In the summer of 2020, Greenbelt Middle School (GMS) Chinese teacher Dr. Joann Liu got the opportunity to lead a team to provide Chinese subtitles for an episode of the PBS documentary series Asian Americans. The five-episode series, which aired in May 2020, covers the experience of Asian Americans in the United States, presenting their struggles against discrimination and their invaluable contributions to the progress of the nation. Liu, who volunteered for this challenging and time-consuming project, emerged learning a great deal more about this country’s Asian heritage, with an enhanced appreciation for the strength that comes from diversity, and a recognition of the lingering aspects of prejudice and victimization that Asian Americans still face.
Liu and her team of four others worked on the first episode, which was an introduction entitled Breaking Ground. The episode recounted the travails and achievements of the first influx of Asian immigrants – mainly around the mid-1800s, from countries like China, Japan, India and the Philippines – as they sought new opportunities and ways to reimagine their lives for themselves and their families. Asian immigrants were an integral part of the workforce that forged the nation, instrumental in projects like the dangerous and arduous construction of the first transcontinental railroad. The episode focuses closely on the daunting efforts of these Asian people to assimilate to the American way of life and economy, paving the way for their descendants here to become legal citizens.
Liu herself was born in China and became a U.S. citizen, having spent the last 30 years of her life in the United States.
Her background as a college English student and teacher, experience in publishing translations, and doctoral work in race, gender and ethnicity studies led to her being selected for this project.
Liu said that a special app and technical support from Kelvin Zhang, a photographer, were used to insert the Chinese subtitles after the English subtitles were removed from the original version.
Liu is in her second year of teaching sixth- through eighth-grade Chinese at GMS. The school offers a three-tiered program consisting of an introduction and Chinese One and Two. Liu has spent 11 years as a teacher in Prince George’s County, with previous jobs at Laurel and Crossland high schools.
Liu stated that there is a misconception among many that Chinese is a prohibitively difficult language to learn, countering that Chinese is in fact very logical. She praised the ability of her students to succeed in this subject and “take the challenge.”
Liu shared dismay that Greenbelt public school students do not have the opportunity to continue their Chinese language studies at either Eleanor Roosevelt or DuVal high schools. Said Liu, “This has been a troubling situation for me as a teacher.”
A number of her former students and their parents have put forward their willingness to advocate for a Chinese language program at ERHS. According to Liu, “I heard that some Greenbelt high school staff and faculty also advocated to add a Chinese program for some time, but it seems to be a complicated issue.”
“Since the Chinese economy has been considered as the second biggest in the world,” stated Liu, “the U.S. government has been spending a lot of money to support the initiation of Chinese programs in the country to educate students to acquire Chinese language skills to help maintain American competitiveness.” Liu expressed that, in her opinion, “politics, lack of vision for the future (the country’s and students’) and disconnect between middle schools and high schools in course offerings seem to play a role in the lack of good articulation of the Chinese program.”