THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, February 12, 1997 TAG: 9702120040
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PHYLLIS SPEIDELL, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 116 lines
LIGHT BULBS, antibiotics, down-filled coat and Kleenex - lots of Kleenex. Not your standard spring travel items, but all rank high on Barbara Hund's packing list.
At a time in her life when foreign travel might more likely mean a leisurely Caribbean cruise or a guided tour of Europe, Hund, 66, is taking off Saturday for two months in Beijing, China, to teach at the Beijing Broadcasting Institute.
She will live and work in conditions that most Western professors would consider Spartan at best, but Hund talks enthusiastically about the latest in a series of career adventures that have taken her to Taiwan, Beijing, Prague and St. Petersburg, Russia.
Hund is a veteran professor of English, speech and broadcasting at Tidewater Community College. Based at the Portsmouth Campus in Suffolk, she also specializes in distance learning in higher education - using electronic communication to simultaneously place an instructor at many class sites.
The professor's polish and classic appearance would suit a corporate boardroom as well as a classroom. And she is keenly interested in international economic and cultural trends, especially their impact on education.
She was instrumental in TCC's development of a faculty exchange agreement with the Beijing Broadcasting Institute, BBI. The 4-year-old agreement brings a different professor from BBI to Hampton Roads each year to lecture at all four TCC campuses. Every other year, a TCC professor pays a return visit to Beijing. This year, Hund was selected as TCC's exchange professor.
For Hund, this teaching stint - her fifth trip to Beijing - will be a homecoming, reuniting her with faculty friends and former students from her previous visits. During the 1988-89 school year, Hund was granted ``foreign expert'' status and taught at BBI under sponsorship of Princeton University.
In June 1989, Hund returned to her Portsmouth home just as the massive student protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square were being brutally quelled by Chinese military troops.
Hund's husband, a retired Lutheran pastor, and her two adult children fretted about her safety as they awaited her arrival home, but she was never apprehensive. She did worry, however, about the well-being of her students when they and some Chinese teachers laid down on the road, blocking government troops from entering the campus. ``It was then that I was really scared for the students,'' she remembers.
Her next three visits to China were prompted by the first Sino-American Women's Conference and by negotiations toward the TCC/BBI exchange agreement. What those trips, and her experience as a guest professor at Charles University in Prague in the Czech Republic, have taught Hund is that flexibility and preparation are key to surviving comfortably in another country.
While in Beijing, Hund will be housed in what BBI describes as ``Western-style accommodations,'' a one-room to three-room apartment in Building 13, the campus residence for foreign faculty and staff. Laughing that 13 has the same unlucky connotation in China as in the United States, Hund - who has lived there before - remembers that ``Building 13 is the last one to get all the heat. And when they run out of coal, there is no more.''
While she is hoping for one of the larger apartments, Hund knows that even the best accommodations will offer only a meager kitchen with a small stove and refrigerator and a tiny basin. The Chinese style bath will have a primitive shower but no commode, or what the BBI administrators gracefully refer to as a ``Western-style night stool.''
The light bulbs Hund is packing are to replace the single 40-watt bulbs BBI uses to light entire rooms.
The cozy down coat is what Hund will wear while teaching during the cold Beijing spring days when the outside temperature tends to be warmer than the penetrating cold of concrete walled classrooms.
On the campus, drinking water must be boiled to be potable. And while Hund makes it a practice to wash and cook any fruits and vegetables she buys from local vendors, she packs antibiotics and a supply of over-the-counter medications just in case.
The Kleenex are for a multitude of uses, Hund said.
The rest of her luggage will be filled with a few clothes and many, many gifts. ``Over there, everyone gives and expects gifts,'' Hund said, adding that the most sought after gifts are not necessarily the most expensive.
``They love books, CDs, coins and other things made in the U.S.,'' she said. TCC pens, pencils, folders and tokens donated by the city of Portsmouth and the Virginia legislature are very popular, but Hund has learned to avoid a few items.
``For some reason, clocks are not good gifts, especially to older Chinese, and they don't like metal items like pewter cups or mugs,'' she said.
Selecting a gift for the BBI president presented a diplomatic quandary also. Would she really appreciate a TCC sweatshirt or yet another plaque to hang on her office wall? Hund finally decided on a biography of Thomas Jefferson, authored by Portsmouth historian Alf Mapp. ``The Chinese really like Jefferson and consider him one of their favorite American leaders,'' she said.
Hund will be teaching several courses in the newly reorganized international communications department at BBI. The only broadcasting school in China, BBI is a highly selective major university, and its students are among the most qualified in the country.
Although Hund can understand and speak some Mandarin Chinese, her classes will be taught in English. ``The students are the cream,'' Hund said. ``They know English extremely well, in addition to their own Chinese dialect and at least one other language.''
Brushing aside any thoughts of retirement in the near future, Hund plans to observe all she can of current Chinese culture with the goal of incorporating those observations into her classes at TCC.
En route to Beijing, Hund will stop over in Hong Kong for several days, eager to see what changes are evolving there as the former British colony prepares to become part of China. Hund will also be noting the radical changes in business, economics and education that a growing capitalistic spirit has brought to China.
``I am a believer in lifelong learning, and to me travel and relating to people of other cultures are most educational,'' she said. ``I plan to bring back a lot to make my teaching here more effective.'' ILLUSTRATION: MARK MITCHELL
The Virginian-Pilot
TCC Professor Barbara Hund holds a roof tile animal from China. She
will leave Saturday on another trip to China, where she will be an
exchange teacher at the Beijing Broadcasting Institute.
Hund teaching in China during her visit there in 1988-89.
KEYWORDS: INTERVIEW