We’ve made about 14 videos by now, interviewing students from different countries. We have a US-China pen-pal network that has more than 100 participants. I believe many teenagers who hardly knew anything about their peers abroad, now do know more through our project.

Teenagers who hardly know anything about people who live in other countries, as well as teenagers who would like more about the real lives of their peers abroad.

As a Chinese exchange student in DC, I realized how much misunderstanding we have between people in different countries. I feel we are somehow ignorant when assuming the cultures of other countries. And I feel this is separating us more and more.

I believe staying in our comfort zones, we are just learning about people abroad from second-hand resources, like hearsay and propagandas. I believe we need a way that we can just communicate with each other directly. Having friends in both China and the US, I thought I can just connect them at first. And this was how my project came into shape.

Yes. At first, it was mostly my friends. Later on, I got contacts of students who had cross-cultural experiences, and thus who strongly believe in the need of more cross-cultural understanding. These students helped me establish networks in their own schools and encouraged students in their schools to join my project.

In China, I have a lot of friends who will be going abroad for college. So I was sure that they are interested in the US culture. In the US, as I was in an exchange program, I also knew a lot of people who are passionate about cross-cultural dialogues.

At first, I had a very big picture in mind. I wanted a platform where students from different countries can just communicate under different topics, directly and freely. I told them this big picture. It really got them motivated and passionate.

I contacted someone who was managing a US gov-led Chinese culture exchange program, and asked her to spread a word about my project among her students.

She was very supportive and excited about my idea.

She let me present my project during their events and gave me the contact of a student leader of their program, which led to the expanding of the network of my project.

Yes. In our project, we video-interviewed Chinese and American students with different sets of questions every month. I thought through the different answers we get, both sides can learn more about each other’s culture and values. But it turned out that we received many similar answers from Chinese and American teenagers. It took me a long time to realize that this is okay. Because seeing our differences through the videos is one thing, but seeing our similarities is another thing that makes us feel closer and more willing to communicate with each other.

I think it’s okay to have a big picture or a big dream. But I hope at the beginning, someone would suggest me to keep that big picture in mind and start from something little, be flexible, and always be happy with even the smallest impacts that we have made.

In the US, I received a lot of encouragement from adults who were interested in my idea. But in China, even though the students were willing to participate, few adults really believed in my project, many even discouraged me from doing it. I believe there are adults in China out there who are supportive of this kind of student projects. But to find them was much more difficult than in the US. Actually, I hope there was a network of resource that we could turn to both in China and the US.

I turned more to resources in the US. And in China, I looked for more support from students instead of from adults.

When we uploaded videos, led group chats, we had to make sure nothing was related to politics. When we post articles, we also had to make sure there wasn’t any sensible context. But this wasn’t a big deal, as our project mostly focused on the cultural side.