海阔凭鱼跃，天高任鸟飞。前不久，全美华人文化教育基金会青少年爱心俱乐部 (ACCEF-YCC) 九名美国出生的华裔学生 “ABC” （America Born Chinese），利用今年暑期飞到了祖籍国的江西省会昌县展开了两个星期的访困助学活动。
如下为他们本次江西会昌行的系列报道：
一，展开希翼的翅膀
基金会十年义工，也为本次美国学生访问团领队的曾永煌先生表示，“这批首次涉足中国大陆的孩子们每到一处都很兴奋，感到明显地开阔了眼界，增长了见识。通过一路访问和开展活动，领略和感受到了中华文化的巨大魅力。”
另一位家长，在美国学校任多年中文老师的唐粉玲女士说：“他们就象从一个无太多机会接触中华文化、缺乏中文语言环境的“生硬的课堂” 里走出来，深入到一个鲜活生动的大课堂 — 我们中华文化的起源地。”
参加这次活动的同学：艾天真、陈佳思、陈倍杰、洪瑾怡、陆书越、赛依玲、郑在思、郑思行，九名同学来自圣地牙哥5所不同的学校，加上在会昌县当地的义工曾琰林同学，在全美华人文化教育基金会江西“一对一彩虹计划”负责人曾永煌带领下，分赴江西会昌县的小密乡和凉舟村等地展开访困助学的活动。
随行的除曾永煌、唐粉玲，还有吕晓炯、杨力、罗芳和陈钢，共六位家长。
九名ABC学生到了大陆后，以当地的简易陋屋作息，粗茶淡饭为香。他们觉得每天的生活很新奇，很开心，每到一处问这问那，好奇心大增。
小密乡【留守儿童乐园】创办者廖祖彬先生请来了当地的著名书法家结合演绎书法，给ABC们讲中国书法的发展史，令这些美国来的学生听得入迷。哇！原来 汉字里的 “门”、“山”、 “水”、“车”、“井”、“牛” 等等，最早是那样的呀！
当地学生就地取材制成的乐器演奏中国民乐，美妙动听的音乐令ABC们耳目一新。
随行家长杨力女士说，“孩子们走过当地的一些村镇，亲眼所见不少朝着富裕发展和已经变化了的事物，完全改变了原来存在他们脑海中的许多有关中国的概念。”
二．心手相连献爱心
江西会昌位于南昌以南500多公里，这里以山地丘陵为主，不宜耕作，经济发展水平落后。而交通不便，那些住在山里的家庭更是贫穷，勉强温饱，孩子们学习条件艰苦。因难有收入，老百姓们纷纷出外打工，乡村中留守儿童处处可见…….美国来的学生看到这一切，心理反差的冲击力如此强烈，相仿的年龄，触景生情，感同如己。
美国ABC学生的到来时正好遇上当地的夏日炎炎，闷热难当的气候、加上蚊虫叮咬，身体与环境产生自然产生各种不良反应，但他们此时只想快点能帮助这些生活在穷山僻壤的弟弟妹妹们。
他们分成两个小组，分赴两地开展活动，每组帮助60位孩童。上午他们到【留守儿童之家】开展教学，给孩子们讲故事，帮助他们学习英语，算术和自然科学文化，每次上完课就开展主题讨论，然后帮助弟弟妹妹们完成暑假作业。下午他们挨个走访ACCEF海外华人资助的40多名分布在各个地方的学生。
随行家长吕晓炯女士说：“一方面通过这次活动，美国来的大哥哥大姐姐们亲眼目睹了农村里的孩子们在如此艰苦的条件下特别珍惜学习，并从小就学会生活自理，同时帮大人做许多的家务，很受震动和感动。美国来的孩子们从对比，真正体会到生活条件的优越和困劣，提升了对感恩和关爱的理解。他们表示希望以后能再回去帮助这些弟弟妹妹们。”
两周结束了，挥手告别的时候，江西的弟弟妹妹们和美国的哥哥姐姐们手拉着手，一双双纯洁的眼睛中饱含了依依不舍的泪光……
这批ABC华裔学生归美后还纷纷将本次江西会昌之行写下感想：
1) 陆书越：
Some 7000 miles away from our native San Diego, there lies a little village called Xiaomi. It’s quiet, almost eerily so, composed of only a few winding streets and surrounded by farmland. You can walk in from one end and out the other in fifteen minutes, bookended by acres of greenery and reddish-ochre dirt. Every building in the town is run-down to some degree: building facades are stained or cracked, the streets are perpetually wet from not just rain, and odds and ends are piled on the ground outside doors. But every few days, this often-ghostly place bursts into uproarious life with a fairytale-like market as people from a several-mile radius flock to the center of town. Tents spring up to shade villagers hawking their wares—all manner of locally grown fruits and vegetables, spices and herbs, chickens and ducks, boots and clothing. The streets become so crowded that it’s near impossible for a car to drive through, and the air is ripe with yelling and honking. This is where I lived for two weeks the summer of 2017.
That summer, a group of nine students from five different schools in San Diego traveled to Jiangxi, a southeastern province of China. We were brought together by the Youth Care Club, a student-run branch of the larger non-profit American Chinese Culture and Education Foundation whose joint-coordinated fundraisers sponsor the education of underprivileged children in rural China—children that we, dazed and spoiled American teenagers, were going to visit. Here was the plan: a group of high schoolers and select chaperones would travel to rural China in the summer to meet some of the people there, to teach children English and have them teach us what their lives were like. We had volunteered to help out at two different 留守儿童乐园 (loosely translated: orphanages for kids who aren’t technically orphans but whose parents are working in the big city and left their children behind to be raised by extended relatives and thus are orphans nonetheless). It was the responsibility of us high-schoolers to plan a curriculum for each school, but at that point in time, we had little idea of what we were doing.
Life in a rural Chinese village is a far cry from the safe haven of suburban San Diego. We were situated in a hotel right above a barbershop (and owned by the barber) at one edge of the town. Each person had a roommate and a tiny two-person room with an even tinier bathroom. The mosquitos in Jiangxi are vicious. None of us went unscathed as insects plagued us from left and right—no amount of repellent would stop the bloodsuckers. To our consternation, the native Chinese inhabitants seem to face no such issue, and they seemed rather bewildered by the Americans’ struggle. Every once in awhile, the water in the pipes would turn an atrocious yellow-brown ranging from opaque rust to pale yellow. Predictably, this caused an uproar among the hotel residents. We were very hesitant to shower or brush our teeth in the sink for a few days. The barber shop/hotel owner laughed, explaining that the heavy rains in the area often washed down yellow-colored dirt, coloring the water.
At last, our months of planning were put to the test. The backbone of the trip was meant to be teaching, and teach we did. The outside walls of Xiaomi’s school/orphanage are yellow-tiled and smooth, two stories rising geometrically into the white sky. As we got out of the car that first morning, three little girls in sandals who had been peering into the building turned to gape at us. We asked them their names and ages—two of them chirped that they are eight and nine, but the third girl did not make a sound, instead staring at us a little fearfully. We entered the building. There were children at the table, all working incredibly studiously, perched on stools or rickety wooden benches, all their calligraphy brushes poised perfectly in their right hands. Some looked up and whispered to each other, staring at the funny foreigners now entering their territory. The principal of the school, Mr. Liao, keeps a collection of all of his students’ old work. He proudly showed us the shelves in a back room, stacked high with yellowing pages of Chinese brush characters. There were also piles of charcoal portraits, incredibly realistic and soulful, as if the pictures touched upon the very nature of the person being depicted. Most of the expressions on the drawn faces were serious, weary. We were led into a tiny shrine-like room, the walls totally covered in framed pictures—of the volunteer group responsible for this incredible establishment, portraits of the Liao family throughout the years. I wandered absently over to one wall only to be struck speechless by a familiar face looking out at me—in one photo, my dad is sitting side by side with the principal on a sofa in this very building. Sitting on my dad’s lap, smiling and chubby, is a toddler version of me. I had no recollection of visiting Xiaomi before, and was intensely disturbed to realize how my prior experiences in China had evidently had such little effect on me. What I remembered was the oppressive heat and mosquitos and seeming hordes of relatives—not visiting in person the students I had spent the last few years helping from across the sea. I have always felt like seeing something as jarring and difficult as children without parents, households with no income, would leave a bigger impact on my mind, yet it seems like my trip here years ago left none. This summer, though, was different.
Maybe it was being able to teach and interact with the kids, maybe it was the fact that we were working in teams, but I will never forget the sheer surprise and pride that rushed through me when I became recognized as a child’s teacher. Many of the students refer to us as just “teacher”. It’s a common practice in China—and although in this case it’s likely because it’s easier than remembering our full names, I feel a sense of accomplishment all the same. Every day at the orphanages/schools, we (the high schoolers) would help the native kids with their stacks and stacks of summer homework, give lectures about a certain aspect of American culture (e.g. holidays, tourist locations), and lead short English lessons. Most of these children had never been out of the immediate vicinity in this part of China, so we wanted to bring the world to them. It was miraculous watching many of the quiet, sullen kids come to life and actually talk to us. China’s education system does not have the class participation component that America so cherishes, but in no time these children were eagerly raising hands to answer questions and laughing with each other. Imagining that many of the Chinese students here actually retained a lot of knowledge of English grammar and American traditions from our games and lectures is seems unlikely; but I like to think that we showed them something of the world, that we helped inspire them in some way. They have certainly changed my perspective on the world.
On most afternoons, all the Americans would bundle into several cars and go around visiting some of the students that ACCEF sponsors. The ones in Jiangxi alone were scattered in villages all around. Each visit went much the same way: we stepped out of the car onto a dusty, unpaved road, chickens weaving between our feet as we walked toward the destination house. Often, piles of rubble that had once been an old house would crouch nearby. We were greeted by an aunt or uncle or grandparent, the child hanging back. The elderly people leapt to accommodate their guests—they never failed to offer watermelon, or some other kind of melon, or peanuts or peaches or whatever they had. Whatever they had, they would give to us. Their generosity when they had so little was astounding. Another commonality was that all of the children were far more mature and capable than any of us; circumstances dictated that they had to take on so much more responsibility than they should have for their age, and they took it in stride. They regularly cooked dinner, washed dishes, did laundry, and worked in the fields. It was expected of them. Many of the children seemed reluctant to smile. Even those whose walls were papered with awards and certificates were reticent. No one was rude or bragged. They were simply quiet and determined—determined, I hope, to succeed and escape the clutches of poverty. One of the favorite sayings of ACCEF volunteers is (loosely translated) “education can change your destiny”. The kids with shining, starry academic records seem to have taken that advice to heart, but the worst is the kids with the angry faces and hopeless eyes. I remember one boy especially who was well into his teenage years. He seemed bitter—and he should be. He is probably old enough to have realized how unlucky his situation is (parents long gone, sisters off working), how unfair life must be to have given him this while we are bathed in affluence and showered with the resources that allow us to succeed.
The lives of these people are unimaginable to us—there is no way to truly place ourselves in their shoes. We met kids whose parents had both been killed, in factory accidents or in random muggings, or whose relative had a debilitating illness that required all of their money and attention. In one case, a single mother was raising three kids, and the two boys both had leukemia. Most heartbreakingly, they had already found a bone marrow match in a city nearby, but the treatment cost far exceeded their capabilities. ACCEF funds the education of many children like these, but it doesn’t solve all of their life problems. One of our nighttime projects was to brainstorm solutions to the issue of poverty in rural China using the Future Problem Solving process, but every possibility seemed like wishful thinking. Massive educational reform? Overthrowing the government? Global communism? The process shall continue.
The duration of our stay seemed to be over in a heartbeat once I stepped off the plane into the sunny blue skies of California. My memories of it, like all memories do, became distant with time, like far-off mountains turned into clouds. It seems too important to forget completely though. How could I forget people who let nothing get in the way of their lives? People who understood more and did more than we, the privileged ones ever could. People who had next-to-nothing, but who gave everything. With some planning and deliberation, the Jiangxi trip could be repeated next year with another group of high schoolers to open another set of eyes. It’s in the thoughts of students like us and the dreams of students like them that can maybe change their lives—if not the world.
2）陈倍杰：
I thought the trip to China was a great learning experience for all of us. Growing up in San Diego, we were spoiled beyond the average American. First of all, nowhere in the United States is there better weather than San Diego. Going to Jiangxi taught us this simple fact that the rest of the world’s population suffers from harsh weather conditions like extreme heat and humidity. Additionally, there were many bugs and insects roaming around in Jiangxi. All of us that went on the trip returned home with arms and legs filled full of mosquito bites. We only stayed in jiangxi for two weeks, but the children native to Jiangxi have lived their whole lives in a place with mosquitoes. Looking at the basic living conditions of the Jiangxi locals really helped us feel thankful for what we already have at home. When we visited the homes of the children we were sponsoring and their bare rooms, I immediately appreciated simple things I took for granted in my day to day life such as on demand electricity for cooking and lighting up the home, easy to use air conditioning, clean drinking and running water, a comfortable bed, etc. All thoughts of what I still wanted in my life disappeared as I stared in awe at what the children coped with everyday. Although we were sponsoring for their educations, I couldn’t help feeling like they were the real heroes for being able to do so much with so little. The kids there were definitely younger than all of us, but proved that they are capable of a whole lot more. For example, every day after school, they would help do chores around the house. First cook the rice, then mop the floor, do the laundry, and finally wash the dishes. They could manage to do all of this, while finishing their homework on time. This put me in awe and motivated me to go do more chores around the house when I get home instead of having my parents yell at me to do so. Growing up in these poor living conditions, while was discouraging for them, showed them the importance of education. They all study extremely hard, knowing this fact: The only way out of this village and to a better life is to study hard and go to a prestigious college. While visiting, I noticed that some of the children did not have any parents that they lived with. Some of the reasons included: father drowning while out fishing, father getting electrocuted while fixing the water pipes, mother mentally ill or mentally slow, parents running away to abandon child, and parents going to the city to work and earn money. Hearing these stories in rural China was a great shock to me. Living in America, I was mostly sheltered to this kind of misery and cruelty. I thought to myself, What if I didn’t have one of my parents, or what if one of them died? I don’t think that I would ever be the same without one of them. I vowed to myself that I would appreciate my loving parents much more because I know that they try their best to raise us up to reach our full potential. My parents even moved houses to a different location, so that I could walk to school. I’m that spoiled, so when I get home, I will definitely study harder and remember how fortunate I am compared to those neglected children in Jiangxi.
3）艾天真：
After staying in Jiangxi, China for 10 days, I’ve learned to appreciate and be thankful for what I have. The conditions in the homes that we visited weren’t top notch, and definitely not what I’m used to back in San Diego. Beds are shared, rooms are small and cramped, and the bathroom, in some cases, is a bucket. Despite this, the children are still happy. After coming back home, I realized I took many things for granted, even toilet paper, clean water, and my parents and family.
Seeing the summer schools was another experience to remember. Even though they have so little, the students are still motivated to study and have dreams to go to the bigger cities when they’re older. It was my first time teaching, so it was a little foreign to me. The schools’ conditions also surpassed my expectations; I thought it would be a one-room building and one blackboard and some desks, but they had multiple rooms and were kept fairly clean.
All in all, this trip was like a whole new world. I’ve heard of kids that lose their parents or don’t grow up in a good environment on the news and media, but I’ve never saw with my own eyes what it’s like for them. I’ve seen new places and people on this trip, and I’m truly thankful for it.
4）洪瑾怡：
This trip was honestly an amazing learning experience for all of us. Despite growing up in China for 11 years, I lived the majority of my life in big cities, sheltered and protected by my family. This trip was eye opening for me, mostly because I was able to experience and witness many things I have never seen before. Many of the children we visited didn’t have adequate housings; the beds are shared, rooms are cramped and their walls are dirty but are almost always covered in awards and certificates of merits. The weather conditions there were harsher than what we’re used to, and insects such as mosquitoes left everyone scarred both mentally and physically.
But despite the tough living conditions, none of the children complained. In fact, they were all really thankful for the hardworks of their guardians and for our support. On top of managing their studies, they often had to help out around the house since most of them lived with their elderly grandparents because either one or both of their parents were absent. They would take care of their siblings, do the laundries and cooking, sweep and clean the floors and windows, and many more. Seeing them making the most out of their lives with what little they have was really touching and motivating for me. It made me feel thankful for what I have and made me realize how often I take what I have for granted. During many of my visits I couldn’t help but feel like these children are working much harder than I am, since compared to my sheltered life, they have to manage to balance both their school work with housework while living under such harsh conditions without complaints. The sheer thought of that fills me up with admirations towards them. They may be much younger than we are but many of them are more independent, mature, and responsible than we have ever been. Our 10 days trip to Jiangxi, China was both rewarding and eye opening, since it taught me to be thankful for what I have and never take anything for granted.
（图片提供：ACCEF-YCC，美国华文网 圣地亚哥华文网 华文风采编发 US Chinese Press，San Diego Chinese Press）