen Ying Ying, what's your name?

I told her my American name and then I told her my Chinese nickname was Xie Yeye, (which translates in Chinese to thankful grandfather)! The classroom roared with laughter and clapped with approval. The students in China all had an American nickname that they chose or were assigned when they started learning English back in grade school.

Turning back to Nikki, I asked her what she was majoring in, which was a question that I often asked the student to start a conversation. When she responded I could tell that her English was better than most of the students in the room. Nikki smiled and told me; “I am majoring in musical performance.” I thought, wow, she must be a good singer, so I asked her, in a very joking manner, “Why don't you come up and sing us a song?” I knew that was something very often requested by teachers and students in Chinese classrooms.

Nikki quickly waved me off shaking her head and her hand, “Oh no, no, no, I'm not a singer. I play the piano.” I looked around the room and low and behold, there was a piano in that classroom. I pointed to it and said, “Great, there's a piano, why don't you come up and play for me? She smiled as if she was winking at me and said, “I'll play the piano if you’ll sing?”

Wow! Nikki was quick, clever, and had me put on the spot. Did I say how much I love bantering with my students? Well, I love doing that!

“OK, I’ll do that, come on up here.” She got up out of her seat came up to the front of the room sat down at the piano. She said, “What do you want me to play? I said, what do you know?” Nikki then said, “If you can sing it, I can play it! You just start and I’ll follow along. I wasn't sure exactly what she meant by that but truer words had never been spoken. I rattled off two or three normal kind of songs that might be something in a moment like that and she started playing as I started singing. I realized right away that she could play the piano by ear. Something that has always amazed me. We did that back-and-forth for two or three songs; the classroom applauded at the end of each song. Needing to move on as I got up, I motioned for her to take my hand and then indicated that I wanted her to take a bow with me. The other students roared again with laughter and applause as we did so and then she took her seat!

I then went into the class content that I had prepared. All things went well. There was lots of chatter and bantering among the students, which is the way I like to teach class particularly in a country that is so rigid and stoic in their approach to lecturing and education.

When I concluded class, as I always did, I left time for them to ask me any questions they might have, even if it did not pertain to my class material. When I did that, I almost NEVER had a question about my content. The questions were always about me, my family, my travel, my likes and dislikes, and even my "love story" of how I met my wife!

After class Nikki came up to me and had a few questions. The first question was how do you spell the name Nikki and then she wrote it on the chalkboard NICKY, and she said, I've been told that that's wrong? What is the proper way of spelling my American nickname. I explained to her that the name she had chosen was a girl's name, but it was also a boy's name, and the way that she was writing it was the boys version, NICKY. I then went on to explain most of the girls who have a nickname of Nikki spell it N-I-K-K-I.

“Then, that’s what I’ll do from now on," she said.

And do you have another question?

Yes, she said, “Tell me again what university you teach at in America, and how do you spell that." “I teach at Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas." She was entering it into her iPhone on Google. As we continued speaking, she found it, flashed her phone at me and said, “Is this the one?” "Yep, that’s it, In fact,” I told her, “If you go to www.harding.edu/china you’ll find some information written in Chinese.” She said, "I'm gonna read up on Harding," As she turned to walk out of the classroom she stopped turned back to me and said, “Thank you for being so much fun today!”

A few days later, I received an email from Nikki asking about transferring to Harding University. I was teaching a class at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies (GUFS), which allowed students to attend for two years, taking foreign language and core classes, before transferring to another university worldwide for which GUFS had a contractual agreement. Harding was a university where students could transfer. I was invited to speak, not to recruit, but to give them a glimpse of an American professor and teach basic communication principles they could apply anywhere, even in another language.

I went home at the end of my itinerary and settled into my summer activities and half-way preparing for my classes that were to start in the fall of 2016 when I got another email from Nikki. She told me that she was planning on transferring the Harding University in August! I thought that was cool.

As the fall semester approached, I got another email from Nikki. I was surprised when I read, “I'm sorry, I won't be able to come to Harding anymore, at least not until later.”

“Why?” I wondered? She answered my question in the next sentence by saying, “I just don't think my English is good enough.”

I told her otherwise! There were lots of students that had come to Harding whose English wasn't nearly as good as hers. And I wrote, she shouldn't let that stop her. We would help her with her English when she got here. But she refused, saying that her parents wanted her to have a better grip on English before she left the country for America.

A few months later I got another email from Nikki saying that she would be at Harding in January. A few weeks later it was January, and on the first day of classes for spring semester of 2017, she walked into my communication principles class as a new student at Harding. I thought to myself what a wonderful unique way of meeting and mentoring somebody. There she stood, a student that I had in class in China, and now she was in my class in America! How many people can really say that?

While I may not consider myself particularly interesting, I have been blessed to encounter unique opportunities that result in noteworthy experiences. This particular incident certainly was a turning point in Nikki’s life, and mine as well.

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Passing counterfeit money in China ¥¥¥

Fri, 23 May 2025 19:10:43 GMT

I was recently asked what was one of the most unusual things that's ever happened to me… maybe a fun fact?

I thought about it for a minute and then I realized maybe the best story I could tell was about the time I was detained by the Chinese police in Beijing, China for passing counterfeit money!

It was the summer of 2016. I was scheduled to go to China that year to visit some of my Harding students that were home for the summer. I was also going to go by and visit some of my former American students who were now teaching in China.

On one visit I had gone by to visit a former student who had moved to the Hunan province, to teach at the at one of the many the universities in that area. This was a familiar place to me because I had spent four summers between 2010 and 2013 teaching there myself. We were walking across the campus when we ran into a fellow professor of marketing communication, a Chinese man that I had known when I used to teach there. As we exchanged pleasantries, he realized that I was in town, and asked me if I would come and speak to one of their classes, a combined group of marketing classes that he wanted to pull together to let them be exposed to an American professor.

Of course, liking that idea, I gladly accepted, and a week or so later I went back to the campus to fulfill that speaking engagement. As the class closed it was nearing dinner time the professor invited me and Renee go out to dinner with him and some of the other Chinese professors. But before going to the restaurant he wanted me to come by his office. He said that he said he had something for me. We went by his campus office where he had his secretary get into the cash box and give me a speaking fee for speaking that day!

Even though the amount of money they gave me was very much appreciated, because I wasn't expecting anything at all, I would have gladly done it for free. They paid me ¥1,000 YUAN, which is equal to about $150 American dollars. $150.00 USD for speaking for about an hour and then taking some questions. That was pretty good money for what I could have done in my sleep. (The secretary’s name), put 10 ¥100 bills in an envelope and handed it to me thanking me for my service of speaking that day. I put that envelope in my pocket and didn't think that I would be needing it very quickly at all.

When I travel in China, I acquired cash and covered other expenses by using my credit card in one of their local ATM’S to draw out money from my American account in Chinese currency. There was a relatively small international transaction fee, but it was well worth not having to carry a lot of local cash, and ATMs were everywhere!

A few days later I made my way to Beijing, and I was getting low on money and instead of going to the ATM to get more money I realized I had ¥1,000 in an envelope that was given to me at the university. So instead of going to the ATM I reached in and grabbed that envelope and went on about my way spending to pay for the things for which I was doing.

I took a taxi to the Pearl Market, and the taxi driver wouldn't accept my money. I had no idea what he was yelling at me about, but he would not let me get out of the car until I paid him with other money, but everything I handed him was the same story. He was very angry, and I didn’t know why! When I started yelling back at him to let me out, he unlocked the door and told me to get out!

I had not gotten very far into that spending excursion and shopping a bit when one of my transactions was denied again, because the counter person told me that the money that I was handing him was a fake. I wasn't sure what he meant by, “it was a fake,” until it dawned on me, because of my poor Chinese, and his poor English, that he was telling me that my money was counterfeit! Apparently, the people that took a lot of that kind of money could hold it, feel it, look at it, and determine that it wasn't normal, but I couldn’t see that difference.

I thought, how can that be counterfeit money? It was given to me by the university, which is in all practical purposes, was a government agency. I didn't know however, counterfeit money was a rampant issue in China. Not having the ability to complete that transaction, I just put the money back in my pocket and left the store.

I thought maybe I should go to a bank and get some more money on my own. I went to a local bank and I thought well they should be able to tell me whether this is counterfeit money or not. I went up to the teller, told her that I had gotten some money and I wanted to find out if it was counterfeit or not. She took the money, looked at it, she marked on it, then she got on the phone and called somebody. In about two minutes a young man came out from an office in the back and said, (in very poor English but mostly in Chinese, “my name is Mr. something or other, I'm the bank manager here, would you come with me please. I was happy to do so thinking he was helping me. But he put me in his office and closed the door and then called the police. The police were there in about 10 minutes and through our poor language skills, of his bad English, and my even worse Chinese, they told me that I was passing counterfeit money and that was an illegal activity in China.

I was mortified to say the least! I didn't know what was ahead of me I didn't know what was going to happen next. I do know that they talked a lot in Chinese, and I had no idea what they were saying. I kept trying to tell them I was paid this money by the university, for speaking and that's where I got that money! All I could tell from their questions was, “where did you get this money from?”

When I realized that they thought that I was passing counterfeit money and knew that I could be in real trouble, I knew where I got that money, and I started singing like a canary! I pointed my finger down the road and said, “that woman at the university is the one that gave it to me, it's her that was passing fake money. Then I remembered I had her business card in my pocket. I reached into my wallet pulled out her card and handed it to the police and said, “this is the woman who gave me that fake money.”

Again, they mumbled among themselves. Not knowing what they were saying, they finally left. Apparently, they made that phone call to the university employee. They came back in the room with a cell phone and asked me to speak to her. It was the woman who handed me that money and she replied, “I didn't know that was fake money, are you sure it's the money that I gave you?” She kept asking question to act like it wasn't her. I was certain however it was she that gave me the money. I handed the phone back to the police, they talked to her again, and they handed the phone back to me. She got on the phone and said would make sure that I got the money that we owe you for speaking that day and we left it at that

The police and the bank manager then walked me over to the counter window and I had to fill out these papers about where I got that money to take pictures and things like that. I still needed $150 just like when I started this fiasco, so I pulled out my ATM card. When I couldn't get it to work in their machine the same people that detained me came over and helped me use the ATM machine because it was all written in Chinese. I got ¥1,000 from their bank, extracted from my bank account in America, minus the transaction fee. I shook hands with them, they all smiled, and I left the bank and the detainment.

As I left, I thought they didn't really treat me like a criminal, they treated me like a victim, and they were all laughing at this poor American white guy, who had been snookered by somebody else handing me fake money. In the end, and the more I thought about it, I really do believe that woman at the university that paid me, knew that it was bad money. I believe she took the good money from the deposit box, reached into her purse pulled out the fake money and put the good money back in her purse.

When I got to my hotel room, I called my wife, then my son, and relayed the entire episode to them. They were a lot more fearful than I was. They made me feel and understand how dangerous that whole event could have been, and the gravity of the situation… then I gasped and got scared!

Now that's an adventure that very few people will ever have.

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Now i believe in God!

Fri, 28 Apr 2023 16:31:07 GMT

What’s your turning point in life? You know that seminal moment that you could look back on now, and say for certain, that if this, or that, had not happened, my life ,and it’s trajectory, would have been very different. To be sure there are many, many of these turning points in our lives. But some seem to stand out more than others. What’s yours?

I have contemplated this concept many times in many different scenarios of my life. So many times those moments seemed like they were either spirit led, providential, lucky, or just plain bad!

When I first became a freshly minted professor of communication, I got to actually assign a speech telling of your turning point to a to contemplate this idea, process the details, and communicate it to others in a speech in what is called an Ice-Breaker Speech.

In the Fall of 2008, my first semester of teaching students at Harding University, I was assigned to teach the COMM 101, Principles of Communication class, or as it is almost always more affectionately known, Freshman Speech Class. All of the Mass Communication and speech teachers, had one, or two, or more sections of this class, because every student at Harding University had to take this class somewhere along the way. Either they took it elsewhere at another college and transferred the credit, or in high school as an AP class, or now, as a student at Harding. The difference is that one of my sections of this class was designated differently because it was to be filled with only Chinese students. These students had been tested to have very low English speaking, writing, or comprehension skills. As a result, they were all placed in my class.

A week before classes started the other communication professors had the normal departmental meeting. Among the many start-of-the-new-school-year-agenda-items was, “Who wants to teach the Chinese Principles of Communication class? I had no idea how many Chinese students were at Harding, or that they even had them at all. Dr. James stood up and said, “We really need somebody who can teach a speech class, just for the Chinese students that we have on campus. Who wants to volunteer for that?

Having no idea how dramatically that would change my life, I raised my hand. I thought, I have ESL training, why not me? Admittedly, it was only a one-day Saturday training seminar. I told the group of very reluctant professors that I had actually taught ESL to Chinese in a ministry role. Everybody cheered the new guy and said, “You da man!”

On the first day of my new speech, class I had 15 Chinese students wander in slowly to an eight o’clock class asking if I was Professor Shaner, and was this COMM 101? Upon hearing my enthusiastic, “Yes, please come in,” they were introduced to a barrage of greetings from me like, “Hello, I’m Professor Shaner, welcome,” and more.

I then discovered two things that I was unaware of about this class before that day.
1. Among the students were two MBA students who could not pursue their classes because they had not yet passed the English Proficiency test and were assigned this class to help them do so.

2. One of the girls was actually from Viet Nam, not China. Her English was almost perfect. After class I asked her, Why was she in that class? She said, “I don’t know, but I think that my advisor thought I was Chinese and just put me here. She smiled the biggest, warmest smile I’ve ever seen, and said, “Can I stay?”

What I found was the most delightfully inquisitive, warm and friendly class, that I may have ever had, and perhaps as much as any other classes that I had for 12 years after that semester. We just seemed to click together. They were all new to this country and Harding. I was new to teaching this class, and new to them. We bonded over the newness of those things. They all had unique personalities, and as time went on, they all seemed to open up to me and Harding. I found out later that more than half of them had been in the same high school class in their hometown in China, then two years together at the same university in Guangzhou, and now they all came to Harding together. For the most part, no introductions were needed for 10 of the 14 classmates. The class was just abuzz with excitement to start their first day of classes at Harding.

There were some wonderful, sweet and fun students in that class. Some of the students became mentees and good friends to me, and many for whom I visited in their hometowns in China in the forthcoming years.

One of the most amazing students made herself known the minute she walked into the room. She was bold. Her personality was bright. She was beautiful. When she walked into the room, the other students all turned their attention to her! They listened in hushed tones to hear her speak. They laughed when she laughed, they responded when it was their turn. She was in command of the room. She was absolutely the Alpha-Student in the group. The girls wanted to be her. The boys wanted to be with her. She was the imitable Miss “M.” She was Zhang Yixiao, or “M” as we all came to know!

As the semester progressed, one thing that I knew going into the class, that was made even more certain was the fact that these students were NOT Christians. When I say that I do not mean to imply they were wild, sinfully out of control, or debaucherously wild. In fact, they were pleasant, polite, and almost reserved in their view of morals and all things that would exemplify a typical student Harding life.

These students were not Christians! They just weren't. You’d think being at Harding would mean they were? Otherwise, why would they travel around the world, about as far away from home as you could possibly get, to attend a Christian University if you were an Atheist? They were not hostile towards us, or Christianity in general. Growing up, they had all been taught that believing in God was for weak minded people, and that smart, well informed, and intelligent people did NOT believe in God.

The fact is that these students were recruited to a Christian university. They were told Harding was a Christian university, and was what it was going to be like. But they didn't understand that until they got there. They didn't understand they had to go to chapel every day, and they didn't understand that they had to go to Bible class every day. When this class of Chinese students found out what that was, and that they had to comply, they complained about it. And they complained a lot and loudly about it.

In my speech class, the students had to prepare, and stand up and deliver four to five different speeches. I usually had two minor speeches and two major speeches. Most, if not all college and university students have probably had a speech class where the professor wanted you to give what was called a persuasive speech. I did too. After trying to make the class relevant to their needs and still stay in the mission of Harding University I wanted to challenge them to think about their view of a life lived from a Christian perspective, process that information, and articulate how that could be matched up with their lives, and world views of all things spiritual.

I always made my persuasive speech the last speech of the semester. It was like the final exam speech. I gave them the topic halfway through the semester. I said, you have to give me a persuasive speech, about something that you really believe… that you learned in your Bible class. I was being a little subversive.

Oh, they complained and cried and whined, we don't like that… “We just sleep during our Bible class. We don't really like that Bible class.” And sometimes they said, “We're not Christians, we shouldn't have to do that!”

My reply was, “This doesn't have to be about Christianity. It simply has to be something you learned in your Bible class. Maybe, it's to honor your mother and father? That's a biblical concept and I know you have to do that in China. Give me a speech about why it's important that you honor your mother and father, or something like that, but I said, it has to be something you learned in your Bible class.”

I tried coordinate this with their Bible teacher because they were all in the same Bible class. They had to turn in their topics to be approved by me before they could continue working on the speech. Afterwards we proceeded to learn how to put together an outline, with an introduction, body and conclusion, with everything in between. We went over all of the how-to’s in class.

They continued to grumble and complain about this assignment, until I asked them would they grumble and complain to a Chinese teacher or professor? That just didn’t exist in their culture, so I asked them for the same respect, and they all settled down into their assignments.

They all finally accepted the assignment on face value and got started. Except for M. She didn't want to do it at all. And, she was really given me a hard time about it. She came to me very respectfully after class and again mentioned that she was not a Christian, in fact she was an atheist and that this assignment just would not work for her! We discussed this a bit before I finally said, “I'll tell you what, forget the Bible class. Give me a speech on why you don't believe that there is a God.” She said, “Okay, I'll do that!”

Because I worked in the media most of my life, one of the things that I did in my speech classes was that every time they had to give a speech, I had it in a different room, in a different venue. I said, you're going to be giving speeches somewhere besides a classroom the rest of your life. Plus, I always put the last speech, this persuasive speech, on what they learned in their Bible class, in the TV studio on campus, and we digitally recorded it.

When the day arrived for the speeches M got there early, quickly came up to me and said, “I want to let you know, that I changed my speech topic. I said, “NO, you had to get this approved. You can't change it now!

She said, “Wait, wait… Here’s why… I started researching why there was no God. And, and… I decided there was a God. So, I changed my speech topic to why there is a God. I thought would be OK with you.”

I said, “Yes, go for it. Let's do this.” She gave the most amazing speech (with PowerPoint) on why there is indeed a God! I still have a video copy of that speech.

I kept up with her. She wasn't in any of my classes after that day, but I kept up with her a lot. She really was a delightful student, very popular on campus, and just exuded energy and personality. I even arranged to meet her in China, in her hometown of Guilin on one of my teaching assignments in the summer of 2011.

About three years after giving that speech M graduated. She moved on to the University of Maryland to get her master’s degree. M was now getting a degree in electrical engineering. Did I say how smart and driven she was? She was amazing in almost everything she did and studied about. Before M left, I reminded her that she had given me a speech about God, and before I could finish, she emphatically said, “Yes, I still believe!”
I then asked her “Did she know people at University of Maryland?” She didn’t. I wanted to make sure she would meet some Christian friends. I found out that there was a church Bible chair, or a campus ministry. (we used to call them Bible chairs). When I knew she was going there I looked up some contacts and gave her some names to connect with after she arrived.

Several years later, M texted me one day and said, “I'm coming back to Searcy. And I want to get baptized!” She wanted to come back to Searcy to get baptized because as she said, “That's where she found God.” She actually studied with somebody at the University of Maryland. But she gives a lot of credit to finding God at Harding. She said, “I wouldn't even have talked to them. I had it not been for Harding.”

I didn't baptize her, but I was there that night. I wouldn’t have missed that for the world! And she told the story herself to the group before she got baptized that, “I came here and didn't even believe in God.”

And even though I had engaged with other Chinese students in Chicago as an intentional ministry, I had now been at Harding for a few semesters now, I said to myself, “there’s a real missionary ministry here.”

Teaching that first COMM 101 Chinese speech class, and seeing M become a Christian made me realize that it was not only a turning point in her life, but in mine as well. I continued teaching that same COMM 101 class for the next 12 years at Harding, and sometimes with two sections per semester, plus several times at three different universities in China adding up to more than 500+ students. Some of my dearest and most beloved students and friends came out of the opportunity of me raising my hand and saying, “Why not me? I’ll teach that class.”

i raised my hand... from Chicago-to-Searcy-to-China

Fri, 24 Mar 2023 17:36:10 GMT

I am a self-admitted-late bloomer in life. When I was in high school, I was undisciplined and unmotivated, especially for things that I did NOT want to do! I graduated from college by sheer persistence, and the skin of my teeth, not because I was a good student, but because no matter how badly I performed, I just wouldn’t quit. I graduated from undergraduate with an embarrassing 2.0 GPA. It was about 5-6 years after I graduated from college that I finally grew up a little. Then I wanted to go back and re-take all of my classes to do better.

I went to graduate school in January of 2001, 24 years after I left college with my bachelor’s degree. Upon starting my master’s degree, I was 46 years old, turning 47 just three months later. I enrolled at Roosevelt University in Chicago eventually getting a Master’s of Science in Integrated Marketing Communication, or affectionately known in the industry as IMC. By the way, my GPA from graduate school was 4.0!

My IMC degree program was one in which at the end every class, as our final, we had to make a presentation of a marketing plan extolling the learning curve which that particular class taught. Every single one of them! I liked that assignment, because I love doing public speaking, and I'm fairly good at it. I knew that I could cover a lot of holes in my research and content with good presentations skills.

In January of 2002 I enrolled in a Creative Message Strategy class. There was a young Chinese woman in the same class. I had barely ever spoken to her, but noticed that when she walked in every week, she didn't speak to anybody. I always wondered how proficient her English was, knowing she had recently arrived in the states to enroll in my same IMC program. When it was her turn to give her presentation, she got up and did the best she could. Her content was great, but her spoken English was very poor. She had lots of misspelled words on her PowerPoint. Her grammar was… well unacceptable for a graduate level class in America.

I thought the professor for the class was kind of mean to her in his oral assessment at the conclusion of her pitch. But it was graduate school, and she should have done better. When she finished, he looked at her and said, “If you're going to be in the marketing industry, you have got to learn your English better. I was really embarrassed for her. I knew it hurt for her to be standing there in front of the rest of the class listening to him berate her performance. Fortunately she was the only Chinese woman in the class, which probably made it easier for her. Had another Chinese student been there she would have died in embarrassment. In Chinese culture you do not want to “lose face,” and I knew that she was “losing face” in front of this group.

But nonetheless, the teacher said that to her. Then he looked at the class and said, “I'm going to let her do this assignment over again, will anybody, please help her?”

I raised my hand, “I'll help her,” I said. With that gesture of assistance, she became one of my most endearing graduate school friends. So much so that over time and the next several weeks, we had her over to the house for dinner, invited her to do many social activities with us, took her to church with us. Over time Donna and I got to be good friends with her. I told her all about us and I was fascinated by her story. She was intrigued by the American way of life. I was married and had children. What was that like in the States she often wondered? She was in her 30’s with a husband and son that she left back in China for TWO YEARS to come to Chicago and get a Master’s degree in IMC. It surprised and appalled me that doing so was a normal socio-accepted practice. It didn’t just surprise me, it-blew-my-mind when she told me that she did that to attend university in the states. She left her son with her in-laws, because her husband lived in a different city.

My First Chinese Student was Li Jie
Her name was Li Jie. Li was her family name, and Jie was her given name. Jie in Chinese means pure. But, like most Chinese students of English she had an American nickname. To her English-speaking friends, she chose the name Eileen.

I volunteered to help Eileen with this presentation project. After class we had a formal introduction and we planned to meet up again soon. I'd seen her in class and we even had some small talk chit-chat before class, but had never really talked to her beyond greetings and pleasantries, and even that was more me talking, with her smiling and nodding her head. We set up a time for us to meet in the library in one of those little private rooms where you can have a group meeting and we went over her presentation. She showed me everything she had in her PowerPoint. For a couple of weeks, I explained how to correctly communicate in writing and speaking that which she needed to learn so she could make another run at this assignment, I changed most of it myself. But I explained to her what I did, and why.

I also gave her some speaker presentation “coaching.” At the time I was working as a professional speech coach and I thought that would make her sound better even if she was still lacking in some ways. The more I knew about her and what she told me about her life back home, the more I became fascinated with China.

A couple of weeks after completing and re-giving her presentation to our class Eileen asked if I would be willing to help with her English needs for other classes? About three weeks into doing that, Eileen brought three of her Chinese friends with her with the implied question, would you help my friends as well? Of course, I said yes, and we held a impromptu English as a Second Language (ESL) session every week just going over their reading and writing assignments from their classes. Make no mistake, these were very intelligent students, they just needed help with their English.

At our church, at that time in the Chicago area of Woodridge/Naperville, we had an ESL ministry called Friends Speak. It was intended to invite local people that spoke little or no English and teach them English using the Bible as our textbook. Friends Speak is the national version of Let's Start Talking. It's made so that you can do the international Bible teaching content in a domestic environment without going abroad to teach.

I set up a little ESL class right there on the campus of Roosevelt University. Donna and I had recently taken a seminar at Moody Bible College in Chicago, and each of us had received a certification in ESL as a Ministry teachers. It was kind of all fitting together here.

We were at Roosevelt University in Downtown Chicago, which was the farthest thing there could be from a Christian University that I was used to. I accepted the task of me teaching her English. And, if I could help teach her English, I wanted to use the Bible as a text for teaching English. Eileen was okay with that. But she told me, “I'm not a Christian. I don't want to become a Christian, but if using the Bible will help me become better at English, then Okay.” I continued teaching English as often as I could.

I taught that class until Eileen went back to her hometown of Tianjin, a large city near Beijing.
Eileen worked for the Motorolla out of Beijing but did so from her home in Tianjin, when she was not traveling to their clients’ offices, which she did most of the time. She developed e-learning models for corporate training for their clients.

I studied the Bible with her a little bit. She never became a Christian. But it really piqued my interest in Chinese missions, because I realized the common citizens were very open to discovering spiritual elements of their lives regardless of what they had been taught about God previously. And, there were so many, many of them.

Eileen went home to China – I went to Harding University.
At the end of the semester, in the Spring of 2003, Eileen arranged to take her last class on line and went back to China before graduating. Motorola had offered her a job wanted her back to manage their marketing communication worldwide efforts. I finished in December of ’03, and went on with my Integrated Marketing Communication career.

Eileen and I traded emails and photo’s over the next couple of years. One Winter Eileen emailed she was coming back to the Chicago area for a meeting at the Motorola headquarters in Schaumburg, Illinois, about 20 miles from us, and could we get together with her? She arrived to our house at the appointed time for a wonderful evening of dinner and catching up.

In 2008, I got recruited, actually called one day, out of the blue to come to Searcy, Arkansas and begin teaching at Harding University. Dr. Mike James, the communication department chairman and my long-time friend simply told me, “We need what you have, and do now… we need an advertising teacher. By now I had started adjunct teaching a Direct Marketing class at Roosevelt University and Dr. James knew that. Would you come and talk to us at Harding? Long story short, I got hired at Harding to be the advertising professor. I started in the fall semester of 2008.

The very first week I was there, we had the normal departmental meeting. Among the many start-of-the-new-school-year-agenda-items was, “Who wants to teach the Chinese Principles of Communication class? I had no idea how many Chinese students were at Harding, or that they even had them at all. Dr. James stood up and said, “We really need somebody who can teach a speech class, just for the Chinese students that we have on campus. Who wants to volunteer for that?

My light bulb went off above my head, “I have ESL training. Why not me?” Admittedly, it was only a one-day Saturday training seminar. I told the group of very reluctant professors that I had actually taught ESL to Chinese in a ministry tutoring role. From that moment and for the next 12 years the COMM 101 – Principles of Communication class became my signature class at Harding. More people knew that I taught Chinese students speech class, than knew that I taught advertising. Before that meeting I had no idea what that would mean to my life for the next 12 years and beyond. I have taught hundreds and hundreds, maybe thousands of Chinese students at Harding and beyond. I believe that was the Lord leading me in many, many ways.

I started at Harding University in the fall ‘08. Soon thereafter in the fall of 2009, Ed Mosby, the executive director of China Now knew what I was now doing. Ed always wanted me to go to China as a full-time English teacher at one of the foreign professor programs that almost all of the Chinese Universities had in place. Previous to now Donna and I just couldn’t leave our jobs and travel halfway around the world to teach. Now, he came back to me and asked if I would be willing to travel for just four weeks as a visiting professor, and to take prospective China Now teachers (who were currently Harding students) with me in a “student cultural exchange” program?

After years of dreaming about traveling to China – I had an all-expenses paid trip to China
I did so the follow May, in 2010. Harding graduated the second Saturday of May. I flew to China about five days later. I taught my Communication Principles class content at Nan Hua Da Xue in Hengyang City, Hunan province. Nan Hua Da Xue translates to the University of South China. Hengyang is a city of about 7 million people in the Hunan province and located about a 30-minute fast train ride from the capital city of Changsha. Hengyang is best known for the birthplace of Mao Zedong.

Nan Hua Da Xue was a campus of 40,000 students. I took four Harding students with me. Those students also taught classes and connected with their Chinese student counterparts. I had been teaching a Chinese populated Communication Principles class every semester since I arrived at Harding, so teaching Chinese students was nothing new to me by then. The class at Harding wasn't anything really different from the American sections, but it was just for the Chinese students. It was designed to be an ESL level class helping Chinese students prepare them for their English proficiency test that allowed them to continue on with their other classes. Harding took all the Chinese kids whose English was very poor, and pulled them out of the regular classes and put them in mine.

At the end of the four weeks of teaching at Nan Hua, I sent the Harding students home, and Donna flew over to China so she could travel with me. One of the itinerary items was for us to visit Beijing, where one of my students from my spring semester, Liu Nian, or Tina lived. Tina and I had planned for weeks to meet up in Beijing and she helped me be better prepared to visit China.

One of the things that I learned to do as I traveled in China, was to take one or more of my former Chinese students who were home for the summer with me to help navigate the transportation, meals and hotels as I traveled. Sometimes I even took some of my current Summer students from the university I was teaching in China. There were a few times I went on my own. And when I did I almost always ended up at the wrong train station or something like that.

I had told Tina that I wanted to go to Tianjin (near Beijing) so we could visit Eileen. Tina helped us communicate with her and make all the meet up arrangements, including meeting us at the hotel, buying train tickets, and accompanying us the entire day. It was really special.

My Harding student Tina had never been to Tianjin and she asked if she could go with us. Ironically, Eileen asked if my student in Beijing (Tina) would be willing to come with us to Tianjin so that we could buy the train tickets and meet her in her hometown without any problems. Eileen is old enough to be Tina’s mother, but they hit it off like they were sisters and had known each other for years.

When we arrived at the Tianjin train station and made our way through the passageways to the greeting lobby, I saw Eileen smiling and waving at us! It was so exciting to see her in her hometown, and not mine!

We had a wonderful day together! Eileen had several stops and venues planned and sort of laid out the plans for us to make some final decisions when we arrived. I had not seen her in four years, but when I saw her smiling face and waving arms at the Tianjin train station. She looked great! We all smiled, hugged and laughed at the idea that we were all in China together.

It was raining so our first stop was indoors at the Museum of History for Tianjin. This city, for many reasons, but chief among them, was location on the sea, and was one of the oldest and most economically important cities in China. This Museum gave a very detailed history of Tianjin defending the importance that Tianjin had in Chinese Culture and history. We love museums. Donna and Tina read everything in sight but Eileen and I just spent the day following them, talking and catching up with our lives since we had last seen each other.

After the Museum we taxied to a very unusual food court or food mall. They had a restaurant there at which we ate lunch, but the unique part of this stop were the many venues for individual candies, meats, cookies, baked products, teas and more. This place had very unusual items and even more interesting people selling their food and services. I don’t think it’s on the tourism routes so the people there were very surprised to see us.

After this stop had run its value, we went to the “Old Streets of Tianjin.” This place was similar to the “Old Streets of Beijing” that Tina had taken us to a few days previous. Fascinating old shops and stores that still sold many of the same goods and services that had been a part of Tianjin’s economy for thousands of years. Of course, much of this was now set up for tourists but it was really neat none-the-less. They had tea shops, engravers, novelty items, food and more. The rain had stopped and it was simply a pleasant stroll through the old part of town. One of the stores yielded a major purchase by us when we bought a calligraphy set for our son Matthew. I think he’ll really like what we got him. In addition to some stainless-steel teacups and strainers, we also bought Aaron a Chinese kite. Kites are big in China. The kites here are very ornate and very intricately made.

Eileen knew we were very interested in Christianity so she planned on taking us to what she called a Christian church. What it turned out to be was a Catholic church. The Church building had just closed from its visiting hours before we got there, so we did not get to go inside and look around.

By now it was almost dinnertime and as we sat on a park bench to discuss what our options were going to be, Donna asked if we could visit a Tea Room. Eileen made a few quick calls to her friends standing by and soon she had a text message telling her and us of the nearest tea house that we could visit. We hailed a taxi and off we went.

The name of the tea house we went to in Chinese Pin Yin is Zheng Xing De. These three characters have its own meaning, which is hard to translate on a word-by-word translation. When I asked Eileen to explain it further, she said, “I prefer to add a flavor of philosophy into the name; it could be translated into ‘pursuing and enriching good virtues in one's life,’ hope it makes sense to you.” We were able to select our private room based on the Chinese design of the surroundings, tables, seating, etc. The hostess was a Chinese woman that came in and explained the menu to Tina and Eileen. They talked for what seemed like a long time about the options on the tea selections. Finally, they explained to us in English what they ordered and how the process was going to unfold. We certainly learned a lot about tea and its proper preparation, including water, washing and presentation. The process included other elements such as an aromatherapy before tasting, and the proper etiquette of handling the different cups with their various specific uses. I was interested but Donna really enjoyed this. You might even say, “It was her Cup of Tea!” I mentioned to the others that sometimes our best activities were not on an agenda, as this tea house was not even on the radar when we started the day. Eileen really enjoyed sharing this part of her culture with us. She even bought us, (OK, it was for Donna), three kinds of tea, a set of cups, a teapot and other items necessary to repeat this process at home. She was so generous to us. It was a very relaxing and pleasant way to end the day.

We taxied to the Tianjin train station for our return trip home. The train station was like many of the other stations: new, big and crowded! This station served the Tianjin area but primarily the routes and rides to Beijing and Shanghai. We were able to purchase our tickets through an automated kiosk, but it did not display the instructions and process in English. Fortunately, Eileen was still with us and had made this purchase many times in the past. Eileen stayed with us until the train was open for boarding. I saw that Eileen had been having such a good time with us throughout the day and she was very sad to see us go. So were we. We had not seen Eileen in four years and I wondered as we waved goodbye and walked away, just how many more years it would be until we saw her again... if ever?

I realized while in Tianjin that day, that I had been “gifted” the opportunity of teaching Chinese students at Roosevelt and Harding Universities, and now in China, because of Eileen. It was a big turning point in the ministry of the rest of my life. I can tell you now, that God was absolutely preparing my path for a future life of ministry with the Chinese. It started the day that Li Jie walked into my graduate Creative Message Strategy class in January of 2002.

sophia - Mooncakes for the Moon festival

Sat, 30 Apr 2022 21:52:47 GMT

I first met Xia Renci, (Sophia), on Graduation Day at Harding University for our Chinese Host Student/Son, Crescent, in December of 2018. After all of the hugs, high fives, and photos had all been taken, we wanted to celebrate with him, and for him. We suggested that Crescent gather a few of his friends and let us take them all to dinner. We met at a country restaurant called KJ’s in a nearby border town of Searcy called Judsonia. Upon our arrival we were introduced to a couple of guys and a couple of girls. I knew Crescent’s roommates Hank, and Leo, but did not think I knew the girls. As we sat down at our table, I made my way around the group to meet them. I first met Lydia, who was very shy and introverted. As I presented my hand to shake Sophia’s hand, I said, “Ni Hao, Wo shi….” she cut me off, beamed a beautiful smile my way, looked at me with a sparkle in her eye, and said in pretty good English, “I know you. You’re Xie Yeye. You’re famous!”

Admittedly, I was well known among the Chinese students on campus, but famous? Nah, well, maybe, but only famous to them because that was the only English word, they knew to use to explain why they knew me. Sophia acted like we had met before, but as hard as I tried to remember and wanted to recall meeting her, I just couldn’t place her. I did what I always do in those situations, I acted like I already knew her. After I introduced both Lydia and Sophia to Donna we sat down and commenced to carrying on a conversation like we all knew each other very well.

When I met Chinese students for the first time, I asked the usual conversation starters such as; where are you from, how did you select your American nickname, why did you select Harding University and what is your major? Both Sophia’s and Lydia’s major was Art. Normally an Art major is no big deal to me, but this time, these Art majors were Chinese. That was a big deal! An Asian parent sending their child abroad to America to study and finish college, and major in ART, was NOT something that Chinese parents happily agreed to do. But here I had two Chinese Art majors sitting with me. I dug a little deeper. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to hear more about the family discussion regarding what was perceived as a no pay, no future job major, or the, “why do you want to be an Art major” backstory. Lydia indicated that she had classical Fine Art skills, but Sophia said she wanted to be a Graphic Designer!

As the professor of advertising, and the Harding University advertising program advisor, the words “Graphic Design major” was always music to my ears. If there is one academic discipline that almost all Graphic Design majors need more than they know, it’s advertising.

I pitched to Sophia the benefits for Graphic Design majors to take my Intro to advertising class for all the various reasons. Chief among my arguments for stating my case is that all too often Graphic design majors want to design something that’s amazing, pretty and something they really like, but does not achieve the purpose for which they were commissioned to design whether it be a brochure, poster, or whatever. Graphic Design is by nature a communicating tool to usually sell a service, product or idea. Unfortunately, most graphic designers, even the really good ones, usually miss this important element of the reason they are getting hired thus making many of them starving artists until they figure that out. I can’t tell you how many I’ve seen printed collateral or other forms of graphic design that simply DO NOT sell anything – but, it looks GREAT! Another reason that I told her that graphic design majors should take an adverting class is that graphic design most often is create dafter the copy is written, and not the other way around. A lot of the graphic design majors simply abhorred the thought of having to write copy to go along with their design. So, I continued, if you can accept the challenge of learning a modicum of what you need to know about adverting, beyond graphic design, it will make you a better and more valuable professional. Sophia nodded her head and seemed to agree with me. Lydia flat out said, “NO, I’m not taking advertising if I have to do any writing at all!”

A few months later Donna and I ran into Sophia at the Chinese New Years celebration. She ran up to me and continued our conversation. Again, I recognized her but didn’t remember her name. As soon as she began to speak it came back to me. I once again asked if she had given anymore thought about my advertising class? She replied, “I’m thinking about it.”

When the fall semester of 2019 rolled around, there she was, sitting on the front row with that same beaming, beautiful smile and sparkle in her eye. I was so surprised and delighted to see her. I pointed to her, casting a smile her way and said, “I know you. You’re Sophia. You’re famous!”

Sophia seemed to hang on my every word. Sometimes I could tell by her expression that she didn’t understand. I would ask her in Chinese, “Ni zhidao?” Which means, “Do you understand?” Sometimes she answered yes, sometimes she answered no. Sometimes I explained in English. Sometimes I tried to explain in Chinese. Either way we were both on our phones using our translation apps to decipher what each other had said. Make no mistake, Sophia’s English was far better than my Chinese! But we always figured it out. We had had so much fun and laughed when we finished the process! She was such a delight.

I was amazed at how well she kept up with the class content and assignments. I soon realized that Sophia was a very good student. She ended up having the second highest grade in the class, and there was only a-quarter-of-a-point difference between her final score, and the highest grade in the class!

On one occasion early in the semester I saw Sophia in the student center when I was sitting by myself, and she was looking for an empty table. There were none. I invited her to sit and eat her lunch with me? I had just gone through the Panda Express line and had my usual Orange Chicken with Fried Rice. As Sophia sat down, I noticed she had the same dish, except that I had picked up three or four Fortune Cookies. Most of my Chinese students liked Panda, because it was as close to Chinese food as they were going to get on the Harding campus, but they never picked up any of the fortune cookies that were free for the taking. They didn’t eat fortune cookies because first they were NOT really Chinese, and secondly it was a “sweet” cookie which was not usually a preferred taste on the palette of the Chinese students. While they have sweet deserts, cookies and cakes in China, it still a rarity in their diet. Most of my Chinese students were pretty intent on “not getting fat like Americans” when they arrived on the Harding campus. Eating cookies was simply something they avoided. Knowing this I still offered Sophia a Panda Fortune Cookie. To my surprise she quickly said yes, she loved them. I gave her two of my four. We opened them up, read the fortunes and laughed about how accurate they described our past, or hoped they described our future. Whenever I did go to the student center for lunch, I usually had to go directly afterwards to teach the adverting class that we both attended. In the future I always grabbed a couple of extra fortune cookies and placed them in Sophia’s place where she sat or simply handed them to her as she walked in to take her seat. Sophia’s beaming smile and twinkle in her eye told me that she remembered our lunch together and was delighted for this American version of desert that was not a part a real Chinese meal.

On another occasion as I was going through the student center, I saw Sophia again, but this time it was not at lunch time. She waived me down to say hi. As I approached, I noticed that she had a supply of Mooncakes and offered me one as she asked if I had ever had one before, and if so, did I like them?

Mooncakes was the signature food of a major Chinese festival and holiday. The Mid-Autumn Festival is always the first day of fall according to the Lunar calendar. It usually falls somewhere between the third week of September and the first week of October. The festival is for lunar appreciation and moon watching, (so it is often called the Moon festival). The Moon Festival is one of the four most important Chinese festivals. This festival is celebrated in China and is one of the most important holidays in Chinese culture; its popularity is on par with that of the Chinese Spring Festival or Chinese New Year. On this day, the Chinese believe that the Moon is at its brightest and fullest size, coinciding with harvest time in the middle of Autumn.

The Moon Festival, was the next day. The Harding Chinese students and community celebrated this every year on our campus and I was always invited to attend, speak or take an active participation of the fun.

Yes, I’ve had Moon Cakes. Did I like them? Well, let’s just say they are an acquired taste. But not wanting to spoil the gesture I said, “Ta Hao chi” (it’s delicious), as I took the Moon Cake sample she was offering. I had been to the Mid-Autumn Festival on the Harding campus for the past eleven years. Each year the Chinese students explained a little more to me about their family traditions of the Moon Festival. I knew that Mooncakes are offered between friends or on family gatherings while celebrating the festival.

Sophia and I discussed our shared experiences of Mooncakes. The actual date for the 2019 Moon Festival was the next day, Friday, September 27, on a day that Sophia and I were to be in class together. I thought it would be cool for us should share this delicacy with our advertising class. I also knew that it was a way for Sophia to be integrated into a group of Americans that she had little interaction with on a daily basis. I had the idea that sharing a bit of her culture together with our advertising class could be fun.

“Where did you get these Sophia, I inquired?” I knew they were NOT at Kroger or Walmart! Sophia told me that the Chinese student office had a good supply of Mooncakes they had ordered to offer to the Chinese students or sell to the non-members of the Chinese student body. I went by their office and gathered what I thought would be enough for the class to at least sample acquired the additional Mooncakes needed.

The next day of class I wore my blue traditional Chinese shirt and brought a red traditional Chinese for Sophia too wear as we delivered a joint presentation of Mooncakes. The class looked on in wonderment, intrigues but also puzzled. They had never heard of Mooncakes. We showed photos on the screen, brought out the samples, cut them into bite sized sample pieces and Sophia handed them out to her classmates. Sophia flashed that beautiful smile that I first saw when I met her. She seemed comfortable and happy to be sharing her culture with her new American friends. However, I knew that some in the class wouldn’t even try them once we told them what Mooncakes were made from… So, I brought another delicacy of an American variety that I knew everybody would like. It is what I called the “American Version of Mooncakes,” MOON PIES!

Now, Xia Renci, Sophia was the famous one!

A SIDE NOTE about Mooncakes
A mooncake 月饼 – (Pinyin): yuèbing is a Chinese bakery product. Typical lotus bean-filled mooncakes eaten during the festival when mooncakes are regarded as an indispensable delicacy. They are round pastries, measuring about 10 cm (4 in) in diameter and 3–4 cm (1 1⁄4–1 1⁄2 in) thick, and are commonly eaten in the Southern and Northern Chinese regions. A rich thick filling usually made from Red Bean or Lotus Seed Paste is surrounded by a thin (2–3 mm) crust and may contain yolks from salted duck eggs. Mmmm… so good! Mooncakes are usually eaten in small wedges accompanied by tea.

In some areas of China, there is a tradition of making mooncakes during the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival. The senior person in that household would cut the mooncakes into pieces and distribute them to each family member, signifying family reunion.

Today, it is customary for businessmen and families to present them to their clients or relatives as presents, helping to fuel a demand for high-end mooncakes. Making and sharing mooncakes is one of the hallmark traditions of this festival. In Chinese culture, a round shape symbolizes completeness and reunion. Thus, the sharing and eating of round mooncakes among family members during the week of the festival signifies the completeness and unity of families.

In modern times, however, making mooncakes at home has given way to the more popular custom of giving mooncakes to family members, although the meaning of maintaining familial unity remains.

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What Chinese People eat at Spring Festival
https://www.inkstonenews.com/food/what-do-chinese-eat-during-lunar-new-year/article/3000677?fbclid=IwAR21r8sO9y9VmxpGZ2gAMetF1gq705fXS9dcnK-UbIdfoCFTd2Hy5QgOmJY

Seeing the World through a camera lens

Sat, 17 Jul 2021 13:35:29 GMT

CJric Zhou, a former student of mine, a gifted photographer and young friend, died on August 31, 2020 in an auto accident in China. Ric, as he was known, was only 32 years old and had been married for two years. He worked for CCTV shooting documentaries for Chinese television. When Ric first came to my Principles of Communication class at Harding, he was very quiet and introverted. He had a soft and warm smile and an inquisitive look in his eyes. I never really knew how much of what I said he understood. English was his second language, and at the time I first met him he had only been in the United States for a couple of weeks. Ric was well like and had a lot of friends.

Even though Ric was introverted he was very social. If there were a group of Chinese students walking across campus Ric was among them. He did his assignments without hesitation and stood to deliver his communication assignments quietly, and with confidence. I’m not sure I would recognize his voice if he were to have called me on the phone. Ric seemed to be at peace with himself.

Even though that never really changed much he found an amazing way to communicate without using words – through the lens of a camera. On one occasion visiting my office for some academic advising, he noticed my antique camera collection. We talked about my history with photography and he indicated that would be something he would like. I encouraged him to sign up for our college photography class. Ric informed me that he was a finance and accounting major and that was not a required class. After explaining the benefits of taking an elective class for the beauty of simply learning something that interests you, he was all in. He had hardly taken a photo before learning to do so while at Harding. He didn’t have a camera other than his phone, (a pet peeve of mine is that people think you have to have a high-end expensive camera to get started or even to take a good photo – but that’s another story). Ric was a very intelligent and savvy young man. He quickly did some research and purchased a camera on-line. He purchased a SONY. I was surprised at the brand selection, but as time went by, I realized that the SONY line of cameras had become the go-to camera of younger professionals. With a new camera in hand, and a seat in the photography class, he got started down this wonderful hobby, craft, and what turned out to be his career.

It was just a couple of weeks later that Ric came by to show me some of his first images. They were so good! Jeff Montgomery was his photography teacher and Ric just soaked up everything that Jeff taught in class. Jeff once told me, “Ric always called me boss. No matter how I tried to get him to call me Jeff- it was always boss.” Jeff also worked for the university as a photographer in their public relations office. Jeff would often hire students from his class for some freelance assignments when he couldn’t be two places at the same time for a photo assignment. Ric was one of those students that Jeff would send to a second location.

Ric was once given the simple task of taking photos of the buildings on our campus. These were iconic images that every student photographer had probably done before him. But he made the images come alive. The angles, the views, the dimensions, that he created made us wonder, "Where is that building", and "is it really located on our campus?"

But perhaps my favorite photo that he ever made was when I commissioned him to take some portraits of me and my wife in the Fall of 2014. He took lots of good photos but the one that really stood out was one that was made in a moment of unplanned candid creative genius. It’s still our all-time favorite photo of the two of us.

Ric graduated from Harding in December of 2014 and moved back to his hometown of Changsha, but soon took a job in Beijing as a photographer. From people, to architecture, to food and commercial photography, the images just seem to flow from his heart and spirit through the lens and into the eye of the beholder.

For the next couple of years we stayed in touch through social media and email. The last time I spoke to him was when I went to China in 2016. I was going to Hengyang and Xi’an to teach on an abbreviated lecture series. My first stop when traveling to China is usually Beijing. Before I departed I scheduled a two-day layover in Beijing just so that Ric and I could spend couple of days together taking photos of the city. His city-scape images were just stunning, and now I wanted to now learn from him. I was so looking forward to reconnecting with him. The night before we were to do so Ric called and said he was being sent out of town on an assignment and we would have to reschedule.

We never met for our photo shoot. Rest in Peace my young friend…

Here is a few sample photographs from CJric Zhou's portfolio:

Reflection from 12 years of teaching Chinese students

Wed, 23 Jun 2021 19:16:27 GMT

In May of 2020, as I posted the grades for my last Chinese Communication Principles class, I paused for a moment of reflection… I took some time to thank God for allowing me 12 great years for the amazing opportunity to teach our Chinese students! It has been a challenge, a stretch, and an exercise of my heart.

I loved these Chinese students so passionately, and differently, from any other group of students that I’ve ever been able to mentor.

I tried to teach them to be quick to listen and slow to speak.
I wanted them to stand up and speak up, and do so confidently, because they had something to say.
I told them that they are uniquely and wonderfully made by THE God of the universe.
I taught them to know they were loved unconditionally by God.
I wanted them to see Jesus.
I want them to know that I loved being their “Xie Yeye,” an affectionate name they gave me!
It is my prayer that they will always know how much I loved them!

I was never sent to China by Harding University, but because I taught these students here, it opened the door for me to do so in China through visiting professor programs. While in China, I met the parents of my students in their hometowns, went out to dinner with them, stayed in their homes overnight, and was lavished with gifts of thanks for teaching their children. I even baptized one of them here in Searcy.

I became proficient at riding the high-speed railway system, traveling with my students and even by myself from city to city all over China. These Chinese students became my sons and daughters. I now even have Chinese grandchildren!

In 2016, while in the hometown of a former Harding student, I called her knowing she recently had given birth to her firstborn. I wanted to see if I could come and visit her, her family, and her then five-week old son? She and her family welcomed me so graciously into their home. Soon after I got seated they handed me the baby boy to hold. While doing so I asked the baby’s name? I was reminded that in China they don’t name their babies for one hundred days. On this day, this child was 35 days old. So, I then asked if they had picked out an American nick-name? They all looked at each other and smiled and clapped, and said, “We knew you were coming, we waited for you so that you could give him his American name!” (GASP)

In 2018, one of my Harding students, who stayed in Searcy for the summer, arranged for me to meet up with his Uncle, (he spoke NO English but we fun communicating anyway), My student asked his uncle to take me to one of the most beautiful sights in the world, a place where I always wanted to see but never could fit into my agenda, The Rice Terraces of Xinhua, in the mountains of western Hunan province. He met me at the train station one evening, paid for my hotel room, and came back early the next morning to pick me up. We then drove for two hours to the mountains and the valleys where the rice and tea grew, stopping along the way to take photographs because my student back at Harding told him I was a photographer. At lunch time he had arranged with a local friend, who lived as remotely as I have ever been away from home, to go to the house of his family for a meal. It was singularly one of the best experiences I've ever lived in China, or in my life!

That same year one of my Harding students invited me to come visit her in her small hometown of Lingbao (only 720,000) and wanted to take me to a very historical site, not just in China but in the world. She took me to the birthplace to Laozi, the founder of Daoism. As we sat on a stone bench in the garden of his childhood home, she paused and asked, “Xie Yeye, would you tell me how to find God?” I was in awe, because I knew right then why God had placed me in the home Laozi at that moment.

I have hundreds of stories like these that I will be telling for years to come. I’m not done going to China, but I will never go back again without looking up my former students and enjoying the cacophony of the Chinese culture and cuisine! The people, the students, the university’s, the markets, the food, the pictures with strangers, the broken English that children would run up to me to speak because they had learned it in school that week, was all such a gift from an entire nation.

I thank God for these opportunities. I feel so blessed and fortunate to have been a small part of these student’s lives. Teaching these students about life has truly been a gift from God!

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Nie Xin - fake name: Nicole

Tue, 15 Jun 2021 18:47:18 GMT

Nie Xin walked into my ESL level Principles of Communication classroom full of energy, and began enthusiastic verbal activity with the other Chinese students. In other words, she was laughing and talking a lot. That was not normal for my new Chinese students. But this was a semester that was starting in January. Spring semesters were always a little different because most of the students had been at Harding for a semester and already knew each other. However, this was Xin’s first semester at Harding. Her English was good because she had transferred from an English-speaking university in the Philippines. Her hometown was Yueyang, Hunan, China, a suburb of the much bigger city of Changsha.

I met Nie Xin at the classroom door as I like to do with each of my students. I asked her in Chinese, “Ni jiao shenme?” (What’s your name?) To my surprise she answered in almost perfect-sounding English. So, what was she doing in my ESL level Principles of Communication class? I quickly remembered that just because someone speaks good English doesn’t mean they can pass an English equivalency test. Reading, writing and comprehension are a lot harder than speaking, especially when it comes to the myriad of spelling rules and exceptions in the English language.

As usual on the first day of class, I explained a little about myself, then ran through the normal who-are-you, where-are-you-from, how-did-you-find-Harding questions. When I came to Nie Xin, knowing her English was pretty good, I asked her the same questions but also asked her to tell us more about herself. She perked right up and told the class her name was Nie Xin, but her “fake name” was Nicole. There probably would have been more laughter from that line, but most, if not all of the Chinese students there either didn’t understand her English, didn’t know what the word “fake” meant, or failed to see the humor she was injecting into this conversation.

Over time I concluded that Nicole was an extrovert looking for a group to belong. She moved in and out of her Chinese community, and in and out of the American Harding community with greater ease than almost all the other Chinese students I'd previously taught. She had an infectious smile and piercing eyes that held contact with whomever she was speaking to. Her constant laughing and cajoling were something that made other people want to meet and warm up to her. She made everybody feel comfortable. And yet, at the same time, she seemed to be a bit of a loner. She functioned in her daily activity without the group of like-minded students that normally accompanied one of our Chinese students. To be sure, she had a lot of friends, but I really wouldn’t be able to say who her tribe was.

Nicole was also extremely independent. When she had the opportunity to move off campus and out of the dorms, she lived in an apartment without a roommate. She traveled back and forth to China by herself and usually didn’t need much counseling to navigate her way through the Harding University system. I’m not sure why, but my perception was that she was unhappy.

Her enthusiasm for all things in life and school seemed to drop off when the discussions turned to majors and careers. Her major was finance. Being the non-analytical, creative person I am, I jokingly feigned my disdain for such disciplines. Nicole lit up, saying, “Yes, that’s exactly how I feel about it, too!”

WAIT…WHAT???

“You don’t like finance? Why did you choose it for your major?” I inquired. This is when I learned a bit more about the Asian culture and the relationship between students and their parents.

“My parents chose this major for me,” she said as she rolled her eyes, “but it’s NOT what I would have chosen.”

There was so much to unpack there. The culture of Asian group-think, the Chinese educational system, the teaching to testing, the concept of telling you the correct answer (as opposed to allowing the process to determine a correct answer even if it’s different from the parent’s or the teacher’s answer), along with the feared and famous GAO KAO, the college entrance exam that determines where you will go to university and what you will major in, were all swirling around my head. I had previously heard various discussions on all of the above, but now I had a real-life Chinese student sitting before me who did not want to accept what her parents, mentors, teachers, tests and culture told her she needed to do to be happy and successful in life.

“Oh? Tell me more,” I asked.

And tell me she did. Finance was the major her parents told her she had to study. Why? In their minds, it was the best opportunity for her to find a good job and have a better-than-average chance of having enough earnings to live comfortably in China. Anytime a Chinese parent espoused something like this, there was the subtle implication that one day the child would take care of them. That is, in fact, the Chinese Social Security system.

Nicole was an only child, as was the norm for children born in the one-child era, but she was also a female. This did not bode well for future earnings and broad, stable, familial, socio-economic implications. Unfortunately, females are not valued as much as males in Chinese culture. Nicole’s parents were teachers and school administrators, which are comfortable, long-term and secure jobs in China. I can’t even count the Chinese students I’ve had who, upon asking them why they chose the major they did, gave me an inquisitive look as if to say, “What do you mean, ‘Why did I choose that major?’” It was simply the norm to have parents decide what major and career track their child would pursue.

For some reason, as the semester unfolded, this discussion came up more often than usual. After several bits of explanation, I finally asked Nicole, “What would your major and career choice be if you could choose for yourself?” To my surprise, she responded, “I would want to do what you do!”

“Teach?” I asked?

“No, advertising.”

This, of course, is the discipline in which I worked for many years before becoming the advertising professor at Harding. I responded, “Let’s talk. Come by my office sometime, and we can continue this discussion there.” (Better in my office than in class in front of all the students who were sitting there in disbelief—disbelief that she would go against her parents’ demands or go into advertising at all, which most thought was a non-existent job in China.)

A few days later there was a knock on my open office door, and I looked up to see Nicole smiling back at me.

“I wanted to talk to you about changing my major to advertising.”

She sounded almost relieved that she had actually muttered those words.

“Yes, come in and have a seat.”

I pointed to a chair and invited her to have some freshly brewed Chinese green tea that I keep in my office for visitors. For the next 45 minutes or so, I went through our curriculum, schedules, requirements and such, to give her a complete description of what we offered. I wanted to make sure the advertising program I was managing was the same or similar to what she had in mind. It was, and she was excited to sign up.

Knowing why she was a finance major, I may have dampened the mood when I asked whether she had discussed this with her parents.

“No…” she said sheepishly. “I’m not sure how to do that.”

“Well, you just pick up the phone and call them,” I said jokingly. I was glad she saw my humor and laughed.

“Yeah, I know the technology, but I’m not sure what to say, how they will react, or what they will say.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I just can’t help you with that.”

She eventually made that call to her parents and recounted to me later that she actually made told them in a series of calls and slowly dropped this on them until they realized what she was telling them. They DID NOT like it at all!

Soon after that call, Nicole became an advertising major. She was especially gifted in the areas of photography and media strategy. Copy writing? Not so much. Even though her spoken English was pretty good, it was still her second language. My perception of her was that she was a “creative” searching to find a place to display her talents.

For the next couple of years Nicole rocked along the advertising major path even though she was the ONLY Chinese student in the program. That is very rare among our Chinese students. They seem to operate in groups. It’s a part of their collective culture. Nicole took Introduction to Advertising, Broadcast Advertising, Print Advertising, Advertising Campaigns and the appropriate marketing and communication classes needed to graduate. She was successful—and she loved it! She was also loved by the other ad majors who all became her new tribe.

In the summer of 2013, I was going to teach in a visiting-professor program at Nan Hua Da Xue (The University of South China) in Hengyang, Hunan, China. I wasn’t exactly sure where Nicole’s hometown of Yueyang was located, but I told her toward the end of Harding’s spring semester where I would be that summer and asked how far away she lived from there.

Her eyes lit up. “That’s pretty close!” she said. “Great! Why don’t we make plans to meet in China?”
While I love to travel in China and visit my students in their various hometowns, I know it’s a lot easier for the students to find me than for me to find them. So, I invited Nicole to come to Hengyang and hang out for a few days with me and the four American Harding students who would be traveling with me.

A couple of weekends into my teaching assignment in Hengyang, Nicole and one of her friends from her hometown came to visit us. I invited them to come to some of my classes. One class was an advertising class. I told Nicole how I was having trouble communicating in my poor, broken, translated Chinese and asked if she would help me.

The next class was magic! Nicole, one of my advertising majors from Harding University in America, was now standing next to me in front of about 120 Chinese students teaching advertising with me in China! I explained advertising principles and what they were seeing on the screen in my bilingual PowerPoint, and she repeated it in Chinese. We bantered back and forth, and we simply had fun doing so. The students laughed, oohed and aahed as she explained the things I had taught her back in America.

When we were finished, the students began to clap. I looked at her and held out my hand to her. We walked towards each other, held hands, lifted them high in the air and took a bow together, much like that after a stage-ending performance, while the students applauded exuberantly! Our encore? We had a Q&A session, as I usually do, but this session took on a bit more fun. Nicole would often re-answer questions directed to me, except she was answering in Chinese and getting a much better response of laughter and applause than I was! Nie Xin and I were quite the team. I swelled with pride and it was truly a “goosebumpy” moment in my life!

Back in the States in the fall of 2013, Nicole signed up for my COMM 304 Broadcast Advertising class. I love that class because it embodies many of the creative elements I love about advertising and because it reaches back to my younger days when I was more involved in creating radio and television commercials than I am now. One class assignment was a group project to create a television commercial for the Doritos chip company and enter the finished product into a national competition in which the winning entry would be shown during the Super Bowl telecast in February 2014. There were two groups in this TV commercial project. Each team had the same assignment. Each team had to come up with a creative idea; write a creative brief; write copy; create a storyboard; select locations, actors, costumes, make-up and props; etc. Then they had to shoot video, edit it, produce a 30-second commercial following all the requirements of the contest and post it on the Doritos commercial website. Plus, as a group they had to decide who was going to do what and when it needed to be done to meet the contest rules and deadline.

Nicole was assigned, or perhaps volunteered, to do the make-up and costuming for a commercial that reflected a popular theme at that time, The Walking Dead. Taking this assignment as a bit of a challenge and a creative outlet, Nicole set about figuring out how to make everybody look like they had just been resurrected from the ground. She found a tutorial on YouTube for what she needed. WOW! She did an amazing job and produced something I had no idea she had in her!

Here’s a photo of us together showing the final product. When I asked her to smile for the photo she said, “No! Stay in character.”

I recall thinking, “Nicole really picked the right major!” That finance major was so in her rear view mirror at that point. It was another goosebumpy moment for me.

A few weeks later, in December of 2013, Nicole decided she wanted to take a class that was essentially a field trip with our Communication Department to New York City. The class would visit communication and public-relations-oriented businesses, organizations and media outlets and do so for college class credit. In addition to whatever each student learned about the various professional outlets, perhaps a greater learning experience from the trip was being together with 25 or so like-minded college students along with the chosen, elite professors of the Communication Department, (not me). This was roughly a 10-day venture to New York City and Washington, DC. Hotel rooms, meals and flights were a part of this group dynamic. Students were assigned roommates for the hotels in New York City and DC.

Nicole was paired with McKenna Carr. I asked if she knew McKenna and she said no, but everyone she knew was already paired up, so rooming with McKenna was fine with her if it was OK with McKenna. I knew McKenna Carr. I and KNEW that Nicole would be blessed by rooming with McKenna. I told Nicole not to worry—it would be a wonderful experience for her.

McKenna Carr was a public relations major from Huntsville, Alabama. She was smart, pretty, self-confident, caring, giving and a delightful Christian young woman. McKenna worked hard on her assignments for all her classes. She exuded Christ-like qualities in all she did and said. I never worried that McKenna would be anything but warm, friendly and welcoming to Nicole, even though they had not met before. I never gave Nicole’s experience another thought, knowing she would love McKenna. Little did anyone know the impact McKenna would have on Nicole during those days in New York and Washington.

Early in the spring semester of 2014, a few weeks after attending our NYC and DC field trip, Nicole came to my office and said, "I want to get baptized!

“What?” Where had that come from? I had a lot of questions for her. “How long have you been thinking about this? Have you been studying the Bible with somebody?” I felt a little guilty that I had developed a loving, mentoring relationship with Nicole and never pursued this discussion with her beyond casual conversation.

I was intrigued with her desire, so I just bluntly asked, “After all this time in my classes and even spending time with me in China, I’ve never heard you even mention this. What made you decide to become a Christian now?”

Much to my surprise she said, “It was the New York trip.”

“WHAT? The New York trip? What…why…”

She cut me off in my stuttering. “I roomed with McKenna Carr on that trip. I was a little worried that she wouldn’t want to room with me, a girl she didn’t know from China, rather than one of her American friends. But she welcomed me and treated me great. She always included me in wherever she was going or eating, and I saw her friendly and loving nature in everything she did and said.”

And then Nicole said words I will never forget: “If McKenna Carr is a Christian, I want to be like her!” Forget the advertising slogan, "I want to be like Mike." I want to be like McKenna was so much more powerful! Wow, that’s quite a testimonial for friendship evangelism.

Nicole grew up an atheist in China. She had little or no knowledge of the process of being baptized and becoming a Christian. She asked me how to get started. I explained to her that anybody could help her with this and if she wanted me to, I would be happy to make the arrangements. We set up a time and place to immerse her into Christ. I also asked her if we could invite our friends and family to this event. “Yes, of course,” she replied.

“Are there any of your friends that I should invite to your baptism?”

“Yes,” she said. “I want McKenna to be there.”

I called McKenna and she was thrilled to come, but I don’t think I ever thanked McKenna for being the fragrance of Christ that she was to Nicole. I baptized Nicole the next day, and it was truly one of the “goosebumpiest” moments of my life and career as a professor at Harding University.

I was planning to go back to China to teach again in May 2014 after Nicole graduated, this time in Wuhan, Hubei province, a city that was even closer to Nicole’s hometown of Yueyang than was Hengyang from the summer before. I told her I wanted to meet her in China again. She couldn’t, because she planned to stay in the States and move to San Diego or Los Angeles to find work in advertising.

Nicole then said, “But I do want you to go by my hometown—my parents want to meet you!”

GULP. UH-oh! I was a bit reluctant since I was the one who had encouraged her to follow her own dreams and NOT major in finance as her parents had wanted, and then to go into advertising of all things!

In May of 2014, just a few days after Nicole graduated, I headed to Wuhan. I was to be a visiting professor at Jianghan Da Xue University. (There’s no translation for the school’s name because Jian Han is the name of a person.) This campus was primarily for residents of Wuhan and the children of the city government workers. It had about 15,000 students on a huge campus. It took me about 35 minutes to walk from my on-campus apartment to my classroom each day. I walked that route to and from in the morning and to and from in the afternoon. Plus, I lived on the sixth-floor apartment, with no elevator. I could say a lot more about Jianghan University, but that is a story for another blog post.

The city of Wuhan was an easy train ride away from the Changsha/Yueyang area where Nicole’s parents lived. It’s hard for me to discern how far away any city is to another because of their use of kilometers and my poor math-conversion skills. It was also difficult for me to comprehend because of their fast train system, traveling as much as 340km per hour (over 211 miles per hour) made intercity travel easy and quick. All I really knew was the fast train would get me to Changsha in about an hour. When Nicole asked me to meet her parents, I knew it was close enough to where I would be, and I was happy (sort of) to meet them. I love meeting my students’ parents, telling them how much I enjoyed teaching their sons and daughters and thanking them for allowing me to do so. Nicole assured me that her changing majors would not be a problem and that she had spoken so often about me that they wanted to meet “Xie Jiaoshou,” (Professor Shaner). Still, they spoke little to no English, and my Chinese was not going to be sufficient. So, I asked Qu Xiaoya (Alice), a Chinese student from Nan Hua Da Xue I’d had in previous years, if she would travel with me to meet Nicole’s parents. Alice had become like a Chinese daughter to me starting in 2013 when I first met her. Alice lived in Hengyang, so she was near Wuhan and could easily join me.

With Alice at my side to translate for me, we went to the train station in Changsha at a designated meeting place there inside the station —a KFC— restaurant, and waited for Nicole’s Momma. As we stood outside the restaurant waiting, Alice was on her phone letting Nicole’s mother know we were there. I then saw Alice reach her hand way over her head and wave as if to say, “I’m the one waving at you.” I looked across a massive amount of Chinese people in the train station and saw Nicole waving back at us! No, wait, that wasn’t Nicole, it was Nicole’s Momma! Wow, did they look alike! I could have picked her out of that mass of people without any help from Alice or anybody else.

Nicole’s Momma had dinner plans for us. By now, she knew Alice would be with us, which was OK because Nicole's Momma had invited about six or seven other people to join us. The Chinese culture never counts who’s coming; the more the merrier. We headed to dinner. I hit it off with her parents like Nicole and I had back in the States. After all, even though they were still younger than me, her parents were a lot closer to my age than Nicole was. Nicole’s Baba (father) was waiting for us at the restaurant. He was a high school principal in their suburb of Yueyang and her Momma was a high school teacher in Changsha. They had not previously known I was bringing my own fanyi (translator), so they had invited about three or four Chinese teachers who taught English in high school to be our translators for the evening. They also knew we would be more comfortable with a bigger, less intimate group. Of course, in keeping with Chinese tradition, they wanted me to sit in the seat of honor around a large, round table. I always feel a little self-conscious and not worthy to have that seat, but not taking that seat would have been an insult. However, I always break protocol in these situations by having the translator to sit right next to me instead of their designated place across the room. I told them I wanted Alice to sit next to me, and they gladly obliged. I always have the translators that travel with me sit on my left. I knew that on my right was supposed to be my host. When they got to talking fast and expecting me to keep up with their conversation, it was Alice’s job to simply lean in and whisper in my left ear what they were saying while I smiled. We ate, talked, laughed and had a wonderful night. It was one of the most delightful and fun evenings I ever had with a room full of strangers in all my travels to China, or anywhere for that matter. After dinner I wanted to get a photo with Nicole’s Momma so I could post it on social media for Nicole to see that I had actually met her parents.

The English teachers were particularly outgoing, friendly and fun. We laughed, hugged and acted like we were old friends. Then one of them spoke to Nicole’s Baba in Chinese. Everybody got quiet and leaned in to listen. What were they saying? I never asked, but the look I gave Alice communicated exactly what I wanted to know. She leaned in and said, “They are trying to figure out how you can come back and speak at one of the Chinese high schools in Changsha.”

Oh man, I would love that invitation. I told Alice to tell them that I would love that to work out.
They invited me to come back to Changsha the next week and speak to a combined group of high school English teachers from all over the city. The location was going to be a large meeting room on one of the campuses of a large middle school. They made arrangements for me to travel back on the train, stay in a hotel, with meals and a stipend, to make this presentation.

When I arrived the next week, I found out the venue where I was to make my presentation was the same middle school Nicole attended when she first started learning English. Ming De Middle School had 7,000 students. Wow, talk about coming full circle! The invitation had some loose directions of what they wanted me to speak about; how professors and teachers in America prepared, related to students and delivered their craft. They also wanted me to tell them about my life of being a professor to Chinese students in America.

After a morning touring the school, visiting with many officials and students, having lunch in their canteen and a nap on a couch in the library with about 20 other teachers stretched out on the furniture, it was finally time for me to speak. They had invited every high school English teacher in the city. There were probably 200 people waiting for me when I walked into the room. I was a little intimidated. As I entered the room, they stood and applauded! I took a deep breath to take it all in. I started, as I often do, with a PowerPoint with lots of photos, telling them about me, my wife and family, then my career that that was culminating at that moment and how wonderful it was to be standing in front of them. I made sure they all knew that one of their own, Nie Xin, was one of my favorite students at Harding University. I went on to tell them about school and university life, but when it came time for the Q&A, every single question came back to families: the lifestyles of my family and the other families in America. There were no questions about education systems and procedures. I’ve given thousands of speeches and presentations over the last forty years or so, but I don’t ever remember being better received and more honored to be speaking to a group than I was right then. Standing in that room to speak and looking across the room, I could almost see Nicole smiling, clapping and waving at me from the back row. It was truly another goosebumpy moment for me.

When I returned to Searcy, I had one more meeting with Nicole. She had not yet left for Los Angeles but was to do so in just a few days. The night before she left, my wife and I took her to dinner at the Fuji Steak House as a sort of a good-bye send-off. At dinner, I had one more request of her. “Can we take one last picture of us together?” What I didn’t tell her was that I wanted to replicate the photo I had made with me and her mother in China just a few weeks previous so I could put them side-by-side. What do you think?

Eventually, it was time to say good-bye. I welled up with tears as we hugged each other. She thanked me profusely for what she said, “changed her life.” Yep, goosebumps again!

I always have such mixed emotions when my students graduate and leave me. I know they are supposed to leave, but it's like going through empty nesting again, and again, and again! But Nicole now saying goodbye and moving on was even harder for me. The next day, Nie Xin, (fake name Nicole), left for greener pastures to seek her fame and fortune in the advertising world. And while I have spoken to her on the phone and traded social-media messages with her several times, I have never-seen-her-since!

UPDATE - UPDATE - UPDATE

God Works His Providence to Have Us Meet Again!
On Wednesday, September 15, 2021, seven years and three months after watching Nicole drive away, I had a business trip to Montgomery, Alabama and heard she had moved there just a few weeks previous. We connected and had a Joyful reunion... Stay tuned to this blog for a complete reporting of developing news.

The Story Continues -
Thursday, October 21, 2021 Nicole made the short four hour drive from Montgomery, Alabama to our home in Ringgold, Georgia, for a long weekend visit. I wanted to spend time getting reconnected with Nicole as well as giving her some needed rest and relaxation from the first few weeks of graduate school after traveling across country from Los Angeles to start this new chapter of her life. We laughed, ate good food, went to several tourist attractions shooting video and photos, and even a little bit of editing and production once we got back to the house. On that Saturday evening we invited a family to come and eat with us so they could meet Nicole. Jody Barr and his wife Xia Wei, along with their two daughters to get acquainted and share stories of living in China and America.

Jody and Wei had just moved to the Chattanooga area from, of all places, Montgomery, Alabama. Nicole had only been in Montgomery for about two months and knew almost nobody. But, Jody and Wel had a good female friend, Cynthia, that was Chinese and very close to Nicole's age and suggested they meet? They actually connected on WeChat right there at the dinner table. When Nicole returned to Montgomery she and Cynthia met and have become best friends since then.

More...

Ma Hua – A Teacher of Language and Life:

Sun, 25 Apr 2021 00:19:56 GMT

In January of 2015 there was a gentle knock at my office door. My office door is almost always open, so before I turned around to see who wanted to see me I heard a soft female Chinese voice that said, “Hello, are you Professor Shaner?” A Chinese woman was standing there and introduced herself as Catherine (her American name) and that she was told I was looking for a Chinese language teacher.

“Ni Hao, Wo shi Xie Yeye,” I said, which means “Hello, I’m Steve Shaner,” my Chinese friends call me Xie Yeye!” (That’s a story for another day). And, “yes,” I said, I am looking for someone to help me learn my Chinese better. I was told that Catherine would come see me so I wasn’t surprised to see her standing there. Catherine let out a little laugh and seemed amused that I had a Chinese nickname. “Really?” she asked. I briefly told her about how I got my Chinese nickname and we continued. We went through the obligatory introductions and pleasantries of a first meeting. Her Chinese name is Ma Hua. I invited her to sit and talk with me for a few minutes. Perhaps, 30 minutes later, we had a schedule of when she would come back to help me continue my language training. I told her how much I wanted to pay her to see if that was OK with her, to which she replied, “Oh no, I won’t charge you anything.” To which I replied, “I insist, if you don’t accept payment we won’t be doing this at all.” She smiled and simply said, “Well, Okay.”

I don’t know if I’ve ever met a more giving culture than the Chinese. Her wanting to help me for free was an example of the way they honor new acquaintances, older people and professors.

For the next two and a half years Catherine and I met periodically. We went through a pre-planned and well prepared Chinese language lessons and a WHOLE lot more. I would tell her of specific things I wanted to communicate in my Chinese speech classes and she would come back the next week with new words, conversation scenarios and such. Catherine also prepared me very well just before I left each year for my teaching in China. She helped me be able to navigate my conversations in airports, train stations, and taxi’s. She helped me be able to meet new friends, order food at restaurants and find a bathroom, and do so in Chinese! We talked about life, her culture, our culture, her background, my background, plus our work and study environment. But what became so abundantly clear to me was that she was fascinated with OUR culture. Not just the American culture, but our Harding culture in general and specifically our Christian culture! She had so many questions. Catherine was not a Christian and, from what I could sense, she had no intention of considering such a decision, but she was just fascinated with our lives that was so different for her upbringing and what she had always known. Catherine always wanted to know what drove Christians to do and act the way we did? She was both amazed and confused.

And, for the next two-and-half years we talked, conversed, and shared our life’s stories with each other. Often, I would ask her about God by asking her how to say something in Chinese that had a very specific reference to Christianity. She often didn’t always know, but would find out and get back to me. It wasn’t that she didn’t know Chinese words, but she didn’t understand the context for such words to be put into a thought process and a conversation. Catherine always came back prepared with an answer and some direction for my conversation question. And, she always wanted me to tell her more about why I was asking such questions and how I would use those sentences with Christian references.

We became friends. Catherine’s husband and she were both professors in China. She taught English and her husband taught Physics. She was at Harding to get her Master’s degree in Teaching English as a Second Language, or as we call it TESL (tea-sell). Catherine lived in a small apartment near campus with her 15-year-old daughter, Xiao Bai, (or Dawn) for whom she checked into Searcy High School. Her husband would come to Searcy as often as he could, usually a couple of times per year and stay for 6-7 weeks at a time. On one occasion when her husband was in town Donna and I had her family over for dinner. They are a delightful Chinese family.

Catherine had many friends while attending Harding. Many of her classmates were also Chinese, and some of her friends were other Chinese professors that were attending Harding in a visiting professor role. As time went on she started collecting more American friends, but more importantly, many of her new friends were Christians or were becoming Christians. Often, while visiting for my language class, Catherine would ask me why Christians… Why Christians did this, why they believed that, why, why, why? She had a myriad of questions.

Last December Catherine’s friend Grace, a visiting Chinese professor, had been studying about Christianity largely on her own and became a Christian herself and was baptized shortly before Christmas. Catherine thought Grace was way too hasty in making that decision. “She has only been introduced to Christianity a short four months ago!” She asked me, “How could she change her life so quickly?” As time went on Catherine was more and more enamored with our lives, our love, our fellowship, our study, our Lord!

On June 14, 2017, just a few weeks before she left town to return to her hometown of Xining, Qinghai, Catherine was baptized and became a Christian! Much to my dismay, I wasn’t there when this occurred. I got a message on my phone one morning that said the night before that Catherine was baptized at the Westside Church of Christ!

On Thursday, July 27th I attended her going away party. The party was being hosted by the Chinese church that meets in Searcy. This church is made up of mainly Chinese women that were either here visiting our campus, or married to American men, and a few Chinese students such as Lillian Chen and Howard Kuang. There are also some Americans who attend regularly, like Gary & Danita Jackson, and Ed & Lolita Higgenbotham. All of these people had been praying and studying with Catherine so that she might become a Christian. We sat her in the middle of the room while the rest of us gathered around her, laid hands on her and prayed over her.

After the prayer was over, I was expressing my thanks, love, and admiration for what she had done for me and for her becoming a Christian, so I asked her, “After two and half years, what was it that convinced you to become a Christian?” She said something that I will never forget. She answered and said, “I had so many questions about Christianity. I had them all answered one at a time… until the only question left was, ‘Why am I not a Christian?’ Then I called my friends and told them I wanted to get baptized.”

Praise God!

Then I asked her another question that had nothing to do with God, or so I thought… “Catherine, Why Harding? Why Searcy, Arkansas? How in the world did you find your way from (Xining, Qinghai, China), a city that’s about as far away from here as you can get, all the way to Searcy, Arkansas and Harding University?” She answered as quietly as the day I met her when she said, “I believe God led me here to meet you, and everybody in this room.”

That statement almost took my breath away! It’s a sobering thought that God is placing people, that are looking for Him, in the paths of those that can lead them to Him. Are you ready to be used by God for such a cause as this?

Sunday, I sat in our weekly worship and thought of the church’s mission as we sang this song:

"Let Us Be You"
Words and Music by Clarissa Cox and Michael Lusk
Live in our hearts, fill this body.
Stir our spirits, help us serve!
Walk with our feet to the hurting.
Let us be You, revive Your church!
Let us be You on this earth.

Let us be You when a wounded soul cries out for hope,
Let us be You when the lonely need to know they're not alone
Just as Your stars pierce through the night
Let us forever shine Your light!
Let us be You, let us be You on this earth.

Reach with our hands, touch this city.
Lord, let our mouths speak Your truth!
Use our blessings to bring justice.
Let us be You, revive Your church!
Let us be You, on this earth.

Catherine left Searcy headed home to China very early in the morning on Sunday, July 30th. I may never see her again this side of heaven. But when I get there I’m going run up to her and to say, “Nihao, Wo shi Xie Yeye!

guanxi 关系 - Chinese students vs. American Students

Sun, 07 Feb 2021 22:46:28 GMT

One thing I learned very quickly from my many excursions to China is the word guanxi 关系.
Almost as soon as I landed and started conversing with others, I was told that I seem to have a lot of Guanxi! I wondered, but didn’t want to ask, what in the world they meant by that? So, I looked it up.

Guanxi (pronounced GWAN-She) is defined as “the fundamental dynamic in personalized social networks of power, and is a crucial system of beliefs in Chinese culture. In Western media, this Chinese word is becoming more widely used instead of the two common translations of it—"connections" and "relationships"— but neither of those terms sufficiently reflects the wide cultural implications that guanxi describes in China.

Yes, I have guanxi 关系. I’m not sure that there is a word in English that describes my personality more. I have taught in a visiting professor program in China during the summer months, nine times from 2010 to 2019, (I also taught in Bangkok, Thailand in 2015). I hope to return and continue going as often as I am able and have opportunity. I have also spent several years in the States tutoring or teaching Chinese university student’s principles of communication, or just simply helping them with their English. It’s been so much fun, and something for which has generated lots of laughs, tears, and heartfelt experiences learning together. Because of these experiences I have become somewhat of an officinato of all thing’s Chinese students, I have often been asked to say what the differences between Chinese and American students might be. I came up with a whimsical, sometimes humorous, and sometimes poignant list of differences.

What do you think? Are there any more than belong on this list?
1. In China - The Umbrella is not for the rain but for the sunshine.
2. Americans like their fish cooked and their meat rare, Chinese like their fish raw and their meat well done.
3. Chinese steam their rice while Americans fry their rice.
4. For Girls in China, it’s High Heels – For American girls it’s flip-flops.
5. In America, Eye Glasses actual have lenses in the frames.
6. In China, it’s Hot Green Tea – In America, it’s Sweet Iced Tea
7. If an American university student gets homesick, it’s just “over the river and through the woods.” For Chinese students its “over the Pacific and through the air.”
8. In America it’s 1-2-3 Cheese! In China it’s EE – R – San: Qiézi 茄子 (translates in English to Eggplant,
9. After a big meal The Chinese go for a walk, in America we take a nap!
10. The purse – in China it’s not just for women!
11. Chinese are not as openly affectionate to one another, especially married people.
12. Chinese students NEVER see their parent’s kiss. American kids don’t want to see their parents’ kiss.
13. Chinese rarely use ice in their drinks. Many think it will make you fat. American like to eat ice.
14. Chinese students drink HOT water to refresh and cool off. That makes no sense to Americans.
15. Chinese don’t ever eat their vegetables cold or raw – they even cook their lettuce!
16. Chinese eat their fish with the heads on them. Americans think the fish is looking at them on the plate
17. Chinese boys spend a lot of time playing video games. Maybe that’s not so different after all?
18. In China, Americans should NEVER speak about the Three T’s: Taiwan, Tibet, and Tiananmen Square
19. Chinese students often start to learn English in kindergarten. Americans NEVER learn Chinese.
20. Chinese students rarely have a sibling. They often refer to their first cousins as "my brother or sister."

Most importantly, I realized that Chinese and American students are not really that different. Both essentially want three things. We all want to be happy, we all want to be loved by somebody, and we all want to love somebody. Please love your neighbor as you would love yourself!