 "Photo: Courtesy of SDSU Professor Miguel Llora")
 "Photo: Courtesy of SDSU Professor Miguel Llora")
San Diego State international security and conflict resolution senior Abdul-Jabbar Gbajabiamila wasn't quoting "Fear-Factor" when he said, "I ate a scorpion." But he may as well have been.
Gbajabiamila reminisced over epic-like experiences (including eating a scorpion) in a philanthropic mission to rural China in July that proved equally challenging, yet exponentially meaningful.
He was one of nine SDSU students and staff who participated in a one-month trip to China with the Educational Poverty Alleviation Project Service Learning Program that aimed to bring educational enrichment to 52 underdeveloped counties throughout China.
The program - organized and funded by Beijing's Tsinghua University and the non-profit Wang Foundation - enlisted 67 American students from 12 universities. The debut partnership, with some 400 Tsinghua attendees, had a mission to eliminate poverty through the implementation of modern educational technology and cross-cultural learning.
"China's growing economy is making a transition from being a labor-intense society to a consumer society," Gbajabiamila said. "It is for this that China seeks to revamp its educational system to ensure that the younger generation is better off and better prepared for urbanization."
In its first year with foreign student participation, SDSU alumna Lauren Weir, economics senior Angela Lee, ISCOR senior Evan Hearnsberger, Asian studies Professor Miguel Llora and six other SDSU students traveled from Beijing to various deeply rural, impoverished counties teaching English to local political officials, teachers, students and, in some cases, villagers.
"These places aren't even on the map, if you try to look for them," said Weir, who returned two weeks ago from traveling in Europe after teaching in China. "They're very, very rural."
Even as each teaching team was paired with a Chinese-speaking Tsinghua liaison who was charged with investigating rural-area energy consumption, financial status and standard of living, total emersion made the language barrier taunting for their American counterparts.
"If there were an Olympic team for charades, I could be on it," Weir said.
She said she carried her phrase book at all times in an effort to communicate with her students in Shanyang, a small village nestled in the mountains of central China.
"It was awkward sometimes, since 80 percent of the people were completely interested in American life and the other 20 percent didn't know what (America) was," Llora said.
Lee recalled her unbelieving Anhui province pupils as they asked, eying her black hair and familiar Chinese features, "Are you really American?"
While overcoming the language barrier proved difficult, in many cases, the dialects of differing localities prevented even the Tsinghua University guides from interacting with the SDSU teachers - creating what SDSU participants said were frustrating barriers.
"I was the one taking the initiative to communicate," said Weir, remembering the lack of interaction even among Chinese-English speakers because of dialectical differences.
Such diversity abounded at the county Ethnic Vocational Middle School in southeastern Guangnan County, bordering Vietnam, where Gbajabiamila taught.
Despite a more accelerated classroom environment - outfitted with computers, Internet and projects - bad hygiene in the 12-person residence hall rooms stirred yet more culture shock for Gbajabiamila, who joked about the SDSU participants "not taking showers for two weeks."
While trip criteria and return dates varied for each SDSU participant, their final week ended with leisure time in Beijing, a closing ceremony and other reflective events.
"There were a few infrastructure issues," Llora said of the program's fledgling operations that included lacking Internet and health care for participants.
Remnants of strong anti-Japanese sentiments in deep regions added dimension to an already stretching cultural divide.
"I was pulled aside after being told I held my chopsticks like a Japanese person, in the middle instead of at the top," Weir said. "They told me I must not do that again."
Despite their variety of experiences, the consensus among the SDSU teachers remained unanimously positive.
"Like most experiences, we take the good with the bad and I would not hesitate to go back in an instant," Llora said.
Weir said her goal was to show her students that there can be unity between the Chinese and American students.
"My mission going over there was to show my Chinese students that even though we're totally different, we can all have a great time - the kids I was teaching walked away with that, and they impacted me that way, too," Weir said. "At the end of the day, we all made it to bed - some of us on planks - but we made it to bed. And that's all that really mattered."
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