By Julia Parmley
When she was a junior in high school, Thao-Anh Tran, B.A. ’09, traveled to Beijing through a cultural exchange program funded by the U.S. State Department. Though Ms. Tran had little knowledge of the language or country at the time, she says the trip “changed everything.” Ms. Tran enrolled in her first of many Mandarin classes during her freshman year at GW, and her courses as an international affairs and Asian studies major at GW’s Elliott School for International Affairs educated her on China’s history, literature and foreign policy.
“The more I learned about this country, the more my interest heightened,” says Ms. Tran. “I went back to China in 2007 for study abroad and stayed there for six months. Anyone who’s been to China will tell you that after having been there once, it is impossible to not come back again for the second or third time.”
And go back she did. For the next 10 months, Ms. Tran is living in Yanji in the Jilin province in northeastern China on a Fulbright Scholarship, one of a record 18 GW graduates to be awarded Fulbrights this academic year.
Along with taking graduate courses in international politics and ethnic studies at Yanbian University, Ms. Tran is researching the role the ethnic Korean community in Yanji has played in past North and South Korea relations with China and how the community might contribute to the development of future relations between the three countries. Ms. Tran is also studying the role of the local Korean-Chinese community in sustaining bilateral relations since the Korean War and the community’s potential contribution to the economic development of North Korea and long-term relations between China and North Korea.
“I hope that my research will shed light on approaches we can utilize to engage North Korea via people-to-people diplomacy,” she says. “My academic and professional interests are all related to China in one way or another. In the future I hope to return to China as a diplomat working to resolve issues in U.S.-China relations, and I think my current experience as a researcher will help me achieve that goal.”
Upon her return to the United States, Ms. Tran will be pursuing a master’s degree in public policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and will join the U.S. Foreign Service as part of her service commitment as a Department of State Pickering Fellow.
As part of her research, Ms. Tran has interviewed numerous members of the Korean-Chinese community, including professors and business people. “Many of the Korean-Chinese students at the school I am affiliated with are affected by the trend of parents leaving to go to work in South Korea, and I hope to continue to talk to more students with similar experiences,” says Ms. Tran.
But it hasn’t been all work. During a Chinese national holiday, Ms. Tran and some friends rode a raft down the Tumen River, which borders China and North Korea. Ms. Tran says her rower guided the raft a mere 18 feet away from the North Korean shore in violation of rules regarding how close rafts can be to the border. “Though we were quite frightened at the thought of being discovered by the North Korean guards at the time, especially given the recent event involving the two American journalists, looking back we are amazed that we had the opportunity to see the interior of North Korea,” says Ms. Tran.
Another adventure for Ms. Tran was attending the Peasants Festival of Jilin Province in Longjing with classmates from her international politics course. “I found myself in the company of a few thousands peasants in a huge outdoor sports stadium,” she says. Despite “freezing cold weather,” Ms. Tran says she enjoyed fireworks and musical performances in Chinese and Korean. “At one point, a huge cow was brought on stage,” says Ms. Tran. “I really had a great time hanging out with the local students and the festival truly allowed me to experience the local peasant culture. It was exciting and mind-opening to say the least!”
In just her few months in China, Ms. Tran says she has grown to value even more her own bicultural identity as a Vietnamese-American and has learned how independently she can live. “Due to its location, Yanji is not a popular tourist destination for Westerners so I do not have any contact with foreigners,” she says. “It can get a bit difficult sometimes; however, I have learned to cope with this and other little inconveniences. I often joke that after being here for only a couple of months, I have learned to be a cook, a plumber and an electrician.”
Despite these challenges, Ms. Tran says she feels incredibly fortunate to be exposed to people from different cultures and walks of life, which she feels has given her more of an open mind. “My primary goal for my time in Yanji is quite simple: I hope to understand why the local people have the perspective that they do while conveying to them my own view,” she says. “Through these informal conversations, I think we can learn a lot of from each other and reach some form of mutual understanding, even if we agree to disagree in the end. Learning to be receptive to ideas that differ from mine and to respond skillfully and respectfully to them is something that this experience has taught me.”