We all introduced ourselves over the app WeChat after our first meeting.

第一次见面后，我们都通过应用程序微信进行了自我介绍，以便每个人都知道谁是群聊中的谁。

Intermittently between the Halloween conversation, the Lanzhou students also shared their art class experiences. Instead of taking an art class as one of many classes in a regular school like the Albuquerque students. The Lanzhou students, if they choose, decide to take the path of art early on in their school career and by high school, they are already going to a school that specializes in art and design. The Lanzhou students in our project took even more art classes with a group member’s father, 沈翔老师. In their class, the students often take group trips to scenic places for inspiration and to sketch nature and buildings.

在万圣节对话期间，兰州的学生们间歇性地分享了他们的美术课体验。而不是像阿尔伯克基学生那样，将美术课作为普通学校中的许多班之一。兰州的学生，如果选择的话，决定在他们的学校生涯的初期和高中时就选择艺术之路，他们已经去了一所专门从事艺术和设计的学校。我们项目的兰州学生与小组成员的父亲沉翔老师一起上了更多的美术课。在课堂上，学生们经常参加风景秀丽的地方团体旅行，以启发灵感并勾勒出自然和建筑物的轮廓。

The Lanzhou students told us that they do not celebrate Halloween, which launched us into an amazing discussion about holidays and clothing in China in comparison with the United States.

兰州的学生告诉我们，他们不庆祝万圣节，这使我们进入了一个漫长而令人惊奇的讨论，即与美国相比，中国的假日和服装。

The Albuquerque students shared some of the types of conventional clothing around the holidays in the United States such as ugly Christmas sweaters. There was a continued discussion of the differences between the United States and China on the topic of national traditional outfits for different holidays.

The Lanzhou students shared clothes worn in different times of the year, casually and for special occasions. They described that the color red is usually worn for special events such as New Year or weddings. But as of the different patterns on the clothes, it would depend greatly on the ethnic group that designs them. Over the 2,000 year history of China, there have been many fashion trends and popular patterns. Modern day dress in China is a mix of historic designs and new day style. Through the discussion about patterns, the topic of school uniforms was also brought up. The Albuquerque team said that at Albuquerque Academy, there are no school uniforms, just a school dress code. The Lanzhou team said that the school uniforms are the same not just in their school, yet most schools in China and that there are three versions of the uniform, each worn in different seasons.

From the museums in New York, AnaMaria and Melinda shared pictures of different art pieces from various historic movements, including cubism, impressionism, realism, expressionism, etc.

The Lanzhou students told us that they did study Monet and Picasso in school as well as many famous Chinese painters such as Qi Baishi, who most of the Albuquerque students had never heard of.

The Albuquerque students and Lanzhou students compared the differences in the teaching style of art in school between the United States and China. The Lanzhou students’ studies seemed more focused on individual artists and their various styles. The Albuquerque students found that in their art classes, assignments were given one after another with less time focused on learning about these specialized artists. Assignments were also just given with an overarching theme or open ended goal  and gave the Albuquerque students a lot of room to add in their own thoughts about the project. The Lanzhou students spent more time in the studio trying to master certain skills such as color palette and realism.

The Lanzhou students had testing during the week of November 18th, and they described their testing days to start at 8am in the morning and end at 5pm in the evening with lunch served in between. The Albuquerque students were a bit surprised because, as they replied, the maximum amount of testing within a day for Albuquerque high school students was approximately two AP tests that are three hours long each with an hour in between for lunch . The day would start around 8am and most likely end by 3pm.

With discussions about individual ideas for art pieces to traditional foods to Japanese anime, our 3rd meeting lasted for over an hour. ZiXuan even wore a traditional white outfit for the Albuquerque Team to see, complete with silk sashes and a decorated hair style! We also unexpectedly discussed the differences between the KFC in China and the KFC in the United States. The Albuquerque students were surprised to learn that in the morning, the KFCs in China serve hot soy milk with 油条 (You tiao – fried donuts without sugar and shaped in long sticks). The KFCs also serve 木耳 (Mu er – black mushrooms), 稀饭 (Xi fan – rice porridge), 粥 (Zhou – congee), and many more dishes specialized for their market. The Lanzhou students were in turn surprised to hear that many Albuquerque students also watch or read Japanese anime for fun during their free time. The Albuquerque Team all knew names such as One Piece, Naruto, and Manga.

The Lanzhou students and Albuquerque students continued discussing traditional foods which included dumplings, spaghetti, chilaquiles, etc. Food was always a great topic to talk about because each family had a different way of cooking different dishes and had varying degrees of influence from their own culture and surrounding cultures.

Food was always an interesting and captivating topic because it brought up discussions of how the delicacies are traditionally prepared and why, how the preparations of the dishes change from region to region, how the meanings and stories behind each of the foods change and shift across families, and much more.

Through the 4th meeting, we all discussed our sketch designs and the meaning the specific features we chose to illustrate about our culture. We also talked about upcoming holidays and winter breaks. The Albuquerque student’s winter breaks were about two weeks long, while the Lanzhou students’ winter breaks were supposed to be around three to four weeks long; however, due to the pandemic, the Lanzhou students spent an extra two months at home. More about this on the Cross-Cultural Contrasts page.

As winter holidays came up for the Albuquerque Team, we shared some photos of our decorated homes. For those families that celebrated Christmas, we sent pictures of the traditional decorated mantelpiece with stockings and Santa cookie jars.

During our meeting, we happened to discuss red envelope culture in comparison to the tooth fairy. On one hand, in the United States, when a child loses a tooth, they put their tooth under the pillow before they go to bed and their parents sneak into their rooms that night to leave some amount of money. Parents usually tell their children that the Tooth Fairy had come to visit them afterwards. On the other hand, in China, on New Year’s Eve, parents would sneak into their children’s rooms and slide the red envelopes with money in them under their pillows. In return, the next day, the children would have to 拜年 (Bai nian – pay Happy New Year respects) to their parents. Although, in decades past, the children would get the money right after paying respects to their elders on New Year’s Day, the pillow tradition displays an incredible example of modern-day syncretism between our two cultures. More about this on the Cross-Cultural Contrasts page.

The Lanzhou students also shared their meals during this time and even labeled the pictures so the Albuquerque students would know what each dish was. Their foods included preserved eggs, auricularia (a type of jelly fungi), cabbages, and many more interesting dishes.

The Albuquerque Team made dumplings using 燕皮 (Yan pi – pounded meat flour) as the dough for the dumplings. There were also two hot pots, one spicy and one not for all of us. More information about this event is in the Highlights section on this page.

The Lanzhou Team sent pictures throughout their Chinese New Year’s Eve celebrations filled with Chinese New Year foods such as dumplings and hot pot.

As the coronavirus progressed in China, it was hard to keep up the group meetings because WeChat only allowed nine members to join a meeting and in past meetings some of the Lanzhou students and Albuquerque students would meet up in groups to all call on one device. However, due to stay-at-home orders, the Lanzhou students couldn’t gather and we had to switch out between people. Some students would stay for a quarter of the time and then leave so others could join. This made the meetings very hard to coordinate and organize.

Through the meeting, we conversed about the Albuquerque Team’s Chinese New Year’s Eve celebrations along with the Lanzhou Team’s celebrations. We delayed the finishing of the first half of the art pieces to January 31st for Albuquerque students and February 1st for Lanzhou students and planned the mailing date.

We couldn’t gather for our 7th meeting because as schools in China started online classes, the times that the Lanzhou students were available varied dramatically. In addition, the Albuquerque Team still had sports practices, clubs, and other activities that made arranging a meeting where many students could be present very difficult.

The Albuquerque Team sent the Lanzhou Team six boxes of Prismacolor pencils as a thank you for participating in this project. The pencils were covered by the project budget detailed on the Cross-Cultural Art Exchange page.

Though many of the members from the Lanzhou Team could not be present, we still had a short video call meeting to decide who on the Albuquerque Team would complete which Lanzhou Team’s piece. During this meeting, the Lanzhou students also shared their ideas behind their pieces before the Albuquerque Team selected the pieces that they were most inspired to complete.

After over two months of waiting for the package with the Albuquerque Team’s art pieces that was supposed to take two weeks to deliver, the Lanzhou students finally received the art pieces! We kept checking the tracking number and all it said for seven weeks was that the package had been processed through the Los Angeles International Distribution Center on February 22, 2020 at 7:51pm. It was quite an intense wait for the last three weeks because we believed that there was a good chance that the package had been lost. This would mean that either the project would only be able to be completed by the Albuquerque side or that the Albuquerque students would have to complete another half piece within a week’s time. Thankfully though, the package passed customs and was delivered safely.

Our video call only lasted around half an hour this time because as the Lanzhou students started school in person again, the Albuquerque students were nearing their end of the year to be completed fully online and had many assignments and tests to finish up. Though the call was short, we still all talked about the activities we were doing at home and nearly everyone had been spending more time outside in nature as well as the differences in the situations with the coronavirus between both countries. In New Mexico, gatherings of over ten people were prohibited while in Lanzhou, students were going to school in person again.

In this meeting, we planned to talk about the designs each student was creating to complete their pieces. The task this time was not only to create half a piece about your culture, but to also continue the flow and design of the other side of the piece into your half, making the painting stand together as a whole.

The Lanzhou students shared with us some well known landforms in their province such as the Zhangye Danxia.

In this meeting, we planned to discuss about events that have happened in the last few weeks such as the end of school, summer activities, and testing. We kept the meeting quite short because the Lanzhou students were preparing for a test. We still planned to cover topics such as the deadlines for the art piece and the next meeting date.

In this meeting we planned to discuss the progress of our pieces and the new multilingual feature of the website created so the Lanzhou students could apply for grants and create their own gallery space. We also wanted to touch on the United States’ decision to ban transactions on WeChat as well as the closing of consulates in both countries due to escalating relationship issues between the United States and China.

The Lanzhou and Albuquerque students got together one last time for a party to celebrate the ending of the project! The Lanzhou students all gathered together in their art class and shared the completed art pieces and the Albuquerque students played Chinese ’80s music while eating mooncake! 

The Lanzhou students sent more sightseeing pictures from 西安 (Xi An) and Melinda shared photos of her trip with her grandfather to 西安 in 2012.