Chinese pen pals: Education through communication

Chinese Honor Society’s first pen pal program lets students keep in touch with their Chinese heritage

The emails that we send daily are seemingly mundane. Its the communication system that we use to get special deals from stores, communicate with our teachers, or receive club notices. Rarely do we use emails as a way to express our culture, but Chinese Honor Society is just doing that with its pen pal program. In addition, the club hopes that students will go back to their native roots from communicating with their homeland. “I really wanted to know about people’s lives around the world [through doing the pen pal program],” CHS member junior Andrew Tsun said. “I get to know about the people in China, and I get to hear about their high school life because it isn’t the same as in America…I get to see how it contrasts.” The pen pal process is extremely simple—a group of three students writes to three students in China through email. But first, they send their messages to CHS officers, who will send the emails to the students in China. Two weeks later, the students in China will send emails back, and this cycle will continue for the rest of this school year.The pen pal program is similar to that of the Chinese 4 Honors and French 4 Honor class’ program, a pen pal program done over a website program instead of by email, but not as personal, says Chinese Honor Society member junior Alexandra Hung. “The idea of people joining Chinese Honor Society is to embrace the Chinese culture. At [MVHS], we tend to [say], ‘let’s get away from the Asian ideal’, because our parents are so into [it],” CHS President junior Michelle Jiang said. “The [Chinese Pen Pal program] is a way for us to still express this traditional heritage.”The club hopes that their pen pal program is going to continue on for many years because this is an learning experience is one that is hard to receive from simply reading  a textbook—the best education one can receive is through experience.