Chapter 22: Teaching Journalism to the Chinese - in Prague & Hong Kong

I realize that over the past several chapters, I’ve jumped back and forth between years and themes. The only explanation is that during the five years my family and I lived in Slovakia, from 2006-11, it’s tough to separate stages of my career cleanly and chronologically. There’s too much overlap.

This chapter, though, I’ll devote to one of the most significant turning-points in my career: When I met my first group of Chinese graduate students – in Prague, of all places, in January 2008 – then how I became immersed in teaching them my style of International Journalism, in Hong Kong. Moreover, that laid the foundation for all the teaching and training I did years later, after moving to Beijing in 2015.

In fact, I was so inspired by the full Fall 2009 semester I spent at Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU), that I not only developed a unique curriculum adapted to their reality, but I myself created a new journaling style of online storytelling to chronicle my journey there, called Postcards.

Ever since, the teaching, training, coaching and mentoring of young Chinese has been a steady side-gig in my career. Indeed, that Fall 2009 semester’s impact was so profound, it laid a foundation for the university teaching I later did in mainland China, after we moved there in 2015. In this chapter, then, I’ll detail how that initial January 2008 encounter led me to:

*Teach a full semester in Hong Kong – followed by six more annual visits as a Visiting Scholar and Super Tutor, teaching every grad student of HKBU’s esteemed International Journalism program.

*Develop a curriculum in Minority Affairs reporting, tailored to my HKBU students.

*Devise a new travelogue style, as I chronicled my entire 16-week stay in Hong Kong, during the Fall 2009 semester. Farther below, I’ve published all 30 or so of the Postcards I produced.

Continuing the teaching-the-Chinese theme, I then leap to 2015: when I recruited a Shanghai university to send 15 of their Chinese undergrads to our training course in Prague. Once the teens arrive, I coached each to produce a real piece of International Storytelling, which we published online. I’ve proudly pasted those stories at the bottom of this chapter – to display what we achieved together.

Then in Part Two, I’ll spotlight the 4.5 years I lived in mainland China – in the capital, Beijing. I’ll explain why that stretch in China was so meaningful, for personal, professional and even geo-political reasons. I’ll describe how I not only taught semester courses at several top Chinese universities, and guest-lectured at many others, but developed a signature new curriculum: Storytelling from China.

Context Matters, Always

Before I get to that first encounter with the Chinese, some relevant context. By the time I met my first Chinese students in January 2008, I’d already spent one year as Journalism trainer for the Transitions Media (TOL) Foreign Correspondent Training Course in Prague.

The 10-day training was held biannually, every January and July, and as described in Chapter Seventeen, I’d developed the curriculum for TOL’s Reporting Project – then coached each participant to produce what was typically their first piece of Foreign Reporting.

Within my first two sessions, in January 2007 and July 2007, I’d already gleaned some key lessons-learned about the challenge of connecting international participants with local issues – as I strove to teach how to be a most effective Foreign Correspondent. As I explained in Chapter Eighteen:

I was now training fellow foreigners – who’d mostly never been to Prague before – in how to produce serious, responsible stories from this exotic locale. Moreover, how to present their reportage to an audience of smart, curious foreigners who’d likely never been to Prague, either.

While grasping my trainees’ own context – where they’re from; their work and educational background; their inspirations and objectives for taking this course; etc. – I’d simultaneously teach how to collect and generate contextualized content about the Czechs, specifically, and Central Europeans, generally. Then, how exactly to present it to that international audience.

Moreover, “To teach all this, TOL and Prague proved that all I needed was a receptive participant: smart, curious, open-minded, eager to learn, willing to follow instructions – and courageous enough to try. My TOL colleagues recognized this cross-cultural appeal and effectiveness, too.”

Meanwhile, the TOL team continuously recruited for this and other trainings. In late 2007, when they attracted a unique new client – for the first time, from the Far East – Executive Director Jeremy Druker entrusted me to train them. That’s how in January 2008, I met 35 Chinese students and faculty of Hong Kong Baptist University; specifically, its Master’s in International Journalism Studies program.

Before I dive in and describe my initial, eye-opening interactions, I should credit TOL for what that non-profit organization did for me and my career. From my new base in Bratislava, While by then I was already teaching at universities in Slovakia and Czechia, guest-lecturing in Austria, and training for TOL in Prague, this deepening relationship with Transitions further solidified my new status in International Education. Particularly in my new niche: teaching International Journalism.

TOL paved the way for new opportunities that broadened my horizons, both geographically and culturally. Beyond the Chinese, Chapter Twenty-Four: Minority Journalists spotlights how TOL hooked me up with another of my career’s most meaningful trainings: coaching several young journalists who were members of Europe’s largest, yet most marginalized ethnic community – the Roma, a.k.a. Gypsies.

For now, though, I focus on the Chinese. Our interaction started innocuously enough, yet launched what became a profound relationship that continues up through today – 16 years later.

The Chinese Come to Prague

With TOL’s new client on board, I initiated my first contact with the Chinese group in late 2007, via email. Now a core member of the TOL team, my confidence in our training format had grown. That’s why, from my home in Bratislava, as I remoted prepared the January 2008 international participants, I accepted the added challenge of simultaneously juggling a second cohort: 35 Chinese grad students.

Admittedly, I was mildly anxious about the proposition, because at that point, I’d had zero personal or professional experience with China. Not only had I never been to the country, the farthest East that I’d ever traveled by then was for a reporting trip to Central Asia, to Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan.

However, I soon learned that HKBU boasted a stellar reputation, not just in the former British colony of Hong Kong, but across Asia itself – especially for the practical, hands-on Journalism education it provided students. Enhancing the overseas opportunities for its students, HKBU struck an agreement with TOL: January 2008 would be their maiden voyage to Prague, for students and faculty.

Still, I knew little about the Chinese cultural context. It’s not just about visiting a place or meeting the people. I’d never before touched upon topics like Chinese education, Chinese journalism, or Chinese journalism education. I wasn’t intimidated, though; I’d study up and lead them like any other foreign trainees – starting with advanced preparation, about five weeks before they parachuted in.

In Prague, we were only together for five days, for a more condensed visit than the international group. Since the Chinese were coming from so far away, the faculty planned to maximize this opportunity for the students to see Europe by squeezing in a short trip to Paris, too.

TOL scheduled for them two training sessions with me, a few lectures from other guest-trainers, and several site-visits around the city. We also allotted the students some time for foreign reporting (individually or in teams of two). So, they would hit the cobble-stoned streets of one of Europe’s most scenic cities, interview Czechs, gather facts, shoot photos, then write their stories.

That’s why it was imperative that I guide them in advance, then once on the ground, to do their best within the limited time. They did exactly that, as everyone produced at least something. It wasn’t terribly deep reportage, but a snapshot. In the end, though, they each tasted International Journalism.

On a personal note, I liked these Chinese students. Very much. They made a powerful first impression. Many seemed shy, which is a certain stereotype of some young Chinese – and may be a function of either their awkwardness with foreigners or lack of confidence in their English. (Or both.)

However, I also found them bright and enthusiastic. Quick to learn. Eager to please. Thrilled to be so far from home. And appreciative of this rare opportunity. As a teacher, all you can hope for is to feel that you’ve gained a student’s buy-in to whatever you’re preaching. I felt that. Moreover, I saw genuine action, as they tried to apply my coaching to real reportage.

The students apparently liked me, too, based on their feedback. As did their HKBU chaperones, who were a mix of Chinese and Western faculty. All sides seemed satisfied with this grand experiment.

At that moment, though, we at TOL had no inkling if they’d return the following year. I personally viewed my experience with the HKBU contingent as merely a memorable “one-off.”

An Invitation Arrives

Yet the Chinese did return. And in even larger numbers: In January 2009, HKBU sent us a contingent of 55 students and faculty. Once again, I led their reporting project. (Plus, the training for international participants.) Once again, the HKBU training went very well. The satisfaction was palpable.

This time, it clearly wasn’t a one-off. So, it occurred to me: This might lead to something special for me, both personally and professionally. Ever the freelancer, I sniffed an exciting new opportunity. Before my HKBU colleagues departed Prague, I felt I had nothing to lose by pitching them my services:

If you’d like me to come to Hong Kong, to lead a training or workshop for your students, I’d be delighted to come for a week or two.

I hoped for more adventure-travel – this time in the Far East – perhaps paid by someone else. It was a long-shot. Yet, after the faculty left, I sent a polite follow-up email from Bratislava. Still, I gave it little thought. Then a couple months later, I received a phone-call. The HKBU program director was inviting me to Hong Kong: not for a short stint, as I’d suggested; instead, to teach an entire semester.

I was stunned – and excited. However, I couldn’t just jump at the four-month commitment. Our daughter (child #3) was just born in January 2009. Immediately after the TOL trainings, in fact.

So, I thought this invitation – no matter how exhilarating – would be impossible to accept. That is, until my Hungarian in-laws stepped up on my behalf. They noted how I’d followed their daughter to Slovakia, in support of her career. Furthermore, in the years since, how I’d branched out from journalism, into teaching and training – to make my career mesh well with our child-rearing.

“You deserve this opportunity in Hong Kong,” they concluded.

I was touched by their words. They also reassured my wife that they’d help with our three young kids, while I was gone, by often visiting Bratislava from their home in Budapest – which is just two-three hours away by car or train.

I’ll never forget how magnanimous my in-laws’ gesture was. Likewise, that of my hard-working wife, whose approval was even more critical. Backed by all this support, I seized upon what I thought at that moment would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: To teach in Hong Kong, for a full semester.

Teaching the Chinese

Officially, HKBU anointed me a Visiting Scholar. Despite the lofty-sounding title, I wasn’t there to conduct scholarly research. For this practice-centric program in International Journalism, the faculty wanted more of what I’d done in Prague: show their grad students how to “pound the pavement,” fact-gather, interview key subjects, and produce content of high journalistic value for a foreign audience.

Two hitches, though. First, I’d be teaching every grad student in the program – about 69, in all – but divided into four separate classes. Second, I’d co-teach this quartet of Foreign Reporting courses with an American colleague: Peter Eng, an old Asian hand for the Associated Press and others.

I’d never co-taught before. But Peter and I settled on a division of labor in which he’d handle much of the nuts-and-bolts newswriting, including the rules contained within the venerable Associated Press Stylebook. In my sections, then, I’d lead each student through actual storytelling projects.

Exploring which themes, though? I couldn’t choose willy-nilly. This required a serious curriculum to satisfy HKBU program’s criteria for its one-year Master’s degree. My planning and coordination with Peter began during Summer 2009, from Bratislava. For the first time, I’d develop a curriculum tailored to my audience of Chinese students, as well as to their unique locale: Hong Kong – a place I’d never visited.

I also wanted to deliver something related to my emerging specialty: beyond International Journalism, more specifically my method of Parachute Reporting. (As laid out in detail in Chapter Nineteen.) The crux of it was how to prepare my Chinese students sufficiently in advance, to then drop into an alien environment, to produce reportage that’s as deep and meaningful as possible?

How to adapt this to Hong Kong? I thought to myself: What exactly can I teach these students, which isn’t just relevant and appropriate for this program, but would be an exciting, eye-opening, thought-provoking course that also benefits them professionally – by enhancing their portfolio?

On the other hand: how to make it fun and gratifying for me, even beneficial to my career?

With all that in mind, I took my own advice: First, consider your audience. Admittedly, it took a good month of settling into Hong Kong – and learning more about my students, my colleagues and the city itself – before I honed the reporting assignments into challenges suitably germane to the locale.

Grasping Their Context

As I’d soon learn about my new students, they weren’t authentic Hong Kongers. Meaning, few were ethnic-Chinese who are members of the Cantonese-speaking minority that’s long populated southern China. Instead, the vast majority of my students hailed from mainland China.

It’s important to note that when I first taught there, it was just 12 years after Britain’s historic 1997 handover of Hong Kong, back to Chinese rule. Hong Kong was relatively “new” to many mainlanders, too. (More on that in a moment.)

It’s also noteworthy that a small handful of our students came from Southeast Asia: Vietnam and Cambodia. I appreciated how faculty leaders sought to spice up the program with a dash of regional diversity, in addition to trips abroad to places like Cambodia and North Korea, not to mention Prague.

As for native Hong Kongers, I recall one single student in the program, if memory serves. Just one young woman, though we were on her home-turf, in a city still viewed as Asia’s financial center.

I asked why the discrepancy: It turned out, HKBU’s Communications and Journalism programs were largely populated by mainland-Chinese practitioners and scholars in both fields, who relished the opportunity to freely explore issues that might be censored on the mainland.

Meanwhile, the faculty seemed intent to do the same for the younger generation, trying to attract and enlighten as many young mainlanders as possible, each year. As I saw in the classroom, too, my colleagues embraced their greater freedom to explore some of the most sensitive Chinese topics that aren’t, shall we say, openly discussed on mainland China.

I’ll never forget one mainland faculty member telling me their favorite lecture topic to deliver to our wide-eyed students was “all the 20th-century Chinese history that they’d never learned back home.”

Why had they never learned it? Because few would dare provoke a reaction from the authorities, or leap The Great Firewall of Chinese censorship, of both mainstream and social media. I won’t delve deeply into Chinese censorship here, though touched on it in this special section.

However, here’s the essay I wrote for Harvard’s Nieman Reports, drawn from my semester in Hong Kong and published in Spring 2010 – which spotlights the censorship issue, among others:

Another detail I couldn’t help but notice about my Chinese grad students was how most of them were young women. As I’d later learn, particularly once I moved to Beijing, this reflected twin trends about modern Chinese women. First, more have pursued Master’s degrees and built professional careers, rather than be pressured into the traditional expectations of marriage and motherhood.

Second, more and more Chinese women are populating the Social Sciences – especially a field like the media. That helps to explain why the vast majority of every course or workshop I’ve taught to Chinese students or professionals has been to a predominantly female audience. (This evidence would later be gleaned from teaching at four other Chinese universities: in Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou.)

Once I got to know and chat with many of these students, I concluded that some of this was borne of a certain idealism that felt maternal. My most compelling evidence was when I gave each of my students the chance to choose their own reporting topics – to stir passion for the storytelling process.

The vast majority of students, women and men, went on to choose societal issues that focused on communities mired on the margins of society. Or, which hadn’t benefited from China’s remarkable transformation from a largely agrarian economy into the world’s second-largest economy. Topics like migrant workers, abandoned elderly, autistic children, the blind or deaf, gays and lesbians, and so on.

That said, the Chinese also weren’t unique in this regard. By that point, I’d recognized that throughout all my early teachings and trainings, the majority of my audience had always been women. Not once did I have more men than women. Starting in New York, throughout my experiences in Central Europe, and now in Hong Kong: I saw it was mostly young women drawn to the appeal of media, which offers a chance for impact, empowerment or to lift up those who’ve slipped through the cracks.

But back to HKBU. Beyond the course curriculum and content, there was another glaring detail that was hard to ignore. The program was pricey: Roughly $10,000 for the year.

The faculty leadership knew that within China’s burgeoning middle class, which frets often about their financial future, a growing number of parents are now willing and able to send their children abroad for education. Especially, to an Anglophone environment – where they can polish their English, too. And their English fluency is as much of a survival skill as any in this globalized world.

Hong Kong: Home or “Abroad”?

This leads us to the peculiarities of Hong Kong itself.

Back then, I got the sense that mainland Chinese certainly viewed Hong Kong as “part of China,” yet appreciated its unique history, identity, traditions and Western-leaning features. Respect for the rule of law. The city’s status as Asia’s financial hub. Its free, vibrant and independent press – many of whose leading figures were proud graduates of HKBU, as my colleagues pointed out.

All of this was a legacy of British colonial rule, which had lasted 150 years, until London handed over Hong Kong to Beijing’s authority in 1997. Ever since, Beijing has grappled with the so-called One Country, Two Systemsapproach to Hong Kong’s administration. Back then, while HK qualified to many Chinese as outside China, Western analysts note how Beijing has “tightened its grip” in recent years.?

?Back when I first immersed myself in Hong Kong, then throughout my annual visits until 2016, I found that the feeling seemed mutual: most of the indigenous Chinese I met in Hong Kong referred to themselves firstly as Hong Kongers (or as some spell it, Hongkongers), rather than as Chinese.

I myself would later describe Hong Kong to family and friends as “China … with an asterisk.”

HK was remarkably diverse, multi-culturally speaking. That was also a function of history, as the city was both strategically important to the British Empire and a magnet for folks from across the realm. My first semester, I relished living in the vibrant Cantonese-dominated neighborhood called Yau Ma Tei. It felt to me like a Chinese city, albeit with a strained relationship with Beijing, some 1,200 miles away.

(I must note: All these initial impressions were well before 2014, when the first violent clashes broke out between Hong Kong protesters and pro-Beijing forces. Then, the far bloodier eruption in 2019, during a time when I lived in Beijing and worked for one year in state-controlled media – which reported on those clashes every day, for months, from a distinctly pro-Beijing perspective.)?

Frankly, for all these reasons, Hong Kong proved to be a brilliant training ground for journalism students. It also served as the backdrop for HKBU’s graduate program, which wasn’t only unique in Asia for its hands-on education in International Journalism, but that it was exclusively in English.

As I got to know my mainland-Chinese students, several surprised me by saying they’d studied Journalism as undergrads, too. That’s odd, I thought. When I attended the University of Missouri School of Journalism, professors advised us to either study Journalism as undergrads or as grad students. There was no need to major in it at bothlevels. Instead, use the second degree to specialize in another field.

Why, then, were so many HKBU students following up their undergraduate Journalism degree from a mainland Chinese university, with a Master’s degree in Journalism, as well? As they explained to me: I was a Journalism major for four years, but didn’t produce a single story.

The way they described it, they’d endured four years of dry, abstract lectures on Media and Communications theory. Yet no professor had ever led them through an actual storytelling project. Perhaps it was due to a desire to avoid the sort of Western-style “watchdog journalism” – which presses for accountability from decision-makers – that might get you into trouble with the authorities.

Student Storytelling from Hong Kong

Infused by all this context, I crafted a course during the Fall 2009 that was initially vague about specific storytelling themes, but ultimately centered around these three street-reporting assignments:

·?????? Examine the contrast between how HK and the mainland view modern China’s 1949 founding, then how they commemorated the 60th anniversary – interviewing citizens of both sides.

·?????? Probe how the tens of thousands of Filipinas working in Hong Kong – primarily as housekeepers – responded to the twin typhoons that recently slammed their hometowns in the Philippines.

·?????? Lastly, and this was the largest assignment: Parachute into any of Hong Kong’s many ethnic, immigrant or refugee communities – and explore any key challenge confronting that community’s present and future well-being.

Overall, I followed the template created for my Foreign Reporting Without Leaving New York course at Long Island University-Brooklyn. (Recall Chapter Nine: Journalist Turns Teacher.) In this case, I adapted it to make the course a mix of one part Foreign Reporting Without Leaving Hong Kong and one part Minority Affairs Reporting. I set out to teach my students as if they were my stable of young Foreign Correspondents, aiming to produce serious, responsible stories for our smart, curious foreign audience.

I wanted all my students – who, again, were mostly mainland-Chinese, with a dash of Southeast Asians – to be on “equal, level footing.” To be fair, here’s how I adapted it. All were virtual “foreigners” in Hong Kong, so I treated the city as if it were alien terrain for each, just as much as it was for me.

Crucially, I insisted that each student try their best to report and interview entirely in English. They largely embraced the challenge. Again, they were grateful for the chance to study off the mainland, in this dynamic city, and to dirty their hands with real journalism. All the while, honing their English.

In retrospect, I should’ve done more to publish and preserve my students’ stories. However, here’s a taste of their output, with screenshots of the blog that my HKBU colleague from Texas – the program’s then-Deputy Director Robin Ewing – created as a student platform on our department webpage:

Such reporting assignments – and tangible, published results – went over so well with students and faculty, that HKBU invited me to return to Hong Kong to teach the following fall semester. However, to once again be away from my family for nearly four months – even though, my wife and kids had visited me for one week, midway through the semester – would be too much to do a second time.

So, I asked the program’s leaders: Could I come for a shorter visit?

This became the foundation for a position that HKBU created especially for me and my short-term visits: they called me Super Tutor. But before I explain my next teaching assignment, in Fall 2010, let me share more about my initial impressions of Hong Kong, my early interactions with the students, and what I learned from them about China itself. Including, a substantial amount of fresh writing.

Hong Kong Blogging

As you see, I’m a fervent advocate of show, don’t tell. So, let me share a slew of blog-posts I wrote during my Fall 2009 semester in Hong Kong. Before my arrival – viewing it as a “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity – I decided to do what I’d never done before: chronicle my entire experience.

Back then, I had no inkling that my HKBU colleagues might invite me to return to teach, nor that my wife would even allow me a second stint. However, I knew I had the perfect platform for such storytelling: By then I’d created my own website: Jordan Ink. – New Stories from The Old World.

In Chapter Twenty-One: How I First Built My Brand & Thought Leadership, I explained how this platform proved invaluable, evolving to serve many vital functions, both personally and professionally.

From Hong Kong, I churned out a whopping 30-plus dispatches. (When looking back to count, I was surprised by the output.) After all, I enjoyed the experiment: my first time writing in a travelogue style. As if penning postcards or dispatches from a foreign land, stringing them together to tell a story.

I even branded my travelogue series with its own name: From East to East. Get it? From Eastern Europe to The Far East. (Perhaps I was trying too hard to be clever.)

These Postcards were a blend of fresh sensations: Through the eyes of an American exploring the Far East for the first time. The similarities and differences I saw, especially when comparing them with my years of living and working among the diverse peoples of post-Communist Central and Eastern Europe. From there, I’d detail some of my fresh insights and lessons-learned from teaching the Chinese – during our relatively brief, but absolutely intensive, time together, over the course of a full semester.

Beyond my website, I published some of these Postcards on the platform of a terrific new literary webzine, The Mantle. More on how I met The Mantle’s publisher, Shaun Randol, coming soon in Chapter Twenty-Three: Penning Postcards – where I’ll also explain the format I’d develop to produce these journalistic portraits. For now, though, I’ll post these pieces below, among all my dispatches.

Included among them, I’ll insert the one piece of Foreign Reporting I produced from Hong Kong for one of my established media clients, The Global Post. I already posted the essay for Nieman Reports on my entire teaching experience. Beyond that, farther below I’ll even publish a photo-essay that I shot of a later group of my HKBU students. But here now is From East to East, starting with my intro:

The blog below documents my Fall 2009 semester of teaching journalism?in Hong Kong, as a Visiting Scholar at?Hong Kong Baptist University. I thought of calling?this blend of light and serious observations?One Hundred Days in Hong Kong. (Though it was actually 108.) But because I’ve spent most of the past 16 years in ex-Communist Eastern Europe … my life and journalistic experiences there were the inevitable measuring-stick for fresh encounters in China. So, I dub this blog:?From East to East!

A quick break from the Postcards. Being in Hong Kong inspired me so much, I wanted to produce at least one serious piece of reportage during my semester-long stint in the city. For two reasons. First, to “plant my flag” as a Foreign Correspondent in one more exotic, far-flung locale.

Second, I wanted to show-not-tell my HKBU students: This is how the pros do it. So, even as I assigned my students a reporting project pegged to the 60th anniversary of modern China’s founding, I pitched a client using the same timely hook – as a way to “open a window” onto the strained tensions between many Hong Kongers and their new overlords in Beijing.

My article was published by The Global Post, which later merged into Public Radio International (and is now known as PRX). Here’s how the piece appeared online:

After publishing that piece, I continued to blog about my HKBU students:

The Chinese Most Like Us

Earlier in this chapter, I shared my initial, indelible impressions of my Chinese grad students. But now I’d like to share a lasting, life-altering insight that hit me as the semester drew to a close: They’re the Chinese “most like us.” Let me explain.

First, this rare chance to get to know each student over a full, 15-week semester enabled me to humanize the Chinese. It opened my eyes onto an entire people, just as living in Budapest and Bratislava had taught me about the unique tribes of Central Europeans, like the Hungarians, Slovaks and Czechs.

That’s no small feat. Despite our ever-shrinking world, too many walls still separate us. In this era, we should do what we can to not only boost a child’s IQ, but their EQ (Emotional Quotient), and even their CQ – their Cultural Quotient. This means empathetic, sincere Cross-Cultural Communications.

Moreover, as we peer beyond our borders, or our shores, we tend to dehumanize entire societies monolithically – generalizing about “the other.” We did this during the Cold War, regarding “the Russians” or “the Soviets.” Then during the post-9/11 era, toward “the Muslims” or “the Arabs.”

Today, too, when we refer to the emerging superpower of China. We typically speak of “the Chinese” (a population of some 1.4 billion, equal to a jaw-dropping 20% of humanity), yet rarely ponder what I call our shared humanity. Rarely do we put a name to a face, or place a face on the people.

For me, teaching the Chinese in 2009 – and working with Chinese colleagues – changed all that.

Even today, fifteen years later, I’m reminded of one thing I learned about the Chinese: Many of them may not fully appreciate their nation’s newfound muscularity on the global stage, in every way that matters. Nor do many grasp why this assertiveness might generate concern, if not fear.

At risk that I myself am generalizing, I’ll state my belief that the Chinese must build more bridges to the rest of the world: not the infrastructure kind, but bridges of Cross-Cultural Communications.

It’s not just me who thinks so, but quite a few Chinese themselves. More Chinese leaders now at least recognize the need for such bridges. Over the years since I began following China closely, I’ve often heard them lament how they feel misunderstood or unfairly treated: We must do a better job of explaining China to the world. Though, they often blur the line between explanation and propaganda.

Even President Xi Jinping has advocated that “we must tell China stories better.” Like in June 2021, when he exhorted fellow Communist Party members to improve international communications:

Immodestly speaking, my MJ Method helps the Chinese do that – in a non-propagandistic way. Beyond the issue of what to say and how to say it, there’s the question of who can say it. And do it well. Not just effectively, persuasively and impactfully, but to put a human face on the Chinese.

Enter, my HK students. They may be ideal candidates for the job. Indeed, during that first semester, it gradually dawned on me: they’re “the Chinese most like us.” This was further reinforced once I moved to mainland China in 2015 and taught at universities in Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou.

How do I define “most like us”? Meaning, more and more of these young Chinese have planted a foot in both worlds – the Western as well as their own. Consider these growing trends among them:

*Their ability to do more than merely speak English, but communicate well in our lingua franca.

*Their courage to leave the mainland, for study or work abroad, engaging with new cultures.

*Their increasing financial means and willingness to travel, exploring alien, unfamiliar cultures.

*Their Internet savviness, to routinely leap China’s domestic Great Firewall, to absorb news and views far more diverse than what the majority receive via state-censored mainstream and social media.

I could see how my students, on an individual level, were becoming de facto ambassadors, wherever they’d venture abroad. Whether it would be for travel, study or to work among foreigners; whether working in media, Communications, business, or anything else; whether communicating through the spoken or written word, in English or any other foreign language they’re rapidly embracing.

To many foreigners, they’ll be the face of modern China. In turn, these educated Chinese help explain China, as well as Chinese society, to an international community that must learn more about both – considering that China is no longer an “emerging” global superpower, but has fully emerged.

The converse is also true: These young Chinese can help explain the world, and interpret the international community’s actions, to fellow Chinese. Such as their family and friends back home, who may remain immersed in Chinese-only society, culturally and linguistically. Disconnected from the rest of the world. Perhaps unable to travel abroad. Or to speak English. Or to scale the wall of censorship.

That’s why, ever since, whenever I meet new groups of Chinese students, I try to inspire them with a big-picture perspective of why exactly I believe they matter, to me and many others: China needs you. The world needs you. Be a human bridge between Chinese society and the rest of us.

Revelations like these inspired me to further document my experiences with the Chinese – while simultaneously building my brand. Here’s my Spring 2010 essay for Harvard’s Nieman Reports:

Students Who Stand Out

I adored my Chinese students, as a whole. Yet there were a handful who touched me so deeply, we remain a part of each other’s life, up through today. For example, there’s Zhuo Yang, known to me by his English name, Young. Soon after he graduated, Young became a News Assistant for the NPR Correspondent in Shanghai. Several years later, he did the same for the BBC Correspondent in Shanghai.

I visited Young many times during these years. We’d always talk for hours. Young even invited me to his hometown of Lanzhou, in Gansu Providence. I’ll never forget spending time with his parents and childhood friends; I was even fortunate enough to have him invite me to his friend’s wedding.

While Young would refer to himself as my Little Brother, I’ll never forget how he once articulated his respect: In China, we say “A teacher once is a teacher for life.” Young photo and quote!?

I’ll always love that. In the years since, I’ve also grown fond of Young’s wife, Zhan, who was pursuing her PhD in International Law and Russian Language, at Shanghai International Studies University – during the semester I taught there. My kids even dined once with Young and Zhan.

Another student from that first year with whom I’ve maintained a friendship ever since is Xiaoyun Gao, known to me as May. She later moved to America with her husband and now has two daughters. May has turned to me for counsel at serious crossroads in her life, from advice about a speech she had to deliver, to handling a tricky situation with her American boss – and career decisions.

May is also one of my biggest fans, like when she listened to a public Zoom lecture I delivered in 2021, during COVID, about what I describe as China’s Global Communications Challenge. During the Q&A session, she posed a question. Later, on my LinkedIn platform, May wrote this recommendation:?

With my Chinese students, the mutual trust and respect was such that in Fall 2011 – when I returned to HKBU for my third stint as Visiting Scholar – I joined one star pupil from the Fall 2009 semester on a serious reporting assignment.

Shirley Zhao had since become a staffwriter for the local magazine, Time Out Hong Kong. Gung-ho to please her employer, Shirley planned an ambitious follow-up story to one of China’s most traumatic – and controversial – accidents: In July 2011, a new high-speed train had crashed in the eastern city of Wenzhou, reportedly killing 40 people. That sparked intense online debate among Chinese netizens as to whether the country was modernizing too quickly.

I agreed to travel with Shirley as a shoulder-to-shoulder coach: for this touchy topic, we brainstormed reporting and interviewing strategies throughout the journey. I also wanted to help keep an eye out for her, because with the mainland authorities sensitive to accusations of a “cover-up,” we sensed that it might be risky for her to report such a contentious story alone.

At the same time, I served as Shirley’s photographer. Happily so, as I tried to document the journey as a photojournalist might. In fact, when Time Out Hong Kong published Shirley’s article, they gave me a shout-out at the bottom of her story: Additional reporting and images: Michael J. Jordan.

Here’s how the piece now appears online, though it was originally published in the magazine:

For some reason, I can no longer see any of my photos published in the web version. However, I preserved that quartet by publishing them on my From East to East blog (along with their captions):

The Super Tutor

After that short detour, let’s return to my teaching at HKBU.

Again, the Fall 2009 semester was so successful, the faculty invited me back. To avoid leaving my wife and three young children for too long, in Fall 2010, my colleagues flexibly arranged for a six-week stint – by creating a unique position as Super Tutor, to all 100-plus grad students in that year’s program.

The program already brought in pros they referred to as Tutors: working journalists in Hong Kong who’d meet regularly with small groups of our students to describe their experiences, share insights and tackle any challenges the students might face within their class reporting assignments.

However, my role as Super Tutor was different. During my limited time, HKBU wanted me to teach meaningful journalism to each of their students. Once again, I developed a new curriculum tailored to this challenge, crafting an intensive project that I called Foreign Reporting from Hong Kong. My objective: teach them to think and act like Foreign Correspondents, writing for faraway readers.

Once more, this played to not only my strength, but to what I found to be one of the city’s greatest appeals: since the British colonial period, HK has been a multi-cultural melting-pot of, as well as a magnet for, diverse communities. So, I innovated from my previous year’s curriculum, focusing in on the Minority Affairs Reportingcomponent.

As always, I gave each student – who were predominantly ethnic-Han Chinese from the mainland – a choice to parachute into any immigrant, refugee or ethnic HK community that piqued their curiosity. (In later Super Tutor stints, I’d also allow students the option to report on the growing community of mainland-Chinese migrant-workers in HK – and rising tensions with local Chinese.)

However, the logistics of simultaneously teaching something impactful to so many students, over such a short period of time, required Rubik’s Cube-like dexterity. My HKBU colleagues organized my schedule so that I could coach 20 tutorial groups, with five or six students in each.

Monday through Friday, I’d meet different groups each morning and afternoon, around a table, for roughly three hours each time. I’d meet the first 10 groups one week; the other 10 groups the next. Then, repeat the fortnightly cycle, to coach each group – and each student – three times.

How to make my curriculum work effectively? During our first session, I’d explain all the necessary skills and strategies, for each step of the process. Next, let them choose which of HK’s migrant, immigrant, or refugee community to explore. Two caveats: It had to be someone “unlike them” – to force each out of their comfort-zone. Second, I required them to conduct their interviews in English.

They each had two weeks until our next meeting. During the interim, with their target-community in mind, I required them to conduct relevant background research and identify pressing issues affecting that community. At our second session, around the same table, one by one, I’d lead group discussion as we’d brainstorm clearer story angles, whom to interview, where to visit, and so on.

Next, I’d give them one week to report the story from the streets – and interview communal figures. Then, write up their first draft: 600 to 800 words in length, as with our limited time, I believe that’s enough space to produce a respectable, value-adding snapshot of any issue or situation.

They’d then email me their first draft, and I’d rigorously critique each story, in writing. All 100-plus stories. During our third and final session, I’d once again go around the circle, one by one, orally critiquing each story, which would reinforce my written critique. Combined, these two critiques would provide a clear, detailed roadmap for how each of my Student-Journalists could improve their story.

With so much individualized attention on their work, that’s why each tutorial lasted three hours. Yet, as the Brits say, “The proof is in the pudding.” Here’s a screenshot of the Fall 2010 stories: XXX

Overall, this intensive immersion worked. Imperfectly. But it worked. Each student consumed a bite of International Journalism, aimed at a foreign audience. Moreover, they generated a unique story for their portfolio – showcasing for future employers their capabilities to research, interview and write.

For me, though, it was exhausting: I felt as if my brain were running an intellectual marathon, for six straight weeks. Practically repeating every day, over and over, like the film Groundhog Day. The third of three fortnights was particularly grueling: teaching all day, critiquing stories deep into the night.

Nevertheless, I loved it – thanks to the students. It was a meaningful, eye-opening assignment, squeezed into three sessions. With positive student feedback conveyed to my faculty colleagues, too, the HKBU invitations continued. This gig became my annual specialty for another five years. I’m proud to have been a seven-time Visiting Scholar at Hong Kong Baptist University, from 2009 to 2016. Even during the four years we lived in Lesotho, from 2011 to 2015, I flew annually from Johannesburg to HK.

Meanwhile, I appreciated how the stories they wrote effectively “opened a window” onto not only the community, but Hong Kong and modern-day China, too – for a smart, curious foreign audience.

With that in mind, this short-course became the foundation for two more curricula I’d develop. First, for the Postcard-style reportage I myself produced from HK, then would soon teach to new groups, as described in the upcoming Chapter Twenty-Three. Second, once I moved to mainland China in 2015, it served as a template for my new teachings in everything from Journalism workshops to semester-long university courses that I dubbed Storytelling from China. (More on that farther below.)

That said, I actually got my first taste of mainland teaching in 2010 – five years before moving there – during that second stint in Hong Kong. An HKBU colleague invited me to visit a Chinese university where he taught part-time, which was located in the city of Zhuhai, just across the South China Sea. Here’s the series of four dispatches I wrote back then about both my experience and my colleague:

https://jordanink.wordpress.com/2010/10/20/a-break-from-china-bashing/

https://jordanink.wordpress.com/2010/10/20/the-old-china-hand/

https://jordanink.wordpress.com/2010/10/20/glimpse-a-different-china/

https://jordanink.wordpress.com/2010/10/20/shmoozing-the-chinese/

In Fall 2011, I generated a few more dispatches from HK – plus, a photo-essay of my students.

https://jordanink.wordpress.com/2011/11/11/confessions-of-a-china-addict/

https://www.themantle.com/international-affairs/confessions-china-addict

https://jordanink.wordpress.com/2011/11/11/the-future-face-of-chinese-media/

https://jordanink.wordpress.com/2011/11/11/dispensing-the-tough-love/

A Builder of Bridges

This deepening interaction with my HKBU students not only made me realize how important these young Chinese were to the future of China’s international relations – as “the Chinese most like us” – but how thrilling it’d be to play a small but significant role in this process, by impacting some of them.

Indeed, once I realized the human-bridge potential within each of my Chinese students, it wasn’t long before I visualized myself as helping to build that bridge of communication and understanding. I began to think through how my skills and strategies might specifically help them achieve that objective. Rather than purely teach the Journalism I wanted, in a self-centric way, I’d empathetically crafted a curriculum with skills and strategies that might benefit them and their career, today and in the future.

At the same time, I was now aware that relatively few of my Chinese students would actually enter the world of Chinese state media. They seemed to have enthusiastically embraced the more independent-minded, freely-expressed form of journalism that HKBU taught them; I couldn’t imagine too many would take a step back and willingly join a more straightjacketed form.

Or, if they did join state-run media, they might not stay long, due to various other pressures: financial, political, familial, marital, and so on. Regardless of their career paths, I sensed that each HKBU student was likely to at least assume some form of professional communicator. At this point, those were their most marketable skills. In that case, I’d do my part to equip them with a relevant, apropos skillset.

That said, rather than teach hardcore skills of an American-style “watchdog” journalist – who doggedly demands accountability from an elected or appointed leader, for their words and deeds – I was mulling how to share tactics and techniques with those Chinese students who intended to return to the mainland, which could prevent them from getting into trouble with the authorities. (More below.)

Here’s one quick example: a screenshot of my Storytelling from China curriculum, which I taught at Beijing Foreign Studies University, in 2016. This was part of a Master’s in International Multimedia Journalism program that was run by a British educational partner, the University of Bolton.?

At the heart of these curricula is the same MJ Method philosophy. The process starts with: consider who exactly our audience is, why exactly they’re our audience, what they want and need from us, and so on. (I first explored this in Chapter Five: What Audiences Need.)

Again, it’s worth reminding ourselves that our audience isn’t everyone. Not every foreigner cares enough to learn about faraway locales like Hong Kong or Beijing. In fact, from my experience, relatively few people around the world care about different cultures, international affairs, global issues, etc.

Instead, as I noted in Chapter Five, our target-audience is largely “elite”: smart and curious, yet also skeptical and generally non-expert. They may have at least one motive to care about a place like China, which may be educational, professional, spiritual, cultural, political, economic, travel, and so on.

How to reach that audience? As Chapter Five explains, my blueprint for how to effectively and persuasively “build a bridge” of communications – to impact smart, skeptical foreigners – includes vital elements. Credible evidencecan influence their mind. Humanizing content can touch their heart. And sufficient relevant context – of carefully chosen details – can make it more accessible to non-experts.

In short, the humanized, contextualized, evidence-based storytelling I taught my HKBU students further honed my approach to bridge-building – and how to explain a situation over here to an audience over there. Thus, if my MJ Method is a builder of bridges, I’m proud to consider myself a bridge-builder.

A Bridge to Central Europe, Too

Between my successful trainings in Prague and teachings in Hong Kong, the TOL team also spotted my bridge-building potential. Once I told them I’d be moving to Beijing in 2015, my colleagues in Prague asked me to help recruit Chinese universities, which might send some students for TOL trainings. Like many other Western educational institutions, TOL hoped for bountiful revenue-streams from China.

However, as I’d learn, recruitment is hard – and I didn’t enjoy it much. I’m a Journalist and Educator, not a salesman. It’s one thing for me to “sell” and promote the value of my own products and services, through my story ideas, or project proposals, or even the benefits of this book.

To me, though, that doesn’t require a hard-sell: as my experience deepened and confidence grew, my skills and strategies began to “sell themselves.” On the other hand, pitching a one-week- program in a faraway country required a hard-sell. Especially to university administrators who also bear responsibility for the welfare of their students. That demands true salesmanship to clinch a deal.

Nevertheless, my recruiting hooked one large fish: Shanghai International Studies University. Not only did I convince SISU to send us students during the Summer of 2015 – where they entrusted me to lead their group of young Chinese undergraduates – but my relationship with the Chinese SISU faculty also bloomed: they later invited me to teach in Shanghai for one semester, which I did in Fall 2017.

Following my format, I guided the SISU students through the advanced preparation, from their home, then coached them on the ground, in Prague. Here’s the introduction I wrote about them for the TOL website (which was translated into Chinese); then, the page we created to publish all their stories:

The?following pieces of international reporting were generated by a remarkable group of Chinese Student-Journalists. They hail from the?Shanghai International Studies University?(SISU)?– one of China’s?most prestigious schools for foreign languages?– and parachuted into Prague in July 2015 to produce this reportage in what is their second, third, even fourth language.

The?fact these stories aren’t of the highest quality or professionalism is beside the point: more noteworthy is that each of these 15 brave young Chinese produced an actual story – though most were still only 18 or 19 years old. And for many, this was their first time even traveling outside of China!

That’s why we left their stories unedited, to show what they were capable of producing – while being led through the process by TOL Trainers. Moreover, with the link to?the SISU Stories page, the students now have an impressive published clip for their portfolio, in English, to show editors, which may help them land an internship or their first job after graduation.

If?some of you visiting this page are yourselves Chinese students or Chinese professors, and wonder if you – or your students – could produce real foreign-reporting from an alien land like the Czech Republic, be reassured:?If these SISU students?could do it, so can you (and yours).

Feel?free to contact us at?[email protected]?to learn more about our training programs.

And now, here are the 15 stories that these 15 students produced:

Lastly, speaking of recruitment, TOL eventually included me within some of their own marketing materials, like this promotional video specifically aimed at attracting Chinese students: