As promised, here’s the first installment from the 1995 collection of essays by students at my old elementary school in China. Actually, I decided to start things off by translating the foreword to the collection, written by the principal. It’s a tad dull at times, but I thought it provides a good glimpse into the kind of things that were being emphasized in school at that time and is a nice way to set the stage for the student essays, because some of the things mentioned here will be recurring themes in those pieces.

Accepting the Challenges of the 21st Century

Classmates, “Easterly Wind Unfurling the Sail” is here! It will be one of our school’s publications, to be published at regular intervals. This inaugural edition focuses on reflecting your classmates’ situations in areas such as their academics, lives, and growth; on recording the students’ accomplishments in their cultivation of morality, intelligence, health, beauty, and work ethics, as well as the accolades they have earned for the school. This is a very happy occasion for our school’s campus culture. It will definitely spur our educational development and elevate the quality of the school’s instructions. I really hope that in future editions, we will see even more students’ shadows and the footprints of their growth.

Does everyone still remember the “Learn To Be the Young Masters of the 21st Century” educational campaign that our school commenced in the 1991 academic year? For instance, we started campaigns such as “The Role Model Next to Us”, “Compete for the Honor of Being a Flag Bearer”, and “Learn From Heroes, Strive to Improve, Vie to Contribute”. We also started reading campaigns such as “Read and Understand Your Ambitions, Set Great Goals; Read and Follow Suit, Be a Noble Person”, “Spread the Wings of Imagination, Sprint Toward the Sun of the 21st Century” … We immediately responded to the call from the higher ranks and implemented a complete overhaul. We put into practice moral education, elevated the quality of the education, created very good conditions for elevating students’ morality and developing their character, and got very good results.

Today, you are very fortunate to be a new generation that spans centuries, standing on the connection between two centuries. You will use your own youth and prime to connect the Chinese people’s present with their future. The 21st century will be the time for you to show off your skills in building the motherland.

Since we are masters of the 21st century, what kind of character should we cultivate and with what kind of attitude should we greet the arrival of the 21st century? On this point, let us again rekindle the teachings of the senior generation’s proletariat revolutionary, the architect of reform and opening up, Grandfather Deng Xiaoping: Strive to cultivate yourself into a new generation of people who “have ambition, have ethics, have education, and follow the laws.” Put simply, to achieve this goal, you must strive to:

• First, set high goals and broad ambitions.
• Second, cultivate good ethics and good habits, elevating your all-around character.
• Third, obtain knowledge of culture and science, develop specialized skills.
• Fourth, exercise and build a strong body.

Classmates, the 21st century is calling to us. The people of our motherland are waiting for us to grow up. Let us, starting today, starting with ourselves, learn to study, learn how to live, learn how to be human beings, and bravely accept the challenges of the 21st century!

Here’s a word cloud for the letter:

Some thoughts about the piece:

• Reading it now, the letter comes off as part encouragement, part boring policy speak, and part propaganda. The part invoking Deng Xiaoping’s teaching to, among other things, “follow the laws” is an obvious bit of not-so-hidden propaganda.
• Ultimately, though, the things the letter advocates — setting high goals, cultivating good ethics and habits, and developing body and mind — are not all that different from what American kids are taught.
• Note the strong emphasis on moral/character education in the letter. That’s an element of Chinese schools that I just can’t envision happening in U.S. schools without a “how dare you teach my kid how to think and act” uproar from the parents. I have mixed feelings on the subject myself. I can definitely see how moral education can be perverted into political thought control, but at the same time, the moral education I myself experienced generally had little to do with politics or ideology, but rather were innocuous things like being taught to lend a hand to those in need, respect thy elders, and don’t derive joy from someone else’s suffering.
• I thought it was interesting the principal addressed the students as “classmates”. Perhaps it’s a parallel to calling someone “comrade”? Only one character separate the two terms in Chinese, after all.
• A little clarification about the “Grandfather Deng Xiaoping” part: “Grandfather” was translated from the Chinese word 爷爷, which means grandfather in the familial sense but also is used as a respectful courtesy title for any elderly man, regardless of whether he is a relative, and it’s the latter meaning that applies here. In fact, many of the Chinese familial terms are used in this way: Kids call middle-aged men and women “uncle” and “aunt”, and young men and women “brother” and “sister”.