I recently received some information from Tom, our friend from the Library Project, sent us some fantastic news about the Library Project and its latest developments.

“The past three months have far exceeded the The Library Project’s goals and expectations. There is so much to share - from our new home in Xi’an, China to an incredible list of schools benefiting from our support - so let’s get started.

“In September, The Library Project donated our first library to a Chinese countryside elementary school. The Xin Xing Elementary School is located an hour outside of Xi’an, in the ShaanXi Province. Over 500 students in grades 1-6 attend the Xin Xing Elementary School. During our pre assessment we discovered the school library’s uninviting environment and general lack of age appropriate books. Most of the books in the existing library were written for high school or university students with a total of less than 50 children’s books for grades 1-3.

“The Library Project provided 500 children’s books for grades 1-3 and a child-safe reading area with comfortable and colorful furniture. We provided a wide range of children’s books including: history, science, short stories, fairy tales, “pinyin” books for very young readers, children’s dictionaries, children’s reference books, and an assortment of comic books. We also provided a full set of children’s encyclopedias for older students. Every book was in full color and of the highest quality. The Library Project provided colorful child-safe tables and chairs, posters and a globe to populate the previously empty room. Once the library was completed, we held a party to celebrate our accomplishments with the children. Twenty “star” students were chosen to participate in arts, crafts and games. One of our activities had the children draw their “dream library”. We learned that most children want a library located outside consisting of colorful books which float in the air. (We’re working on that concept for a future library.)

“Without a doubt The Library Project has improved the level of education that the Xin Xing Elementary School provides to its students.

“We didn’t stop there. In October The Library Project completed a phenomenal feat of donating three libraries in three days. The libraries are located at three different elementary schools in the countryside of Xi’an: the Si Qing Elementary School, Bai Lu Yuan Elementary School and Mi Cun Elementary School. Furthermore, all the items donated were upgraded from our previous library. We provided higher quality books, better seating, sturdy wooden tables and bookshelves custom made at a local factory, and we even found cacti and plants to put on the tables and shelving.

“Providing three libraries in three days pushed us both mentally and physically. We had a team of over 20 volunteers helping with the delivery of the materials, setting up furniture, sorting books, and playing games with the kids in their new library. Through our experiences we learned this one simple fact: that when The Library Project arrives in a countryside school, the students go absolutely crazy. The madness usually begins when we pull up in our large truck and the children come running out of their classrooms.

“For our next goal, I need your help. In the past we have benefited one school at a time and now we are looking to help an entire school district. We want to make a clear IMPACT on the level of education an entire school district will be able to offer its students. Our first school district we would like to help will be the Ba Qiao School District (the same school district where our last three elementary schools were located).

“The Ba Qiao School District is an hour outside of the Xi’an city center. This area was hit very hard by the closure of state run factories over the past twenty years. Because of the closures and the lack of work, the average annual income is less than 2,000 RMB ($266), and there is very little hope that things will change for the better in the future. To learn more about the Ba Qiao School District, please click here.

“If you are interested in Adopting a Library or adopting a group of schools through our Adopting a School District programs, please click here for more information. You can also send me an email at [*tom@library-project.org* ] to ask any questions about the library adoption process.

“Furthermore, our website has been updated and improved to help both large and small donors have a better idea of exactly how their financial contributions are put to work. We also added an Adopt a Library page for those who would like to provide an entire elementary school with a library. The page also contains information on the Ba Qiao School District. Everyone who donates to the Adopt a School or Adopt a School District programs will receive a Library Completion Report for the specific library that you supported, along with a beautiful hardcover book celebrating our past libraries and the communities and schools we have worked in.

“I am very happy to announce two new additions to The Library Project’s team. Jenny Wang is our first full time employee in China. Jenny is from Hunan Province and has lived in Xi’an for the past ten years. A short list of some of her accomplishments these past few months have been getting us a 20 - 65% discount on children’s books at the country’s largest chain of bookstores, managing our growing list of partners in China, spearheading the completion of our first four libraries in Chinese countryside elementary schools, and doing non-stop assessments of schools and orphanages. Welcome aboard Jenny!

“I am also very happy to announce that Kevin Kruse has joined our Board of Directors. Kevin Kruse joined in August and has been an incredible addition to the team. Kevin has been instrumental in helping create a solid business foundation for The Library Project. He was also our first donor to support our Adopt a School District program. To learn more about Kevin, please check out his bio by clicking here. Welcome Kevin!

“Lastly, please check out some of our new products for the holiday season. We created 50 book, 100 book, 250 book and 500 book gift cards available at $1 a book. Each card also has a beautiful picture of a past library we have donated. The gift cards are a perfect holiday gift idea. To check out our new online store, please click here.

“Your help is greatly appreciated. Click here to make a donation and help give the gift of education and opportunity to a child in Asia. As a result of your donation you will receive photos and a Library Completion Report on the library you helped make a reality. Your donation truly does make a difference.

“The Library Project is a non-profit organization. Your donation is 100% tax deductible. Thank you in advance for your kind support of our efforts.”

Sincerely,
Thomas Stader
The Library Project
Founder

Buddhist Temple: Daily China Photo

中文

This week’s photos come to us from Lydia Kong, a student in the US, and her trip to Tibet. First here is her picture of a temple at Baijusi in Tibet.

Check here this week to see more photos from Lydia and her trip to Tibet!  And to see your photos here, send them to [*photos@blogofdreams.com *] or [*dawei@blogofdreams.com *].

Read on »

中文

This past weekend I traveled to Shanghai in order to attend the 2007 China Education Expo, an annual traveling expo showcasing international study abroad opportunities for Chinese students. While there, I also had the chance to catch up with several bloggers, speak with Steve Feld, the Executive Director the University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business, and spend some time with Christine Lu of the China Business Network. I have to admit that serendipity seemed to follow me as I met up with a number of people, from a helpful and friendly group of Casablancan businessmen on the plane to the Chinese watch salesman that helped me find an Internet Bar when I needed it most.

This week I’ll be writing stories about my adventures and some of the fantastic dreamers I met in my few short days in Shanghai. Photos and maps will follow. Unfortunately, my camera battery died a quick, painless death on this trip, but others have been generous enough to donate their own photos.

Photo courtesy of Ken Yip.

PS–My regrets to missing Chris Carr of Cal Poly MBA Trip’s latest visit. He was in Beijing and I was not able to meet up with him to hear about the latest on his MBA program in California.

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中文 

A few months ago, Yanzhi and I met Thomas Stader, the man who created The Library Project. His project donates books and libraries to underprivileged schools and orphanages in the developing world. Stader created this project because he believes education is the key motivator to breaking the cycle of poverty that exists in the developing world. For him, education is change. The Library Project accomplishes its work by getting the local community involved through book drives and awareness raising, establishing bi-lingual libraries, and partnering with local orphanages and schools.

I recently received a note from Thomas that he has built a new library, and I’d like to share what he sent to us.

“Everyone at The Library Project are very excited to announce that we have provided our first library to a countryside elementary school in China.

“There are over 500 students, grades 1-6 that attend the Xin Xing Elementary School. One third of the students that attend Xin Xing Elementary School are worker children. Worker people are people that do manual labor in China. Their jobs can be anything from building highways to building apartment blocks. They tend to be migratory, going where the work is, and once the work is finished they pick their family up and go again where the work is. Because the area around the Xin Xing Elementary School was declared a Special Development Zone by the Central Government, there has been an influx of Worker Families and their children. As you can imagine, this puts an added strain on the school budget that the administration must balance at the Xin Xing Elementary School.

“Even with this added strain, the Xin Xing Elementary School has an incredible school administration with the Vice Principle named Mr. Zhong being a key player. We met Mr. Zhong one day during the Summer Break when we showed up unannounced and he welcomed us at the gate. He was alone, cleaning the school in preparation for the approaching Fall Semester.

“During our Pre Assessment we found the school library located in a dirty room on the fourth floor of the school. Even though it was dirty, the books were all very well kept, in new book shelves the Central Government had just provided. Their collection of books numbered 3,000. This sounds like a very impressive number, but the books they had in the library were almost completely inappropriate for the children attending the elementary school. Most books were written for High School or University students, or were published in the 1970s and were showing their age. There were no more than 50 children’s books for grades 1-3. The library room also lacked any comfortable furniture for the children sit on.

“On September 25, 2007, The Library Project provided 500 children’s books for grades 1-3, and also a child safe reading area with comfortable and colorful furniture for the children to be able to sit down and read a book. We also provided a full set of children’s encyclopedias for the older learners. After the furniture and books were setup, we held a party to celebrate the children’s new library. Twenty “star” students were chosen to participate in arts, crafts and games. Everyone had a great time.

“Most importantly, the administration really saw how much the children enjoyed their new library. The Xin Xing Elementary School administration made a plan to make sure every class has an opportunity to use the library once a week.

“Without a doubt The Library Project has improved the level of education that the school provides to its students.”

If you have any questions, please contact Thomas Stader at: [*tom@library-project.org *].

Read on »

Yangshuo China Adoption: A Daily China Travel Photo

中文

This begins week 2 of our featured photographers series. This week we will see pictures from Yauly, an Israeli photographer who has taken a number of pictures of China. Her first picture in our series is from her travels in Yangshuo:

Yauly had this to say about the photo:

“[This photo] was taken in a small village near Yangshuo. While walking there, we saw those two kids and waved to them to say hello. The young one was really scared of us, started to cry and ran away. On our way back she was fine and looked at us with curiosity, still hiding behind her friend. When we tried to understand why she was so frightened, we found out that a child from this village was adopted by foreigners and she thought we might take her away.”

To see your photos here, send them to [*photos@blogofdreams.com *] or [*dawei@blogofdreams.com*].

Read on »

欲览中文，请点击这里

One of the most useful pieces of advice I ever received from a professor was during my sophomore year, in a class called Abstract Algebra. The math was so abstract, in fact, that it is still hard for me to imagine how I made it through that class in one piece. This Professor, however, was able to inspire me, no matter how difficult the assignment, to continue solving problems deep into the night. And his main advice was always this: “Mathematicians spend most of their time being wrong.” And what he meant was that anyone involved in taking risks–mathematicians trying to solve mathematical problems, writers crafting stories, and anyone trying to make their dreams come true–is going to spend much of their time banging their head against a wall, struggling with problems that seem beyond one’s ability to handle. And what I find I need, as I bang my own head against writing this blog, are stories and thoughts from people who have the courage to take risks and dream.

Meet Randy Pausch. I’m not sure exactly how he found his way into my electronic stumbling, but once Yanzhi and I found him, we were hooked. I watched diligently for the first two minutes, but when he said, “The inspiration and permission to dream is huge,” I knew I had found something real. As I watched his story, I knew that his message was something that needed to be on this blog.

Though there were many different and valuable parts to his lesson a lot of different parts to his message, a few pieces really stood out for me. In particular, Professor Pausch struck a cord when he spoke about walls. In China, I find so often that my students, my colleagues, and everyone here eventually comes up against the Great Walls of China. They are walls of silence, walls of insecurity and distrust, or walls of insurmountable difficulty, but they exist for each of us, in real, personal ways. I have watched Coffee, Ms. Yue, Yanzhi, our interns, and myself struggle against these different walls, and each day I am impressed with the courage of other people to stand against walls so much deeper, higher, and more entrenched than my own. Despite all this, standing against walls is only standing, and for me, we need ways around the wall–this is where Randy Pausch came in.

What I found in Professor Pausch’s lecture is not a way around the wall: I do think that only individuals can walk around or break through their own walls, though they can certainly receive help from others. And that offer to help is what people need most. What Professor Pausch’s lecture offers is an invitation to transform these walls into bridges. As he says, “The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t it badly enough.” I hope that each of our readers can watch these videos and find in his story, like I did, an imaginative and lively story about finding your dreams and making them come true.

We’ll continue to post these lectures as a feature on our blog. Professor, thank you for telling stories about people striving and achieving their dreams.

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We’ve been featured in 21st Century! Read the story here and tell us what you think:

China Dreamblogue 21st century

Thanks to Charlie Shifflett for his faithful reporting.

In a series of articles about our sponsors, we’ve decided to begin with The China Business Network, a website devoted to helping entrepreneurs in China make important business connections and create exciting opportunities here in China. Created by Christine Lu, The China Business Network has a large media, podcast and content network it uses to promote businesses seeking to operate in China. Now that network can help our sponsors, too.

The China Dreamblogue has partnered with The China Business Network, and now our sponsors will have the opportunity to enjoy an interview on their networks, and readers can look forward to regular updates about the Dreamblogue on CBN.

Interested in helping to sponsor the Dreamblogue? There are several things you can do.

First, WE DO NOT ACCEPT DONATIONS. If you are interested in donating money, please contact one of the charities we support, The Library Project (run through the 501(c)3 charity Nomadic Marketing) or The Reading Tub. The China Dreamblogue offers services-for-fee and service-for-service exchanges with sponsors. If you are interested in becoming a sponsor, we are looking for the following things:

• Individuals and Businesses: Link to us and favorite is on Technorati by clicking on the tab in our sidebar!

• We badly need 2 laptop computers–One of the current computers running the Blog of Dreams, Yanzhi’s prized Macbook, suffered a cracked screen and our second laptop caught a fatal virus, SO we are searching for laptop computers that will help us continue to create the Dreamblogue and maintain its content and projects for you while we travel.

• 2 high quality cameras to help us document the beauty of the people and places in China we encounter.
• 1 high quality digital movie camera to help us record the stories of the dreamers we meet along the way
• audio and video editing software to help us present the dreamers’ stories to you
• Educational institutions in the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand interested in attracting talented Chinese students to their universities
• Travel insurance to help keep us and the dreams we carry safe as we travel
• Airplane flights and acomodations from a travel company willing to help us arrange the legs of our journey
• Quality English-language training centers to help students prepare for their journeys to study abroad
• Other businesses willing to help individual dreamers achieve their dreams

Please note that we will give away all of the equipment and extra supplies at the end of the China Dreamblogue travels to our supporters and dreamers.

Interested parties can read more about sponsorship details here: Travel China Blog Proposal. Contact [*dawei@blogofdreams.com *] or [*yanzhi@blogofdreams.com *] if you or your organization are interested.

Keep Dreaming.

Recently, I spoke with Coffee, a former student of Liu Yanzhi, about the scholarship she received and about the dreams she wants to achieve. As some of you know, Coffee is a university student in Guangzhou and lost her leg last year to cancer. Though she spent months out of school, she studied over summer to make sure she graduated on time, and has now received a $20,000 USD scholarship to study French and learn to how to become a UN translator. I wanted to share this conversation I had with Coffee.

Dawei: Tell us a little bit about the scholarship you received to study translation.

Coffee: Yeah，I should say‘ thank you’ to my French teacher, he is so kind. He has high expectation on us and so he is strict with us in class, but he is easy-going after classes. I know what it means the moment he decides to grant me this opportunity. I will not let him down. Of course I will grab this opportunity to improve my French proficiency.

Dawei: Will you tell us about your dreams for yourself and why you wanted to study translation?

Coffee: I am always ambitious, I want to learn more about the languages and the cultures about the world, and I want to be a bridge between China and other countries in the world, to be a translator. I am fond of French; Luckily, I got this chance, thanks to the kindness of one of my former teachers at my school. I am now taking French as a second foreign language, and I will keep improving it.

Dawei: What are your dreams for your family and community?

Coffee: Yeah, I’ve been dreaming of changing the condition of my family for a long time. Dad and Mum are now getting old, and they have been swinking all their lives, it’s high time I did something for them, I want to make their lives better, and enjoy their lives in their old ages. I am now living in a small village, it’s far away from Guangzhou, most of my peers receive a secondary school education, and then pour into the job world. I am the only one to get a college education in my village. I hope I can change all this, and to make more children get access to higher education.

Dawei: Dreams are often held back by fears. What is your biggest fear about your dreams, and how have you overcome it?

Coffee: I always tell myself not to put all the eggs in one basket. I am always trying different ways to do things better, to be frank，when striking for my dreams, I am not fear of anything. I have confidence on myself. And I wish I could get a job as a translator, that’s the first step of fulfilling my dreams.

Dawei: What do you encourage others to do in order to achieve their dreams?

Coffee: I want to do my best and to be excellent and to show people life is to be conquered however hard it is. As long as you have a will, nothing is difficult. It is important keeping optimistic while facing difficulties.

Dawei: What do you hope to do with your scholarship and after you complete your training?

Coffee: I will keep on learning , as the saying goes : It’s never to late to learn. It does not mean my French proficiency is good enough after attending the training, there are lots of things I need to learn about. I hope I can learn more during my work. And I know clearly that to be a good translator, I should keep renewing my knowledge.

Keep Dreaming:

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