Leah Wang sits with a student, Cherry, at an English class at Sea Turtle Foreign Language Training.
I feel very lucky that I can do work I enjoy that is also meaningful. You can have lots of energy and enthusiasm if you think your job is meaningful and helpful to others.
My first job, when I was 20, was not meaningful. It was in a factory which made small farm trucks. After that, I went back to school and studied accounting at Shanghai Financial and Economic University. I became a certified public accountant in a foreign-owned company, but there was conflict between me and my boss, who was Chinese. When she forced me to resign, I went to a different city to study English so I could report her to her supervisor and get revenge.
While studying English, I became a Christian through people who, step by step, helped me to learn more about God. I learned about forgiveness from studying the Bible. I sent my former boss a Bible instead of reporting her. I became a teacher in a language school, and I found out teaching was much more fun than accounting.
After two years, I moved back to my hometown to set up my own English school, to share God’s love and help people know more about Christ, and to take care of my mom.
There, I heard about MCC’s International Volunteer Exchange Program (IVEP) and how I could learn more about another culture and teach others about Chinese people and culture. From 2005 to 2006, I was part of IVEP, living in Canby, Ore., working as a teacher’s assistant in an elementary school and worshipping as part of Zion Mennonite Church.
The people at Zion Mennonite deeply influenced me by how they loved me. I got lots of spiritual support. They welcomed me, took care of me and lived out their Christian faith. One thing I didn’t expect was the way that everybody in this church, whether a farmer or a city worker, all give their money to support MCC’s worldwide projects. Even though they never left the country, their lives connected with the whole world.
Also, I went to a Mennonite history training program. I learned about nonviolence and how, during the second World War, some Mennonites refused to serve in the army. Because of their pacifist convictions, some were even put in jail.
I went to a lecture where a person came back from the Middle East and spoke about how people use their bodies to protect others. They walk children from one village to another to go to school safely. Or they stay with people who raise goats or sheep, so their enemies are less likely to take their things or kill them. This amazed me.
Peace can begin just by one person. You can help one family or one person to get peace just by yourself. For me, peace was not my business. For most Chinese people, peace is not their business. It’s the country’s business. They have to use the army to protect the peace.
When I got back from my year with IVEP, I started to teach again. I also got married and had a daughter. I began to think about having a peace camp for young people from different countries. In northeast Asia, because of historical reasons, there is still lots of hatred, misunderstanding and stereotypes of each other.
The first peace camp happened in China in 2009 with Korea Anabaptist Center of the Republic of Korea (South Korea) and World Friendship Center of Japan. It was in the mountains. The young people had a half day of indoor activities such as role plays, dramas and teaching on nonviolent communication skills and a half day outdoors focusing on group-building and cooperation. At night, we mixed roommates from different countries. It’s amazing to see how easily and quickly they can make friends with each other, even without strong language ability.
It’s true that in a peace camp, we can’t change big groups of people’s thinking, but we just start from small groups. They can spread what they have learned from their experience.
The peace camp experience strengthened my thinking about doing more peace programs. In early 2010, I started Peace in China and Sea Turtle Foreign Language Training, two organizations in the same building.
Peace in China offers half-day or full-day training, teaching people what peace and conflict is. We also helped coordinate peace camps in 2010 and 2011 and exchange programs, including hosting university students and volunteers from Canada and the United States. Sometimes with the visiting groups, it’s exhausting, but to see how they can be changed and learn from this trip is very important to me.
Sea Turtle started with 30 students. We now have 80 students, from kindergarten to sixth grade, who come three hours a week for afterschool training in English. We are not just teaching them language. We use the language to teach them more about the world.
After the first peace camp, I was looking for ways to get more training. Last year MCC paid for me to go to a peace training in Beijing, and this past summer I spent two weeks at the first Northeast Asia Regional Peacebuilding Institute (sponsored by MCC).
In the future, Peace in China wants to start a program in primary and middle schools to teach kids about bullying. We also want to teach mediation training to people who work directly with conflicts.
I tell people who work in Peace in China and Sea Turtle that it is very important to find meaning in your job, rather than just trying to make money. Through my work I share the love and care God gives to me. That’s how I can do it. Otherwise, if it’s not to share God’s love with people, you just do it as a work, not with passion.
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