Northeast China 中国东北

Northeast China (东北; Dōng​běi​) was historically known as Manchuria. In ancient times, this was an area of steppes and fierce nomadic tribes, outside the Great Wall built to protect China from those tribes. In 1644, the Manchus from this region crossed the wall, conquered China, and founded the Qing Dynasty which lasted until 1911.

The Northeast brings some bitter-sweet memories to us. My first visit was to Heilongjiang back in 1985 when I visited Harbin to visit my dearest friends and mentor, Tom & Diane Lawrence. I was there during Christmas and we celebrated the occasion. The second visit was in 1987 for our honeymoon. We visited Harbin to see the Ice Festival. Then we visited Jilin to see one of the most beautiful phenomenon that occurs there:Rime (when the water droplets in fog freeze onto objects they touch). In this instance, it was the trees along the river. We were not disappointed. However as we were making our way through a park later in the morning, we were mugged and beaten up. We ended up spending Chinese New Year in the hospital and the rest of our honeymoon got canceled. But the most devastating part was that during the struggle with the attacker, the camera opened and all the photos I had taken in our honeymoon were destroyed. Our third visit was in 2014 when we took Victor to see the Ice Festival in Harbin. Our fourth visit in 2018, we wanted to retrace our original honeymoon trip with additional sights.

Southwest China

Our 3rd SoH school, Wananzhen Xilian Primary School, was established March 26, 2013 in Hebei province. It is a three hour drive from Beijing. Our first trip took place a month later in April. My colleague, Chris, and I joined the YCIS Beijing school in the inaugural trip. This inaugural trip would usher in a unique relationship with the school for years to come.

Our team slept in sleeping bags using two of the newly built classrooms. While this was not unique (we slept in the school in Anyue first), it was the only school where our students had to cook our meals. We were divided into teams and each team took turns cooking and others cleaning. The second unique aspect of this school is how much they embraced the teaching styles and activities we did with them. We provided art lessons, PE activities and I even did the Cha Cha Slide and Chicken Dance. While none of the other school gave our activities any thought, Xilian observed what we did and said, "We can do this." They not only did, but they did it even better. It brought so much joy to see them embrace what we shared with them.

Explore North China