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Hello! I am your new penpal. I am 10 years old. There are six people in my family: my father, my mother, my older sister, my younger brother, our dog, and me. I go to Julia Green Elementary School. I love football, and pigs.
So began Julie from Nashville, Tennessee’s introduction to her newest friend, almost 8000 miles away in Mianzhu, Sichuan. She had hand-written carefully in a mix of Chinese characters and pinyin for those characters she had not yet learned in the two years she has been studying Mandarin. Her letter, along with dozens of those of her classmates, was scanned and emailed — combining the pleasure of reading hand-written letters with the speed and convenience of the Internet. She received her reply from China, written in English, only a few days later, as did her classmates in response to their own letters, and the Nashville-Mianzhu penpal project was officially underway.
In September 2009, Ms. Caitlin Harris, a teacher at Julia Green Elementary School in Nashville, contacted SQR. Abigail Washburn had recently visited their school, playing songs from the Afterquake project and talking about the work of SQR and other organisations helping the victims of the earthquake. Ms. Harris wrote to say that she and her students were “very moved by the documentaries, information and images” they saw. Ms. Harris is a fluent Mandarin-speaker, and teaches the language to Julia Green students, which they learn in addition to their core subjects. She wondered if SQR would be able to help them set up a penpal exchange with a school in the quake-affected area: her students would write in Mandarin, the Chinese students using English.
Ms. Harris explained her hopes for the project:
The project will promote international understanding and commitment to the Chinese language. My students have already learned about Sichuan, so it will be very meaningful to my students to communicate with students from there. They very much enjoy Chinese, and composing letters for a native Chinese reader will benefit their studies. I would like to foster their excitement. I would like the Chinese students to learn about American children for the same reasons.
Our two countries’ futures are intertwined, and promoting friendship, cultural appreciation and understanding is an important goal.
SQR’s Outreach Coordinator Li Yuanyuan contacted the Mianzhu Education Department and, after introducing the project, received their full support. The department helped us select the Mianzhu Nanxuan Primary School, whose teaching building was seriously damaged in the earthquake. Fortunately only one student was injured. All the other students were safely evacuated through the efforts of the school’s faculty. With the help of three companies, including Nanjing Shengkai Corporation, the school moved into its new permanent building in September 2009.
Liasing with SQR, the headmaster of the Nanxuan primary school, Zhang Xiangyun, and Ms. Harris worked out project details. 61 Nanxuan students were selected for the project by review of students’ personal applications and their teachers’ recommendations. In January 2010, the Chinese students received the first batch of letters from America. Despite their busy exam preparation schedule, the students wrote back straightaway. The replies were sent back in the beginning of February. The Julia Green students are already composing their next batch.