Mr Mossman's Reflections

For many years our boarding house has been home to a number of students from Mainland China and Hong Kong. These students bring so much to our community through their hard work and unique cultural perspective. This is a relationship that we are keen to maintain and develop, and so, two weeks ago I found myself boarding a flight to Shanghai, slightly nervous but also armed with some basic and probably awful Duolingo taught Chinese. Over ten days I visited 7 different cities ranging from Guangzhou in the South, to Beijing in the North and Chengdu in the foothills of the Himalayas. In every city I was able to promote our school’s broad curriculum and values to many wonderful parents, potential agents and language schools. Everywhere we went, hospitality and food were incredibly generous and often dangerously spicy. I was also lucky to be invited to visit the Forbidden City and a school project working with pandas; they are as cute as you might hope. It is hard not to be impressed by how developed China has become: massive skyscrapers, electric cars everywhere, robots in hotels and many, many technological toilets! A bullet train from Shanghai to Beijing took under four hours; it took me as long to get home from Heathrow! I was particularly struck by how much people in China are living online even compared with the UK, and I had to become quite proficient with vital apps such as WeChat, Alipay and Didi (a better Uber). Everything seemed to be photographed or videoed and then posted online. I think at least one video of me in a panda hat even went a bit viral! I will not be sharing that... Such ventures are exhausting, and it can be scary to go out of our comfort zone, but the experience is always worth it, to make connections and see the world more broadly: to become a global citizen.