A Journey to the East: Waldorf Education in Thailand and China 2009

by Christopher Schaefer and Signe Schaefer

For many years at Sunbridge College we had students from different parts of Asia, and they often and repeatedly invited us to visit. After retiring from our full-time work at the College we were finally ready to say yes and to plan a journey to the East.

We went in March and April of 2009, spending two weeks in Thailand and another five weeks in China. While in Bangkok we visited and taught at the Panyotai Waldorf School started by Porn Panosat and his wife Jan Pen. The school was just finishing its 13th year and has now begun its first 12th grade. They have just completed a beautiful purpose-built campus on the outskirts of Bangkok and are a thriving and successful Waldorf School, an amazing accomplishment in such a short time. Then we were off to Chengdu, China, to visit Harry Wong and Zhang Li, students and friends who spent many years in Spring Valley.

Waldorf education is booming in China! Everything is booming in China! There is tremendous energy, made visible by the building projects and enormous cranes everywhere you look. It is a country on the move. After their own cramped experiences of school, many parents are searching for a true education for their precious only child. Those who find Waldorf embrace it with a devotion and a hunger to learn more. Many of them first found their way to Montessori kindergartens and schools and are now wanting more. Things happen fast in China, and so there are already over 20 Waldorf kindergarten initiatives in cities all over the country.

The work in Chengdu is the most developed with an eighth grade that began in the autumn of 2009, a beautiful campus with five kindergartens and both teacher education and kindergarten trainings. The Guangzhou Waldorf initiative is also quite strong with a capable initiative group and a new school building with several grades. In cities like Beijing there are multiple initiatives, and like in many places cooperation between them is limited. There is a great need for more understanding of what Waldorf education is, including its spiritual foundations. While there are people getting training in Australia, the U.S. and England, the need for help and support from abroad is still very real. It is important, however, to remember that China is an ancient culture with its own long imperial history and its unique philosophical and spiritual traditions. These need to be understood and appreciated by foreigners, as does the complex history of 20th century China. The Chinese people are proud, and they need to feel respected by those who would help them now.

We had the privilege of working in four different cities where Waldorf initiatives are developing: Chengdu, Xi’an (and yes, the Terracotta Warriors are truly amazing!), Guangzhou and Zhengzhou. We gave three to six day workshops for from 30 to 90 participants. We met with different school groups. We spoke with many individuals. It was hard not speaking Chinese, but we had wonderful translators; and we found people to be very open and sincere in their eagerness to learn—for their parenting and also for their own inner growth. Often we were working with questions of human development, and it was wonderful to discover that life phases and temperaments are as real in Asia as in the west. Their unique stories were, of course, fascinating and deeply moving. We ended up having many individual helping conversations which were inadvertently, but perhaps accurately, referred to as “biography consoling.”

People had warned us about pollution, and traffic, but life in New York had not prepared us for what we met. We saw blue sky one time during all of our five weeks in China. On any express highway you might see a speeding Mercedes, three wheeled moped trucks loaded with ducks and chickens, old buses spewing smoke, bicycle taxis, jaywalkers, bikers and a frustrated driver heading the wrong way on the busy street. One person said about the traffic, “We see red lights as polite suggestions,” and another added, “You have to remember that very few drivers have had a license for more than two years—and they may not have taken a test to get it.” So we were in for an exciting slow merge at all intersections.

Throughout our time in China we rarely saw other Westerners. In fact we had to get used to being stared at wherever we went. We were a novelty, and one older woman we passed in a park was even overheard to say, “They’re so white!” Often strangers on the street would ask to have their pictures taken with us. We also experienced how people wanted to share their country with us; this was often done through extraordinary meals—well, we could have done without the spiced donkey... People were generous, interested, and in some way innocent in their eagerness to know about a broader world. So much of the heritage of ancient China was destroyed through the many struggles of the 20th century. What you experience everywhere is a rush for the ‘new’ and a drive for personal success and lifestyle improvement. The goals of a good job, an apartment, a car and a better education for their child are strong motivations for hard work. Many of the parents and teachers we met had come from the villages, and their way out was through education. China has a population of over 1.3 billion people with over half still living in the villages. Factory jobs are bringing people to the cities in ever greater numbers, creating an unbelievable frenzy of building on the outskirts of every city. China has over a hundred cities of over two million people and ten of over ten million. The Waldorf parents and teachers have achieved a modest middle class lifestyle, and they are proud of what their country has achieved in the last thirty years. They are looking for a creative education for their children and also for psychological and spiritual understanding for themselves . This creates an opening for both Waldorf education and anthroposophy to be of real service in supporting the re-emergence of China as a world culture and a world power, not only materially.

We were both very moved by our time in Asia, and we returned for a few weeks in November of 2009. Chris again spent time in Thailand doing a workshop for new initiatives including some Waldorf Schools, and then we met in Chengdu to work with a new group of students in the Teacher Education Program as well as doing some work in other cities. To our surprise the Chengdu Waldorf School had a new meeting hall, enrollment in the grades had increased dramatically, and formal permission from the authorities for the grade school was expected shortly. We also noticed that in the six months we had been gone that people were beginning to pay attention to the traffic lights, at least at the big intersections, so now Chris who was always put in the front passenger seat because of size, could begin to relax. Either it was that or a new found fatalism.

We are seeking to support adult education and teacher training activities in Chengdu, but also in Xi’an, Guangzhou,and Beijing and are happy to provide introductions to any Waldorf teachers who are willing to mentor, teach and support the growing work.

Harry Wong and Zhang Li are planning to return to North America so that their children can experience a Waldorf High School, as well as to prepare for starting a high school in Chengdu. They and others have done truly amazing work in bringing Waldorf Education to China over the last seven years. While they will certainly be missed we think the Waldorf School in Chengdu and the Waldorf movement in China is strong enough to move forward with the many gifted teachers and parents active in the different schools and initiatives.

We can suggest the following books as a way of understanding the recent history of China and its ancient and complex culture. For understanding China and the Silk Road from Xi’an to the Middle East read the marvelous travelogue by Colin Thubron, Shadow of the Silk Road (Harper Perennial, 2007). The famous Wild Swans by Jung Chang gives a heartbreaking picture of three women’s lives over three generations, from pre-revolutionary times through the cultural revolution to the late 1970s. Xinran’s China Witness and the Good Women of China contains many insightful interviews with people from many walks of life about their thoughts and experiences during the tumultuous decades of the 20th century. John Pomfret’s Chinese Lessons follows the lives of five of his classmates over the last twenty five years in modern China. Not to be missed is Leslie Chang’s Factory Girls which follows the lives of a number of young women who left their villages to make a new life in the factories of southern China.

This “going out” is the largest migration in human history as some 130 million Chinese have left their villages in the last two decades to find work and a new life in the cities. Most of these migrants, mainly young women, like their new freedom and see the risks and struggles as worthwhile as they are “changing their fate.” The Chinese literary classics of the Three Kingdoms, The Monkey King and The Dream of the Red Chamber are not easy to appreciate with a western mind-set. The four volume Three Kingdoms is a mixture of Machiavelli and King Arthur and his knights, a political treatise, a military and strategic guidebook and a morality play. As a historical teaser look at Gavin Menzies, 1421 and 1432, in which the former British submarine captain describes the extensive evidence that the Chinese sailed up and down the eastern and western coasts of North America, as well as mapping a good part of South America including some of the Antarctic, thereby providing detailed maps for Christopher Columbus and Magellan. He also insists that the inventions, navigation aids, charts and global maps provided by the Chinese to Venice, Rome, and Florence was a major influence on and cause of the Renaissance. The evidence is compelling and it is a fun read. If you are interested in this amazing country and culture which Rudolf Steiner describes as the world’s oldest civilization and wish to help, let us know.