Last Wednesday, I woke up to find out that Minnesota Governor Tim Walz had been announced as US Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate for the coming election. As the world proceeded to collectively google who Walz is, I checked my notes: the same Tim Walz once taught in my high school in China back in 1989.
As I scrolled through my phone and tried to find out more information about Tim Walz’s China past, my mind was flooded with old memories of my high school, a selective school for Year 10-12 students founded by a British missionary 111 years ago in Foshan, a southern city where Ip Man, the teacher of famous Kung Fu star Bruce Lee, was born.
I knew exactly one thing to do: go to the alumni group chats and gossip.
Since leaving my school in 2014, I have been added to four alumni group chats (which I’d all muted). In one group chat, an alum now living in Melbourne said Walz was his English teacher when he was in Year 12. However, as it’s been over 30 years since then, all he could remember was Walz gave every student an English name, yet he couldn’t recall the name he was given.
In another group chat, a classmate of mine, whose mother also attended the same school and was in Year 11 when Walz was there, shared a photo of Walz chatting with the school principals in front of an old teaching building. The photo was taken in 1994, after Walz founded a company that organised summer school camps for American students to visit China. That year, he took 50 American students to my school.
There were also screenshots of testimonies from retired teachers and alumni — now in their late 50s — on their memories of Walz, who they said was “a very friendly person”. In one screenshot, Walz was remembered to get scared by the firecrackers during the Lunar New Year celebrations in 1990. I spotted a name from that screenshot — it was Ms Pang, my Chinese literature teacher in Year 11 who has recently retired.
According to Ms Pang, Walz was the first foreign teacher assigned by the local government to teach English at our school. “Everyone treated him like a superstar,” Ms Pang told me. “When he joined us [in 1989], he was very young with a bright smile.” Ms Pang had viewed Walz’s latest campaign photo. Despite the ageing face and grey hair, Ms Pang said Walz’s smile remained “infectious” like in the old days.
She also remembered Walz loved having ice cream from the convenience store near the school. He also seemed to be a fan of lychee, a fruit grown in south China. Once, he asked a colleague in Mandarin if he would like to have some.
At my school, Walz was popular among staff and students. He was a member of the school teachers’ basketball team. He greeted everyone when walking on campus, regardless if he worked closely with them. Before he headed back to the US, Walz received many gifts, including a fan with calligraphy prints on it from Ms Pang.
As I wrote up the interview with Ms Pang and sent it to a Chinese-language news outlet, my mind also travelled back to 10 years ago, when Ms Pang praised my essay in her class. I was in the same campus where Walz once created a window for hundreds of young Chinese students to learn about America.
Now, writing from my home in Sydney, I was also documenting a lovely and genuine interaction between the peoples of China and the US that was a world away from tensions and geopolitical conflicts.
The waltz down memory lane was also a reminder of the positive side of international education. This week I will be celebrating 10 years in Australia. The reason why I came to Australia is because in 2013, I went on a school trip (organised by my high school) to Townsville.
There have been so many talks about international student caps recently, from how international students are deteriorating university degree quality, to the accusation that they’re intensifying the housing crisis. The Waltz side note is a nice reminder about the importance and value of cultural exchange and creating more opportunities for young people themselves.
And of course, after reading what I wrote, Ms Pang gave me a big thumbs up, just like a decade ago.
Correction: a previous version of this article said Bruce Lee was born in Foshan. It has been updated to reflect that his teacher, Ip Man, was born there.
