Exam-grading trumped overdosing on movies, though on occasion the view of the polar ice cap from the window mesmerized me. I chose not to remind myself I flew 40,000 feet high in a long, silver tube, trapped inside for thirteen hours.

 

Having skipped a day of my life, I spent the night in the Hyatt at the Seoul airport and the next morning went another time zone west to Xi’an, ancient capital of China, end of the Silk Road (or, as my soon-to-be Chinese friends remarked, its beginning). The approach to Xi’an was reminiscent of landing in L.A. on a bad day, over mountains and into a valley with yellow and brown layers of air. The city has a semi-arid climate, with dust storms in the spring.

 

I was met with flowers by Lily Liu, the Chinese principal of Xi’an International School; her assistant Lynn Wong; and the school’s western principal, Ariel Schatenstein, who hails from Perth. We were driven through the city of fourteen million—one cluster of pencil-thin, dusty high rises after another— to a Holiday Inn and a suite of rooms with enough space to rival the first floor of my house. Its television also accessed a welcomed CNN, which I discovered later wasn’t available on the televisions in the workout room.

 

So why was I on the other side of the earth from my day job? The Korean company Samsung is building a new plant in the High-Tech Park, an important business addition to Xi’an that will attract a number of executives and their families looking for schools. The small international school headed by Lily Liu will move from its current site into the High Tech Park, become an International Baccalaureate School, and potentially add two thousand students. Through connections made by Sam Mok, whose grandsons Ian Chang ’19, Jonah Chang ’19, and Eliot Chang ’22 attend St. Albans, as well as by former Governing Board Chair John Gerber ’80, father of Robert ’19 and William ’17, St. Albans has signed a modest management contract to help with these tasks, the proceeds from which go to our campaign. More importantly, our strategic plan also calls for an ongoing deepening and expansion of our international education. This trip inspired thinking about and on-the-ground research into the place of China in our boys’ education.

 

My time was fascinating. I admired the Chinese educators and learned much about their approach—in particular the place of art in the curriculum, the national examination system, the admissions protocol with multiple language and educational systems, the recruiting of faculty, and the rising importance of environmental studies in China—and I enjoyed explaining and fielding questions about the way St. Albans functions. Where do your boys come from? How do you make admissions decisions? How many athletic fields do you have? Is anyone as tall as Yao Ming?

 

I look forward to our ongoing relation with Xi’an International School and possibly with other schools in China. A student immersed in a language and an educational system different from his home practice will be stretched—and will profit from that stretching. Our already successful fellowships to China inspire us toward more programmatic initiatives, perhaps in short exchanges, which have proven successful in Australia and South Africa. My short stay in Xi’an demonstrates just how much can be learned in a few days and how powerful an experience our boys might have in only a few weeks.

 

I am not enamored of the phrase “bucket list,” and I certainly would caution people

about all the complications of traveling in China, but Xi’an gave me cultural riches I will

not forget. Visiting the terra-cotta warriors felt the equivalent of seeing the pyramids or the

Great Wall or even the Grand Canyon. I went to a Han burial site and later into the Old City

of Xi’an, where I studied both a Bell Tower and Drum Tower. Our friend and assistant Lynn Wong then took me and others into the Moslem quarter, where I visited a mosque built in 742 A.D. Of all the remarkable sights in China, one very odd shrine made the deepest impression on me. At its base was a gigantic turtle, and wedged into the middle of its shell was a tablet reminiscent of the Ten Commandments. But listed on this tablet—dating to the eighth century—were the names and places of the best performers on what was the Chinese national examination at the time. Imagine walking into our Common Room and instead of seeing the portrait of Harriet Lane Johnston and her sons, or the portraits of past school heads, you saw the enlarged photographs of students who scored highest on the national exams. The lobbies in the schools I visited had such displays.

 

The next day, before I left, I visited the Wild Goose Pagoda, where preparations for the Chinese New Year had begun. Atop the temple, as was the case in the Bell Tower, I saw the four major entrances into the city. Lynn Wong accompanied me to the fourteen mile-long Xi’an City Wall, a beautifully maintained, six-lane wide structure that day drenched in cold sunlight.

 

I flew back to Seoul and the next morning down to Hong Kong, all part of the best travel deal I could get with one airline. I was met in Hong Kong by David Shepard, from our Alumni and Development Office, and for a day-and-a-half we met with alumni Rob Petty ’79, Jayanti Bajpai ’83, Owen Belman ’87, Leland Lim ’93, and Nick Lee ’95, who warmly welcomed us to their phenomenal city. We dined in both the legendary China Club and the American Club high above the harbor. David and I were able to take a taxi to the top of Victoria mountain, and after delighting in the 360-degree view of the city and the surrounding islands and sea, we took a trolley car back down the hill. In mid-afternoon, after six days in China, I flew again to Seoul and back to Dulles the next morning—regaining the day I had lost the week before.

 

Back at school, the student interest in the trip has been strong. Let’s hope there’s more to follow.