Visionaries The overlapping realities of Keystone Class of 2023 members going to British universities
How does one make sense of the many possibilities happening simultaneously? While we are drawn by daily bustle and distractions, we overlook the struggles and strides others are having. In the parallel world we all live in, beauty is happening somewhere in between.
At Keystone Academy, students live in the same space and time but experience life differently. Keystone Class of 2023 members Andy Han, Victor Qian, and Ariel Chen have done remarkable actions in the past years, sometimes without knowing what others are doing. When Ariel was studying the footage of leopard cats taken by infrared cameras she installed in a natural reserve in Beijing, Victor might have been teaching Spanish online to students living in Ukraine. At this time, Andy was probably in Henan Province, teaching English to students at a rural primary school. They were making things happen in their respective realities connected by the powerful thread of Keystone. Now, they are set to continue their pursuits in their next destinations—the universities of Oxford and Cambridge in the United Kingdom.
In the latest edition of the Keystone Graduate Profile Series, we feature these three students with an admirable vision to empower young people. They have used their Keystone experience to amplify their passion projects and rally others to join their cause.
Universal Access: Why “ace teacher” Andy Han aspires to make education equitable
“The ace teacher in the universe, thank you for teaching us English and playing games with us these days. We have learned a lot from you!”
Andy Han often returns to Beijing from Henan Province with a bag packed with gifts and a heart full of contentment. The children at Dongmingyi Primary School in the town of Xuchang always prepare tokens for Andy, their “ace teacher”. Bottles of soda, packs of candies, and decks of handwritten cards—the young students save their pocket money to put up a “care package” for someone who has cared for them for a long time.
In spring 2017, then-sixth grader Andy and five other volunteers stood at Dongmingyi’s main gate for the first time. Nearly 400 students lined up on both sides of the school gate and welcomed the young guests with a well-rehearsed show.
The performance reminded Andy of his father’s story: Mr. Han, who also hails from Henan, persevered during his school days to find his footing. Later, he was admitted to Peking University as a graduate student, and then attained a remarkable career path in Beijing.
As Andy left that short trance, he looked at Dongmingyi’s students and felt their hopes for a better future. Most of them are “left behind”, or children whose parents work in the cities and are often cared for by grandparents. They make do with the rudimentary facilities of their rural school and go home after class to help with farm work. Nearly all of them have never seen anything beyond their village.
The welcome spectacle and wide grins from students barely hid what Andy saw as a massive gap in economic opportunities and the lack of educational resources they faced. At the same time, he realized the privilege he had.
Since 2017, Andy has visited Dongmingyi Primary School every spring break. He has composed songs and played these for the students with his guitar. Through these ditties, he introduced children to simple English phrases. He has also designed interactive games based on learning methods by his Keystone teachers. He shared leadership and athletic skills from his Keystone basketball team with Dongmingyi’s students. And in 2022, Andy and two other Keystone students directed the school’s first interactive musical drama, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. He spoke with Dongmingyi children about his directorial debut and previous performing arts engagements and guided them in making their own drama production. In addition, Andy and his classmates initiated a fundraiser whose proceeds they used to build toilets, set up a library, and buy teaching equipment for the school.
Dongmingyi students have called Andy their “ace teacher in the universe”. Some tell him they went home and “sang to my sister what you taught me” or “told my family the story you featured in our class today”. Nothing beats the feeling Andy gets when his students share knowledge with the people in their communities.
“What I have taught children there are the lessons and experiences I have gotten from Keystone,” Andy said. “When I do that, I feel the power and joy of active learning.”
He usually spends a week in Dongmingyi, trying to squeeze lessons and activities in an already jam-packed schedule of students. On paper, this teaching method is insufficient. But for Dongmingyi’s students, their “ace teacher” gives them fresh perspectives and brand-new connections to a world beyond their reach. More than that, it is the pure joy of being understood and accompanied by people who care that matter the most for these rural children.
“They have little contact with what’s beyond the confines of their hometown,” Andy reflected, “and so are their worldviews.”
“As a student volunteer, I hope to plant a seed in their hearts. I hope it will grow and expand to become a tree on which the children can stand to see a world of many possibilities for them.”
These experiences have inspired Andy to study economics in college, a field that he believes will allow him to understand the causes of economic disparities and improve the allocation of educational resources in rural regions of China. While studying inequality in a summer program at the University of Chicago, Andy encountered multiple global cases of regional wealth disparity. Together with Professor Lincoln of Claremont Mckenna College, he designed and researched the correlation between domestic migration and regional economic growth. Andy proposed a model for calculating an area’s potential for development to help policymakers and societies make cost-effective strategies for reverse migration.
Andy has taught the same group of children at Dongmingyi since 2017. Back then, these 74 students were in Grade 2. Now, they have graduated from primary school. Every time Andy visited the school, he saw something different in them. As he reflected on his volunteering years, Andy also realized the extent of his growth. He admitted he was overly active and sometimes disobedient, especially when he joined Keystone as a fifth grader in 2015. Despite that, he noticed that teachers guided him patiently and never suppressed his energetic spirit. He is grateful to them for providing an environment where he can remain enthusiastic.
“Andy used to be overconfident sometimes,” English teacher Christina Myrisi says of her former student. “I would use that overconfidence and turn it into tolerance, understanding and development.” Individuals and Societies teacher Dorothy Mubweka has seen considerable growth and transformation in Andy over the years and considers him her “son”.
In the many life lessons he has gotten from Keystone teachers, Andy always remembers the one from his sixth-grade Chinese teacher Kalian Wang: “Most people believe luck is random. But if you keep following the right path and work hard in the right direction, you will encounter good fortune one day.” He shared that gem of wisdom with Dongmingyi children.
Recently, one of his students told him she was accepted into their city’s “key” high school.[1] Studious and diligent, she firmly believes education can change her destiny despite some people telling her otherwise.
Andy’s ongoing support of Dongmingyi Primary School has become a schoolwide project at Keystone, with several teachers already committing to join the cause. He hopes this becomes one of the many opportunities for people and organizations to take steps to uplift rural education.
“I know I can’t change everything in my lifetime,” Andy said, “but I hope my work will draw more attention to rural students and their needs.”
As We Speak: Polyglot Victor Qian widens his world with six languages under his belt
Victor Qian is now used to hearing people speaking different languages and accents. As his family lives close to Instituto Cervantes and Alliance Fran?aise de Pekin in downtown Beijing, Victor occasionally visits these cultural institutions.
In kindergarten, where Victor practiced speaking English, foreign tutors from Spain and France would teach him and others a few words from their mother tongue after school. Their babble intrigued the young Victor so much that he picked up Spanish and French “using hand gestures and broken English”. His parents noticed his knack for language and encouraged him to try learning Spanish and French alongside English.
On some weekend afternoons after his kindergarten year, his parents sent him there so he could flick through some children’s picture books in Spanish and French and try talking to staff with his limited vocabulary. It didn’t take long before some employees grew close to their young patron.
Victor recalled one afternoon in 2011 at the Instituto Cervantes library, when an employee named Mr. Gomez gave him a Spanish version of the science fiction novel Ready Player One.
“You like video games so much. I bet you’ll like this book,” Victor recalled Mr. Gomez as saying. At the time, the five-year-old boy was amazed to see italicized English words scattered in that book because they were the only ones he could understand.
Two years after that library encounter, Victor became the youngest Chinese candidate in Beijing to pass the “breakthrough” A1 level in Spanish and the “way stage” A2 level in French in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR)[2] according to Instituto Cervantes staff. In the years since, Victor juggled studying Spanish and French after school with exploring potential ways to immerse himself into these languages. While other Spanish learners got lost in the complexities of its verb conjugation, intonation patterns, and grammatical structure, Victor navigated them with ease. He binge-watched many Spanish TV series and even read the Spanish translation of Les Misérables—both the novel and its comics version. He has cooked dishes using French cookbooks, too.
His passion paid off big time: in 2018, his language proficiency leveled up following his B2 certification in Spanish and B1 in French. He also studied for the Advanced Placement Spanish and French examinations alongside his ninth-grade year at Keystone. He passed both and received full marks in French.
Acquiring mastery of a language requires constant practice and communication with native speakers. Victor found that opportunity after joining Keystone and became a boarding student in Grade 9. The school’s residential setting made up for Victor’s reduced visits to Instituto Cervantes and Alliance Fran?aise de Pekin. His ninth-grade Individuals and Societies teacher Jorge Durango often spoke to him in Spanish. When Victor was preparing for Oxford’s entrance exams, Mr. Durango helped him with questions on Spanish grammar. Meanwhile, Victor has had remarkable conversations with his eleventh-grade advisor Christophe Gigon. He sparred with his Belgian teacher over using Shrek as an essay topic. “Mr. Gigon’s rebuttal in eloquent French easily defeated my belabored arguments based on Americanized humor,” Victor recalled. “It was as if Shrek was debating in a 17th-century salon of the intelligentsia. From a Francophone perspective, the ogre couldn’t compete with the grandes oeuvres.”
It wasn’t only language immersion that Victor had taken away from Keystone’s boarding program. He has been exposed to a number of cultures, thanks to faculty members who generously shared their traditions with students during advisory evenings and weekend activities. In between these years, Victor deepened his understanding of different languages. He interned as an English and Chinese editor at China Daily, learning more about cultural differences in the expression and use of these two languages. In Grade 11, he became a TEDx translator who adeptly switched between Chinese, English, Spanish, and French. At times, he “changed the structure of English sentences to fit French tenses” or tried to interpret language-specific conventions through logical and contextual connections. And following his experience of interpreting for TEDx speakers with different accents, he began exploring phonology to find out how differences in pronunciation occurred in response to social and cultural influences.
Victor’s parents previously wanted him to attend high school in the United States. However, he thought he would miss many precious moments by moving to a place where he hardly had connections.
“Keystone doesn’t only have teachers from all over the world; I have Chinese teachers and classmates,” Victor said. “The dishes I love to eat are here. Keystone has a culture I can relate to. And all these aspects are instrumental in my growth as a person.”
Victor finds joy in sharing what he has learned with many people. Last year during a Creativity, Activity, Service (CAS) program session, Victor and his Ukrainian classmate Alex Chalyi used their fluency in Spanish to teach a language course virtually to more than 40 students in Ukraine. This teaching initiative made Victor realize the deeper meaning behind languages. He summarized the common Latin roots and their conjugations among Spanish, French, and English through comparative studies for his TEDx translation assignments. By examining the contexts of jokes and expressions in American standup comedy talk shows, Victor noticed the vast cultural differences behind languages. He also explored African Americans’ colloquialisms for an individual oral test for his Diploma Programme (DP) English Language and Literature course, which informed him of their history of racial discrimination and constant struggles.
For Victor, languages do not exist solely as a mode of human communication; they reflect our history of development and ways of thinking. In the 2021 Linguistics Olympiad, Victor won the individual gold medal for solving a problem in the counting system of the Trans-New Guinean language Ndom by looking at its similarities to French. In this competition, Victor realized that language “was the gateway to the road of thoughts and the bridge across borders.”
While preparing for the Oxford entrance exams in the summer of 2022, Victor taught himself Italian and Portuguese right after passing the advanced-level (C1) CEFR exam in Spanish. This time, Victor’s goal is to learn new languages to “unlock” more diverse cultures, explore histories, and become aware of pressing issues other nations face. In addition, he hopes to continue expressing his thoughts and telling stories of a more vibrant world, just like the numerous essays and creative articles he has written ever since he began learning English. Don’t be surprised if he becomes a prolific writer in Spanish, French, Italian, or Portuguese one day, because he has already been on this path for so long
A Force of Nature: Ariel Chen welcomes young conservationists to the “Wildlife Neighborhood”
In March 2021, Ariel Chen brought wildlife inside Keystone through an immersive forest exhibition. In her Personal Project product, Ariel introduced visitors to the leopard cat, whose footprints lay on a winding ‘forest’ path with trees made from paper tubes and small hills printed on cardboard. A camouflage net spanned the track, splitting gallery lights and turning them into sunshine.
It took Ariel over 100 hours to conceptualize, design, and construct her “Wilderness of Beijing” project, which sought to raise awareness of the condition of the leopard cat and why the species gradually disappeared in the capital. At the end of the exhibition, visitors saw a board with Ariel’s message that it is still possible for urban residents to coexist with wildlife by changing mindsets and employing empathy for the environment.
“The project not only seeks to regenerate the wilderness in North China but also the curiosity and caring for nature that has disappeared in people’s hearts,” Ariel said. “Only by restoring this love for the environment and wildlife—and when people in Beijing are ready to welcome them—will the leopard cat come back.”
Several months before the exhibition, Ariel and her friends from the Animals Around Us Club launched a fundraising initiative that later allowed them to purchase and install 14 infrared cameras in several protected areas in Beijing. These cameras have recorded footage of wildlife species, including the hog badger, the red fox, the wild boar, the Siberian deer, and long-tailed gorals. Meanwhile, the device installed in the Yeyahu Wetland Park in Yanqing District captured a clowder of leopard cats, which became the subject of Leopard Cats in the Capital, a documentary that she and several friends produced under the moniker “Cat Peepers”. They premiered the short film at a student assembly in October 2020, much to the delight of students and teachers in the audience. Later, the documentary was aired on China Central Television’s (CCTV) China Movie Channel.
Ariel is also known as a “Swift Ambassador” in the Keystone community due to her previous birdwatching engagements. Between 2017 and 2018, she traveled from around Beijing to several countries and saw more than 1,500 species of birds. On one of her trips to Yunnan, the self-confessed birdwatching fanatic found herself lost in the Pudacuo National Park because she was riveted by the flocks of birds chirping and soaring overhead. These experiences inspired her to launch the Keystone Birdwatching Club where she hosted nearly 30 sessions on bird species, organized six off-campus birdwatching trips, and arranged two lectures with experts.
In June 2019, she shared her thoughts on the protection and conservation of the dwindling Beijing swift at the launch of the Beijing Swift Project in downtown Beijing. In the following academic year, when Ariel was in Grade 10, the Keystone Birdwatching Club was renamed Animals Around Us, which expanded the scope of the club to wildlife species living throughout Beijing.
Ariel continued with her animal advocacy in Grade 11—this time, she launched Wildlife Neighbors, an animal conservation platform with more than 40 members from different ages, schools, professions, and regions. Ariel also expanded her Personal Project exhibition. She and her project partner, Keystone Class of 2022 member Jane Liu, along with 15 other Wildlife Neighbor members redesigned a new immersive display on Northern China ecosystems, which was launched in several locations: first, at If Garden (a bookstore) and then at Cave Discovery (a theme park) in Beijing, and later in a museum in Pingyao, Shanxi Province. The series of exhibitions received more than 1,400 visitors.
Besides exhibitions, Wildlife Neighbors has promoted wildlife protection through Weibo, bilibili, and official WeChat subscription accounts. Ariel founded the Keystone chapter of Wildlife Neighbors in 2022 and helped members install infrared cameras in different locations on campus. Club members were overjoyed seeing footage of hedgehogs and weasels, realizing that wild animals were indeed around them and that these creatures were also part of Keystone’s ecosystem. Ariel shared the recordings with Wildlife Neighbor chapters in four other schools, drawing the curiosity and attention of more students. Ariel hopes to expand this network of campuses connected by shared care for urban wildlife.
On the sidelines, Ariel and her Wildlife Neighbor co-members at Keystone used data from the cameras, coupled with insect biodiversity investigations, to work on a “rewilding” proposal to restore undergrowth vegetation and improve soil quality in the school’s green spaces.
Continuing the Swift Ambassador project, she worked with Design teacher Mark Hobbs and a group of eighth graders to construct and install swift nest boxes at Keystone. On her WeChat subscription account, she has authored more than 40 articles that discuss controversial conservation concepts and debunk myths about ecosystem conservation.
Ever since childhood, Ariel was attracted by all kinds of animals featured in encyclopedia volumes at their home. Her parents nurtured Ariel’s curiosity and often took her to nearby forest parks so she could observe animals. Later, they took her on different trips around the world. On these travels, Ariel witnessed how animals tried hard to survive like humans. She was heartbroken to see stretches of pristine tropical rainforests replaced by barren rubber tree forests. All her advocacy to engage the public to conserve wildlife and nature sprang from these experiences while growing up. At the same time, she was emboldened by the support of her parents and the motivation from her classmates, teachers, and friends at Keystone.
“Since coming to Keystone in Grade 6, I have had many opportunities to experiment and explore freely,” Ariel said. “Ms. Sindhura Mahendran [the supervisor of the Wildlife Neighbors project] helped us connect with other schools and apply for the Service Learning Grant from the Association of China and Mongolia International Schools [ACAMIS], so that we could buy infrared cameras. Ms. Yao Lei guided and helped me to run the Birdwatching Club. And there were more teachers who gave me a hand. Jane Liu and I would inspire each other and discuss improving the exhibition. Nicole Wei [from the Keystone Class of 2022], also helped me with the documentary. And more Keystone students in Wildlife Neighbors have been enthusiastic about animal protection activities.”
Ariel still remembers the warm reception of the Keystone community to her Personal Project exhibition. Students she had never met sent her online messages to express their appreciation. Some teachers also posted on their personal WeChat Moments wall several photos and notes of encouragement. These actions showed Ariel that what she was doing was all worth it.
Now that Ariel has expanded her conservation project, she has also faced new questions: How is the ecology of small wild mammals around the city maintained and functioning? How do they coexist with predators and humans? How can wild animals adapt to the changing ecological environment? She has dug deeper into related fields to find answers. Aside from joining a summer course on ecology at Cornell University, Ariel self-learned a geographic information mapping system, R programming, and ecological statistical methods, conducting several studies on how humans exert profound and indirect impacts on ecosystems. In her long-standing advocacy, she realized that cities bear not just human history, but also a tale of how wildlife settles and adapts to new ecological niches.
“I began to see cities and nature as a fluid, interweaving system, where wildlife is part of our society as much as we are ingrained into their lives,” she said. “I am now more observant—looking behind, above, and below, noticing animals and their signs, evidence of a hidden side of Beijing.”
The stories of Ariel, Victor, and Andy and how they have transformed their interests into commendable pursuits are only a small part of their colorful lives. They have shown that academic achievements and the institutions of which they will soon be part do not define them or their futures. Their tales tell us of their willingness to take action and selflessness to lead many young people to a path of growth.
Translation: Allen Zhu
Special thanks to Dorothy Mubweka and Christina Myrisi for providing information.
[1] In Chinese general education system, secondary schools are categorized into “key” or “ordinary” schools. “Key” schools enjoy more privileges and funding from the local government.
[2] The CEFR categorizes language proficiency in three levels. A speaker with an “A” level in CEFR is categorized as a “basic user” of a language.
