The Human Spirit

No matter where you go, it seems that most people are the same. We want to love, be loved, be with our families and give back to our world. In my second class with one of my engineering sections, I had them write a short essay describing their home town. They were to identify any historical significance of their town, talk about the natural beauty, and what they enjoyed about growing up there. Some of the essays were unremarkable – “my town is beautiful and I like it very much”. That’s a decent sentence for a non-native speaker but perfunctory. Here are some of the essays I got that I found more inspirational – or representative of the changes that China is undergoing.

“I am from Hebei province. My hometown is not very beautiful but I love it because the people are kind-hearted and they teach me how to face my future. I will study hard and build it more and more beautiful and rich. Welcome to my hometown.”

“I was born in a small village in Hebei province, the town is about 200 kilometers from Beijing. When I was a child, my good friends and I always go fishing and swimming in spare time, but now the loved river besides our village has been dry out. It is a unfortunate thing! There are lots of trees around our village, kinds of. The people there are very friendly and they most have never seen a foreigner.”

“My hometown is a small village of Henan province. There are lots of mountains and rivers around it. In my childhood, I usually climbed the mountains and swam in the rivers with my friends. Sometimes we went fishing too. However, great changes have taken place in the past four years. Now a highway comes through it and the people of our village live a happily lives and many of the children have the chances to go to university in my village.”

“My hometown is Tieling which is in the north of Liaoning. It is called the bigger city. I like my hometown very much. When I come back from school, I want to go home. My hometown is not beautiful and rich, but it is my root, is the place which I grow up. My heart belongs to there.”

Now if I were in Chinese class and trying to write an essay in my beginner Chinese about my hometown in Pennsylvania, I doubt I could have written such things. I could have said it was “hen mei” (Very beautiful) but that’s about it. I’m impressed with how these students are observing the changes observing in their lives. You can see that this is a hopeful time for them. And how could someone who worked with these students see them as enemies? China brings many challenges to the United States but what Americans must never forget is that thousands in China are being brought up out of poverty every day by the tremendous economic growth. We’re all people and we all want a decent life for ourselves, our families, and our communities. We must help Chinese understand that about Americans as Americans must understand that about Chinese.