The Greatest Story on Earth: Return to China, Part 1

The Chinese name for the Mother Land is Zhongguo, or “Middle Country.” For the majority of the last 5,000 years, the Chinese Empire was the anchor, centerpiece, and lynchpin of the shifting peoples of East Asia.  Mongolia, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Tibet, Taiwan, the Philippines: All these lands were pulled into the inexorable orbit around China’s gravitational pull.  After 200 years of relative stagnation and backwardness, China is once again ascendant.  Spurred on in the 1980’s by Deng Xiaoping’s loosening of Mao Zedong’s strict proletarian peasant revolution, the last 30 years have witnessed China pull more people (300 million+) out of poverty more quickly than any nation on Earth has ever done, ever.  Indeed, between 2000 and 2015 alone, China’s middle class multiplied sevenfold!

In my field, education, the recent Chinese footprint in America is unmatched.  Some 275,000 Chinese students are studying in America, comprising roughly 1/3rd of all foreign students studying here, and they are by far the most numerous group.  (Worryingly, only about 13,000 Americans per year choose to study in China, and those numbers have declined recently as competent bi-lingual Chinese crowd out from the job market Americans who have studied Chinese.)  As a growing middle class in China accrues discretionary income, private property, and ambitions for the future, the Chinese increasingly want two things: 1. Children who are not just proficient but fluent and literate in English, and 2. Access to the best Universities in the world, which are in America.

Here enters my school, Maui Preparatory Academy.  This young, small, and ambitious private college preparatory school is in the midst of expanding its mission and identity to include students not just from West Maui, but from all corners of the Earth.  To enrich the educational experience of our day students, to socially engineer an international school culture, and to grow and sustain programs that will improve the entire learning community, Maui Prep has chosen to embrace its emerging identity as a destination boarding school.

In the past 12 months we have acquired a dormitory, hired a Director of Boarding Life, traveled the planet to market our school, welcomed our first five boarding students, fielded inquiries from people around the world, and signed up ten new students for 2015-16.  We are growing steadily.  Still, we have 48 spaces in our dormitory, and so our campaign to share the story of our school continues.  This Spring our Head of School Dr. Jonathan Silver travelled to Vietnam (Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City), Thailand (Bangkok), and Hong Kong to meet prospective students.  For my part, as I lived in the Republic of China for a year, speak functional Mandarin, and take a keen interest in China, I am being sent back to Zhongguo to canvass for students.  This time my twelve day trip will take me to Beijing, Jinan, Qingdao, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Dongguan, and Shenzhen.  I’ll be blogging the whole way, as I know from experience that 95% of the trip will be lost to memory within weeks.  At home I’ll miss half of Spring Break, a week of school, and my pregnant (and supportive!) wife.  Yet the East calls. . .

My last trip to Shanghai and surrounds in December yielded just one student, Hao Fu, but the name of the game in China is guanxi (relationships).  This time I return with experience, an active profile on the Chinese Facebook (weChat), a number of connections and leads, and the extremely supportive and helpful staff at our China recruitment agency, Educatius.  At the very least, the trip will be fascinating, delicious, and fun.  At best, I will successfully encourage students and families to consider Maui Preparatory Academy as a one-of-a-kind, boutique, and rigorous college preparatory program in American paradise.  Only eight more airplane hours to Tokyo and then five more hours until I enter Beijing Capital Airport at 9:30 PM on a chilly Spring night . . .