Every year, I assign a speech to the newly enrolled international students, entitled "My Chinese Dream". Speaking in either rusty or skilled Chinese, they talk passionately and sincerely about their Chinese dreams: Fidele from Rwanda says the dream that brought him to China was to learn kung fu and become a kung fu superstar like Jet Li, but now he's determined to be a pilot soaring in the blue sky; Marwa from Egypt wants to "work for the freedom and equality of women", and her dream is to be an English teacher; Yonas from Ethiopia used to dream of being an oil painter, but after becoming a master's student in civil engineering, he now aspires to be a bridge expert like Mao Yisheng; Nazif from Turkey would like to be a trade agent of intraocular lens made in China; Nizi from Pakistan hopes to do business in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. Hearing their pursuits, I wrote them a song called We International Students' Chinese Dreams.

"Living in China, I hear all of my classmates talking about Chinese dream

I ask my teacher what Chinese dream is about, she says

The Chinese dream is about rejuvenation of the nation

The Chinese dream is about protecting the civilization with solidarity

The Chinese dream is about building a democratic, free and harmonious society

The Chinese dream is about giving people a secure, and happy life

And the Chinese dream is about carrying out the ecological conservation

Ah, my teacher mama, I also have a Chinese dream

Here in China I wanna learn how to fly a plane

I wanna learn how to build bridges

I wanna learn how to impart knowledge to others

I wanna learn how to practice Chinese medicine

I wanna learn how to build 5G networks

I wanna learn how to be a businessman"

...

Fidele—my dream is up in the sky

There are two famous quotes from The Analects—Isn't it a pleasure to learn and apply what one has learned? Isn't it a pleasure to greet friends from afar? After I finished explaining their meanings in a Chinese class during Fidele's first year as a graduate student, he came to me and asked what if he changed the last character of his Chinese given name 勒(le) to 乐(le), since the latter one means pleasure and happiness in Chinese. I told him it would be a great new name and taught him another Chinese ancient classic De Le Tian Shu ("Receiving a letter from Letian") written by Yuan Zhen in Tang dynasty, whose title also contains the character 乐. This poem depicts the true friendship between the two great scholars, Yuan Zhen and Bai Juyi. By chatting with him about this book, I expressed my wish for him to be always happy and make best friends here in China.

Fidele is a master's student of NCHU in aeronautical engineering. As a child, he watched many Chinese kung fu movies such as "Shaolin Temple", "Fist of Fury", "New Dragon Inn", "Once upon a Time in China", etc. Amazed by the martial skills of Jet Li and Jackie Chan, he dreamed of going to China one day to learn Shaolin kung fu. His family rejoiced when he was admitted to the School of Medicine at the University of Rwanda, the best university in his country, with top results of his university entrance exams. When he was still a freshman, Fidele met a martial arts teacher from China. The teacher told Fidele that if he could master martial arts well, he would get the opportunity to learn more at Shaolin Temple in China. So Fidele studied hard and practiced with the teacher every day. Finally all his hard work paid off, as he was selected to study at Shaolin Temple. He told his family the good news, but his mother had some concerns. She wanted Fidele to pursue a career in medicine after graduation, after all it is a well-paid and decent job. But Fidele felt that it would be a unique opportunity to not only learn martial arts and Chinese at Shaolin Temple, but also to pursue his medical studies or other more interesting professions in China.

Fidele has finally arrived in China. To his surprise, there were many more fresh experiences waiting for him, besides the opportunity of learning Shaolin kung fu.

Coming from the tropical Rwanda straight to the freezingly cold Beijing, and then from Beijing International Airport to Songshan Shaolin Temple, Fidele was completely unaware of and unprepared for the extreme coldness. He still remembers the excitement of seeing the snow-capped mountains for the first time in his life when he was on the airplane and the double-decker bus.

The Shaolin Kung Fu program is no joke. Every apprentice has to wake up at 5 am every day and go through a series of training such as leg press, leg planking, staking and gymnastics. On top of that, they have to run between the Daxiong Grand Hall and the Dharma Cave, go over the mountains, carry water buckets and chop wood to build up their muscles and stamina. Exactly at 8 o'clock, they will have breakfast, and then continue to practice until noon, with no rest in the afternoon.

A year later, as the representative of foreign apprentices in the Shaolin Temple, Fidele participated in the 2014 CCTV4 Spring Festival Gala, and toured all over the country with the monks of the Shaolin Temple to do martial performances. During those tours, what stroke him the most is to know that anyone in China can fulfill their dreams as long as they work hard, and that one will also gain respect if one respects others.

Fidele wins the team champion of the First International Shaolin Wushu Festival in Kaifeng, Henan (the first from left).

Fidele fell in love with Chinese culture. He began to know more about China's developed aviation industry in the two-year nationwide tour, which made him believe that the aircraft manufacturing is one of the fields Rwanda should learn from China. He then decided to choose aviation manufacturing to continue his study. That's why he came to study at NCHU.

Fidele is fluent in English, French and Chinese. He studied professional courses with Chinese students, and his grades were the top among his peers. Therefore, he received the CSC National Full Scholarship, and became the only international student who won the Tellhow Scholarship Nomination Award. What he enjoys most is to do internship at Hainan Airlines where he could learn how to maintain large planes and fly one in a simulated cockpit at the aviation base. Flying in the sky is his biggest dream.

Fidele learns to maintain aircrafts at Guanyi Aviation.

Fidele strives his best at learning Chinese. I often say that Chinese characters are the essence of Chinese culture, however, some of the international students are only willing to learn pinyin (the pronunciation of the characters). Different from others, Fidele would memorize all the texts in both Pinyin and Chinese characters, among which "Sun Tzu's Art of War" and "Thirty-six Strategies" are his favorites. He would often ask me to share more stories in these two classics. Through him and other international students, I also learned what kind of Chinese culture foreigners may be interested. He repeated several times to me that his greatest achievement in China is becoming a person who is self-disciplined and not afraid of difficulties, just like an old Chinese saying goes, "there is no insurmountable mountain in the world, as long as you are willing to climb it".

Marwa and her dream of being a university teacher

The beautiful Arabian girl Marwa in the photo, who comes from Egypt, is a master's student majoring in English. She once told me that in Egypt, there's a saying "Seek knowledge even if it's in places as far as China".

Before coming to China, Marwa was a student majoring in English at Misr International University. One year, Mr. Huang, a visiting scholar at Cairo University from China, moved in next door to her house. She asked Mr. Huang why he had chosen Egypt as his destination. He told her that both Egypt and China boast the same cultural foundation and thousands-year storied history, so he decided to learn everything about Egypt and experience the land where the pharaohs had once lived. Huang introduced China and Chinese culture to her, and the two would often talk and compare the similarities and differences between their own cultures. Since then, Marwa has been deeply attracted by the mysterious Chinese culture.

In 2017, Marwa got a job as an assistant at Misr Internatioal University. In the summer vacation of her junior year, she applied for a one-month student volunteer exchange program in Hangzhou, out of her interest in China. After a 12-hour flight, she traveled from Cairo to Beijing, then took another 2.5-hour flight to Hangzhou. Getting off the plane, she saw a group of Chinese classmates who looked, dressed, spoke and did things in a different way from hers, but were highly hospitable and treated her nicely. The Chinese classmates took her and 5 other Egyptian students to the hotel, helped them get a quick check-in, carried their luggage to the rooms, and told them how to use the TV, WiFi, air conditioning, shower and other appliances. On top of those, they also invited these newly arrived international students to taste local cuisines and took them to appreciate the views in Hangzhou, which swept away all of Marwa's previous worries and nervousness before landing in China. During their talks, the confidence and pride of Chinese youth in the country's system and culture made her more excited about what she might experience next in China.

As a volunteer Marwa became an English teacher in a middle school in Shaoxing City, Zhejiang province, and has since been in love with the hard-working, brave, and warm-hearted Chinese.

In 2018, Marwa graduated with a bachelor's degree and tried hard to find opportunities to study for a master's degree in China. That's why she submitted her resume to Nanchang Hangkong University. I was touched by her love for Chinese culture in her personal statement and enrolled her as a master's student. Marwa is very smart and arduous. From classic masterpieces such as "Book of Changes", "Tao Te Ching", "Analects", "Zhuangzi", "Mencius" and "Records of the Grand Historian", to Tang poetry, Song poetry and Yuan music, as well as other aspects of Chinese culture, I have tried my best to introduce the grand and sophisticated system of Chinese culture bit by bit to her. Watching her progress every day gives me a sense of pride and satisfaction. It's also because of my conversations with her that I completed the book "Key to Chinese Culture".

She once discussed with me the meaning of "the benevolent loves others", and I told her that by observing the Chinese character 仁( pinyin ren, which means benevolence), one can see that it emphasizes the relationship between people. In Chinese culture, “people” refers to the sum of social relations. Everyone has many of their own social roles, like a parent, a child, a partner, a teacher, a student, or a colleague, etc. Then she would still have more questions to ask, "Why do Chinese women have such a high status?" -"Because in China, 'women hold up half the sky'." "Why are most Chinese people born with a relatively good overall thinking?" -"Because in the eyes of Chinese people, humans, Nature and the society, the three form a whole, hence the long-held philosophy in China that 'heaven and humans are a harmonious one'." I would always patiently answer her questions.

Since her postgraduate studies, Marwa has taught the course of English Academic Paper Writing to undergraduate students. Now she's officially one of the foreign teachers working full-time at NCHU. Her classes are enthralling and very popular among the students. She is an excellent English user with an easily-understood accent, a grammatically high-standard writing style and a well-formed logic. During her teaching, she focuses on training her students' critical thinking. Interestingly, because of the lovely, beautiful and patient Marwa, this once-least-welcomed writing course among the boy students, became so popular that the guys would rush to the classroom just to secure a seat and compete to answer questions during her class.

Marwa with her Chinese student.

Nazif—China is where my dream life comes true

Nazif is a tall and handsome Turkish student of Indo-European descent who used to study at NCHU. Proficient in both English and Chinese, he was selected by his Chinese classmates as the best English male host in the International College. They invited him to be the host at various celebration occasions, which he quite enjoyed and would appear on one stage after another with a well-groomed hairstyle and decent formal attire.

Nazif likes Chinese a lot. He says that whenever he listens to people speaking Chinese, it's as if they were singing a beautiful song, which makes him enchanted. At a very young age, he longed to master Chinese so that one day he could go to China to study. In high school, there was an international Chinese teacher who taught him Chinese attentively and constantly encouraged him, which in the end helped him realize his dream.

At the end of August 2015, Nazif, having graduated from high school, flew from Istanbul to Beijing. Before departure, he asked a Turkish friend living there to pick him up at the airport at 5:00 am. However, after landing at the airport, his friend was nowhere to be found. Just when he was anxious and feeling helpless, a decent-looking airport policeman walked up to him and handed his own mobile phone to Nazif, telling him to call the friend. But the line was always busy. The policeman bought Nazif bottled water, bread and instant noodles for breakfast, and comforted him in English: "Don't worry, you can wait at the airport and come to me if you have any difficulties." Before Nazif could thank him, the police officer left and continued to work on duty. Wandering aimlessly at the airport for more than two hours, Nazif saw the police officer running to him, sweating heavily. He told Nazif that his friend had called and the reason he was late was because he thought the arrival time was 5:00 in the afternoon instead of 5:00 in the morning. He then told Nazif to go to Gate 4 and wait for his friend who would arrive soon. As a newcomer in China, Nazif immediately felt the warmth and kindness of the Chinese people.

After coming to China, he first studied Chinese at Tianjin University for a year, and was later admitted to NCHU. As a star of extracurricular activities on campus, he participated in the Jiangxi Provincial Chinese Language Competition for International Students and won the third place. He hosted the campus welcome party and the CPC history knowledge competition for Chinese/foreign faculty and students, and participated in the promo video shooting of the second "Poyang Lake International Bird Watching" organized by Jiangxi Jingshi TV. He also did dubbing work in a large number of the University's promo videos. In his senior year, considering his major was business administration and that he is good at English, Chinese, and Turkey, I put him on an internship at an  intraocular lens trading company to learn how to do foreign trade. There, Nazif took to the job like a duck to water and met many young, promising colleagues. He said that he saw the spirit of the Chinese people in them.

After graduation, he was recommended to continue his studies at NCHU for master's degree in business administration. During this period, Nazif not only studied each course diligently, but also actively communicated with teachers and classmates to better his scientific research thinking and teamwork ability. He said in his graduation speech: "During the past 7 years in China, I have been completely in love with this secure, peaceful and lovely country. The most precious years of my youth are spent in China, and my friends are all Chinese. So I no longer consider myself as a foreigner. If possible, I'm willing to be a bridge of friendship between China and Turkey. I really want to stay in China and use what I have to contribute to China. This land has shaped me, and given me a lot of opportunities. This is the place that allows me to live my dream life.”

Nazif learns to make ceramics in Jingdezhen.

Yonas—the young man who dreams to be a bridge expert

Yonas is from Shashamane, Ethiopia, a city rich in coffee and roses. This tall, handsome, gentle, and sympathetic man is interested in drawing and table tennis. The figures and scenery he paints are vivid and appealing. His oil paintings are bold and passionate in colors, completed with delicate brushstrokes and has a strong effect in terms of the depth of fields, which fully demonstrate the artistic conception and style represented by the objects in his works.

This year marks Yonas' fourth year in China. He is currently a master's student in civil engineering at NCHU. Due to his excellent expression skills, he was recommended by me to take part in a TV program made by Jiangxi Jingshi TV. Yonas made a feature film introducing Poyang Lake and migratory birds in fluent Chinese and English, which got viewed by people across the globe through social media platforms Facebook and YouTube. Because of Yonas, more people in the world have learned about Poyang Lake and the migratory birds. His parents, teachers and classmates in his hometown also saw the program and praised him, saying he looked so cool on TV, and that he did a good job introducing the beautiful Jiangxi to the world.

On weekends, Yonas likes to carry a drawing board to sketch in the old town of Nanchang, enjoy the lively streets and draw people passing by. He draws old ladies dancing square dances, sweet young couples holding hands, and kids capering about, all wearing a smiling face. The locals in Nanchang are very welcoming. When he's painting, many strangers chat with him, which makes him feel as if he were with his family; in the evening, he stands on the platform of Tengwang Pavilion watching the sunset and catching the gentle river breeze, knowing that Nanchang has become his second hometown.

All the teachers and classmates love to ask Yonas to paint them portraits, to which he always happily accepts the invitations. His works are true to life. One day, he wanted to paint a portrait of me, but I didn't have time to model for him. Therefore, I gave him a photo of me. A few days later, he came to me with a painting. The short-haired woman in the painting looks exactly like me. However, as the painting was completed based on a photo, there were no highlights on my eyes and face. What's more, he carefully put the painting in a black frame with no blank space left at all and gave it to me in a solemn manner. I told him that the lady in the painting was more beautiful than me, while secretly thinking how I should explain to him the different customs of people from different cultures framing their portraits.

A few days later, I replaced the black frame with a wooden colored one and left some blank areas around the painting to be seen. I told him that when Chinese people paint living ones, there are several rituals to follow. There should be light on the face and sparkles in the eyes, the four sides of the painting should be left seen, the painting needs to be framed with light-colored wooden frames, and the black frame is only suitable for people who have passed away. At first he was a little embarrassed, then we looked at each other and laughed. "The differences between Chinese and Western cultures are really huge. Thank you, my teacher, for teaching me so much." He said. He picked up the brush again and added highlights to my eyes and face, and the portrait came to life instantly. I laid this portrait on my desk with alacrity.

Because of his love for painting, Yonas wanted to switch his major for his master's degree from civil engineering to art design. I took a few photos of his works and sent them to my painter friends for professional comments. They said in a sincere and straightforward way that as an amateur, he had quite a good painting skill, but if he wanted to make painting a career, there was still a long way to go. I couldn't tell him face to face the disappointing news that might curb his enthusiasm in painting.

Instead, I came up with an alternative idea. I took him to Bada Shanren Memorial Hall, where he got to understand the principles held by Zhu Da (aka Bada Shanren), one of the most famous ink wash painters in China, that “the artists should not rigidly follow the rules, but seek to innovate. In addition to pursuing the beauty of appearances such as shapes, lines, and colors, it is also necessary to convey the spirit and inner beauty of the characters and things in the paintings.” Zhu's works manifest the idea of “less is more”. Some of his paintings depict just one single bird or rock in a couple of brushstrokes on a large piece of paper, yet they are extremely lifelike and appealing; we then visited Cai Chao's Traditional Chinese Painting Studio, where he saw a variety of Chinese paintings, completed in different styles and skills, portraying the depth, broadness and the vicissitude of our life; next we had an enlightening trip to the lacquer art studio showcasing the works of Mr. Xiong Jianxin, a master of arts and crafts in China, where he witnessed how lacquer art integrates traditional techniques of carving, stacking, engraving, inlaying, painting and grinding with the art of modern oil painting; in the end, I showed him around the Ceramics Studio of Wu Tianlin, a luminary in the Chinese porcelain art, where he appreciated those exquisite ceramic works, on which beautiful patterns of landscape, flowers, birds and figures, together with famous lines from poems and essays complement each other harmoniously.

Clever as he is, Yonas quickly understood what I was trying to tell him through these tours. He told me he would continue to use his painting skills in bridge design, and that one day he would be Ethiopia's Mao Yisheng, a highly prestigious Chinese bridge designer. Once he made up his mind, his grades improved by leaps and bounds, thus winning a scholarship as a freshman in the graduate school. When Jiangxi International Company came to our campus to hire new blood, Yonas was the only student who received a job offer.

Yonas visits Jingdezhen Ceramics Biennale (the first from left).

Yonas participates in the soiree of Porcelain's Journey Along the Silk Road.

Yonas learns to make ceramics in Jingdezhen (the second from left).

Nizi—the dream seeker travelling in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor

Nizi experiences skating at Mingyue Mountain in Yichun.

The fine-looking and eloquent Pakistani student Nizi is one of NCHU's first graduates majoring in aerospace engineering. Whenever he meets people for the first time, he likes to introduce himself in a passionate way: "My name is Zhuang Yili. Zhuang is from Zhuangzi, a respectful ancient Chinese philosopher. Yi comes from the word yili, which means perseverance. And li is in the Chinese word lirang, meaning politeness." He's very satisfied with his self-introduction, thinking it's kind of a special one. When he was studying at NCHU, he would always ask me, "Ms Xie, do you think I'm like a real Chinese now?"

Born in 1990, Nizi is a witty, sincere, funny and very communicative young man. He has a very high level of English listening, speaking, reading, writing, and translation. He is also proficient in Chinese with a HSK level-5 certificate. In addition, he can speak Urdu, Pashto and Hindi.

After graduation, Nizi was disappointed and frustrated by not being able to find a suitable job. He felt that the future was bleak, thus consulting me on WeChat from time to time. I suggested he use his advantage in mastering multiple languages and broaden the channels and fields when looking for a job. He followed my advice and became an IELTS tutor. Since 2014, he had worked as an ESL teacher at Webi, an English training institution, and concurrently as an overseas project manager of MAP Engineering Co., Ltd. Due to his outstanding performance in the team of the training school, he was then in charge of the Webi online platform team since 2016, responsible for developing course materials. He successfully built an IELTS course system suitable for part-time English learners, and managed a team of 6 teachers. By actively promoting the online learning platform, he had built a large client base of foreign language learning for the institution.

In December 2020, Nizi started an import and export trade company in Xi'an, whose business scope covers food sales, knitted textiles and raw material sales, metal material sales, technical services, technical development, consultation and exchanges, and etc. Thanks to China's national strategy "Belt and Road Initiative" and the ironclad relation between China and Pakistan, countless Pakistani like Nizi have been bringing Made-in-China products back to their home country.

Although his work is getting busier, he still misses his alma mater. Those wonderful tours he had when he was living in Jiangxi are still mentioned by him every now and then: going to Fuzhou to follow the footsteps of the playwright Tang Xianzu, known as the Oriental Shakespeare; visiting Jingdezhen, the thousand-year-old porcelain capital, to appreciate ceramics; traveling to Ganzhou to learn about China's revolutionary history; climbing up Mount Lu, described by numerous ancient poets, where Li Bai wrote down “its torrent dashes down three thousand feet from high” and Su Shi said one will never tell the true face of Mount Lu; and spending time on Sanqing Mountain, a famous Taoist mountain covered by clouds and fog. Of all the trips, the one that excites him the most is going to the Ski Resort on Mingyue Mountain in winter because it hardly snows in his home country. To him, snow is like a carpet of cotton batting, a bright moon in the sky and a crispy meringue tipped with yellow and pink. The buckwheat flowers scent the cold air, as if the snowflakes are fragrant as well. What a gorgeous view!

Nizi says Nanchang is his second hometown. The locals in Nanchang start a fresh new day with a bowl of Nanchang stir-fried rice noodles and some soup stewed in a pottery pot. When he first came to Nanchang, Nizi followed the local customs and quickly fell in love with the noodles and soup here. With a cost of only 5 yuan, one could get to taste a mouthful of smooth and fragrant rice noodles and the soup made with a secret recipe that has been passed down for thousands of years, one will enjoy the feeling of delicacies dancing on the tip of the taste buds. Besides the gourmet foods, Nizi still remembers the shock that Wugong Mountain brought him: when he reached the top of the mountain, he saw an endless lush prairie. White fluffy clouds and a seemingly endless grassland can make all troubles and worries disappear. At night, he and his friends lie in the tent, watching the starry sky, as if they were taken right back to their carefree childhood. His friends took him to eat Lianhua (lotus) braised duck cutlets in blood sauce. He thought it was too spicy yet tasty. He asked, "Doesn't the name of this dish contain lotus? Why are there only duck cutlets but no lotus?" Everyone at the table laughed.

International students have a more objective understanding of the richness and diversity of different civilizations. An unimpeded two-way exchange between countries enables the students to have an international perspective and philosophies, thus helping them form an ever-growing endogenous strength for the development of their own countries, the common well-being of mankind and the sustainable development of the world. Studying overseas is not only a good choice for young people from different countries to travel and communicate, but also a good opportunity to share global talents and resources for all countries. In the new era, China will cultivate more international talents in a further open and inclusive manner. (written by Yiqing)