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Love for Chinese: An American Professor in China
The name "Janice" is familiar to most citizens of this coastal city in east China: college students, journalists, taxi drivers, peddlers, and people on the street.
Dr. Janice Engsberg is an American who has been working in China for 15 years, teaching in the mass communication department of Xiamen University.
Like many foreigners who have developed a passion for Chinese culture, Engsberg has amassed a large collection of personal treasures: coins, calligraphy, paintings, and even straw hats worn by local farmers.
Engsberg is an avid traveler in China, and has the photographs to catalogue her adventures in Harbin in the north, Kashi and Turpan in the west and other lesser known places. In her spare time, she rides her bicycle to remote corners of the city.
Engsberg has made effort to protect the environment in Xiamen, her "second hometown." On Chinese Arbor Day, she planted five mangroves, and on World Environment Day, she joined her students and Chinese colleagues to clean rubbish from a local beach.
A music lover, Engsberg is an advisor to the Xiamen Philharmonic Orchestra. She has never missed a performance of the orchestra, has helped them set up a website, acts as an interpreter when necessary and offers suggestion on ways to improve their music.
"What the orchestra brings to me is more than the beautiful music; they also show me the glorious Chinese culture," she said.
Each time she returns to the United States on holiday, she is invited by U.S. institutions to give lectures. Her favorite topic is the changes in Chinese society.
In the eyes of her students, Engsberg is strict and demands assignments be well done and turned in on time.
"Sometimes this is the only way to make the students work hard, " she said. "Most of my students will become journalists, and a journalist's job is full of deadlines. They've got to be prepared for that." She also expects her future reporters to be observant.
"Once she went on an outing with us," one of her students recalled. "In her class the following day, she suddenly asked what each of us had worn the day before. We forgot everything, but Janice remembered every detail."
Most of Engsberg's students stay in touch with her after they graduate. Each year at Christmas, she receives greetings from her Chinese students, who are now working in different provinces and cities across the country.
Engsberg clearly loves China, and the feeling from the Chinese is mutual. She is among the nearly 600 foreign experts who once received the "Friendship Award" by the Chinese government.
However, Engsberg has one more desire: to get a Chinese green card so that after she retires, she can continue to visit China often.
"Without a green card, I can only come with a tourist visa and stay briefly at a hotel" she said. "And I'll be very sorry if that happens."
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