Ms. Meng uses her art form to impart many aspects of Chinese culture and heritage besides the technical skills of painting. At the end of her classes, her students know to bow their heads in the same way that Ms. Meng was once taught to show respect to her elders. Every custom she shares with her students helps build a bridge connecting them to their heritage.

“It’s not just paint – I’d like them to know the Chinese history, too. Every time you do the painting or calligraphy, you really slow down. You’re very calm…you want to relax and do your ink before you even start. Besides painting, [when] I do the calligraphy I try to teach them to speak Chinese – and not just to write it, to understand.” In every exchange she has with her students, Ms. Meng tries to flesh out and transmit to her students a complete sense of their rich Chinese heritage.

Even though she has a full-time job, she enjoys making time to teach. “I like…not keeping it to myself. I [would] like someone else to learn how to do it, too.” Many of Ms. Meng’s students have been adopted from China She comments that one result of many of her students growing up in the United States is that, “Most of my younger students are Chinese, but they don’t speak Chinese.”

She tells me that these days there is a “pretty big group here in Harrisburg” that gets together to celebrate holidays, especially the Chinese New Year. Ms. Meng’s husband is a former president of the Central Pennsylvania Chinese Association (CPCA), and Ms. Meng surmises that she knows just about all of the Chinese-Americans in the area. She offers this observation in an even, unassuming tone, as though it is the obvious and inevitable result of “getting together and keeping our customs.”

“Keeping our customs” means much more than going through the motions of past generations’ traditions, though. It involves breathing new life into them, which is best done by bringing members of young generations into the active community. In south-central Pennsylvania there is a significant population of children whose parents have adopted them from China. Many of these parents want their kids to retain their Chinese heritage, and are involved in the local organized Chinese community for that reason. In fact, Ms. Meng has the opportunity to teach calligraphy and painting to several of these children herself.

For Ms. Meng, part of being an American citizen involves “holding on to our traditional customs” and educating other people about those customs. Ms. Meng shares her cultural knowledge with many people in the area besides her art pupils. She visits schools and organizations to give lectures and introduce people in the community to Chinese painting, dress, paper-folding, and even non-material values.

At a recent event with Big Brother / Big Sister, Ms. Meng wrote out participating kids’ names in Chinese characters. Diana suspects that prior to that event some of the kids had never seen Chinese writing. By introducing kids who’ve grown up in the middle of Pennsylvania to elements of the culture in which she grew up, Diana constructs important cross-cultural bridges. Setting foot on one of these bridges is an important step toward recognizing the similarities and celebrating the differences between individual people, as well as between the cultures that have shaped those people.