Becoming Tim Walz, from Nebraska to China

Building bridges, teaching students, and criticizing regimes

Photograph of Foshan Ancestral Temple by Wikipedia user Zhangzhugang. I have no idea if Tim Walz visited this, but given its prominence in the Wikipedia entry for Foshan, I’m guessing he probably did, and it probably looked something like this.

When Tim Walz, then an honors student at Chadron State College, was chosen to teach American history and English in China, it was news—at least to the Chadron, Nebraska, Record.¹

“I’ve always had a real interest in travel, and feel this is a golden opportunity to see a culture that’s 3,000 years old,” Walz told the Record in an article announcing his selection in 1989. Walz, who graduated from high school in Butte, Nebraska, a town of about 500 people, would later say his motivations for going were simple: “wanting to get out and see what else the world had to offer.”²

Walz was chosen for the volunteer opportunity by WorldTeach, a nonprofit based in Cambridge and founded by Harvard students that placed volunteer teachers in countries around the world. It was the first year the program would make placements in China, the Record reported, and that meant participants had to be independent: “They said we’ll basically have to solve our own problems.” That included a mandate to raise $2,500 for his transportation, health insurance, and orientation costs—and, once in China, to make do with $100 per month in salary (“about twice the amount generally paid [to] Chinese teachers”, the Record stated).

This trip has become part of Walz lore. Unusually, the trip and its effects were well documented at the time. News reports about Walz, his trip, and how it affected his teaching help flesh out this period of his life.

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Walz’s name appeared surprisingly frequently in Nebraska newspapers. In May 1989, Staff Sergeant Walz was photographed in the Alliance, Nebraska, Times-Herald touring the National Guard Armory in Alliance with retiring First Sergeant Wayne Simpson, a 37-year veteran of the Guard whose job, the caption reported, Walz would take over when he moved to Alliance.³ That February, he had been photographed with his employer, Norm Eitemiller of Eitemiller Oil and his wife Barb Eitemiller, who was receiving an award for supporting National Guard training.⁴ He showed up again in the Chadron Record in the spring listed as a recipient of a certificate of merit from Chadron State, an award given to outstanding seniors in each major.⁵

News of Walz’s doings fit in well with small-town Nebraska newspapers. It’s a little hard to remember that before social media there was a role for newspapers not only to preen as defenders of democracy but also just to print what was happening. (Some older readers may find this explanation of what newspapers used to be like patronizing, but it is not: we are further from the founding of Facebook than the founding of Facebook was to Walz’s sojourn in China.⁶) When in 1990 the Chadron Record announced that Phi Alpha Theta history honors fraternity at Chadron State would feature Walz as a speaker on “Education in China,” a talk to be based on his year teaching in Guangdong (Canton), the item ran above a concert announcement of a cover band and below a description of local 4-H club activities.

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To be sure, not everyone was in the paper that often. Walz was also living an interesting life—more interesting than 4-H clubs, at least. Foshan was a big and rapidly growing city in a part of the world that was little visited by Americans. He was seeing things few people in his community had the opportunity to visit. On the other hand, the Record also printed excerpts from a letter Walz wrote to Al Holst, a Chadron State education professor, which really seems to take the small-town paper aspect to a new level.⁷ (On the third hand, it lets us reconstruct what he was saying and doing at the time with unusual clarity.)

In the letter, Walz wrote that he was “being treated like a king” and that he was

totally responsible for my curriculum. But I’m managing. As for the classroom environment that the students are used to, it is very reminiscent of turn of the century America (with) rough furnishings and rigid adherence to the law of the teacher. The students are almost too well behaved.

A 1990 article in the Alliance Times-Herald reported Walz’s recollection that taught four classes a day with 65 students per class in the senior middle school.⁸ The students had taken at least six years of English and were eager to learn about the United States:

I was treated exceptionally well…There was no anti-American feeling whatsoever. America is it in the eyes of the Chinese. Many of the students want to come to America to study. They don’t feel there is much opportunity for them in China.

The students had previously learned English from a British teacher, and enjoyed learning from Walz—and learning his Midwest colloquialisms.⁹

Walz noted the school boasted modern equipment, including Apple computers and a high-tech sound lab, and found the students to be industrious if only modestly creative. His students and friends made a Christmas tree for him on December 24 and threw a birthday party for him. “No matter how long I live, I’ll never be treated that well again,” Walz said. “They gave me more gifts than I could bring home. It was an excellent experience.” (His bicycle was stolen, but he was given a replacement.)

In a 1993 article, Walz expanded on his observations. “There was never once, during the entire time I was teaching there, that a student didn’t do what I had asked of him,” Walz said. “There was never even any unfinished homework.”¹⁰

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Walz learned some Mandarin and (more logically, given that he was in Guangdong) some Cantonese. To give a sense of how exotic his travels were at the time, I reprint the description of his language encounters from the Times-Herald:

He also tried to speak their language, and would be applauded each time he used a Cantonese word correctly. However, he said he had great difficulty with “Mandarin Chinese”, another of their languages, because tones are involved as well as pronunciations.¹¹

Mandarin Chinese: famously an obscure language. Well, in the 1990s…

In Walz’s telling, he took advantage of being in China to see China, including six trips by bus to Macau, a city about 50 miles from Foshan that was then a Portuguese colony. Having traveled occasionally by bus in China on my own in 2004, my respect for Walz’s cultural fluency grew tremendously reading this—2004 was easy mode compared to the 1980s, and navigating the bus system was a challenge even then.

Walz took the train to Beijing, then a 40-hour trip (and, given his finances, I suspect he traveled via hard seat). There, he visited Tiananmen Square, months after what the papers described as a “massacre” of protesters. As much as Walz loved China and the Chinese people, his attitude toward the Chinese Communist Party was bluntly critical. Tiananmen, he said, “will always have a lot of bitter memories for the people.” (Walz famously later chose June 4 as his wedding date so he could “have a date he’ll always remember.”)

His overall assessment of his trip continued the theme of praise for the people and criticism of the government:

Walz feels the Chinese have been mistreated and cheated by their government for years. “If they had the proper leadership, there are no limits on what they could accomplish,” he stated. “They are such kind people. They just gave and gave and gave to me. Going there was one of the best things I have ever done.”

This article, or a reprint of it, has been extensively quoted in the media. The New York Post took the “never be treated that well again” as evidence that Walz “fawned” over Communist China, while the “one of the best things I have ever done” line has been reported by NBC News . China Daily also reported the line, but the CCP-backed news outlet did not reprint his observations about the failings of the Communist Party or the Tiananmen incident.

Yet I think viewing the article in the context of Walz’s discussions and consistent view helps frame it properly, and more coherently than picking one or two lines to characterize this period. Walz was an explorer who wanted to be a teacher, and he learned a lot—and part of what he learned was a lasting admiration for China’s people and criticism of its government’s policies.

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When he returned from China, Walz was looking for a job (something the article also mentioned—there’s little that stays private in small towns). Within a few months, he had found a position as a social studies teacher in Alliance, where he met Gwen Whipple, a fellow teacher. He continued serving with the Guard—and continued to be photographed doing Guard work, including helping to paint and repair trash cans in downtown Alliance.¹²

He kept up his ties to China. In November 1991, Walz created a pen-pal program between Alliance Middle School, where he then taught sixth-grade social studies, and Number 8 Middle School (presumably in Foshan), where a friend worked. The Americans worried they wouldn’t be able to write in Chinese; Walz reassured them the Chinese could write and read English. (Having once organized a similar program, I can testify that Chinese students read and write English better than American students do Chinese.) Tying the exercise back to his lesson plan, Walz told his students that relations between the two countries’ governments were at odds, especially in trade: “The Chinese government wants us to buy what they sell, but won’t buy what we sell.”¹³

In July 1993, Walz led a group of 25 Alliance students on a trip to China partly funded by the Chinese government (the students and sponsors, including Walz, had to raise $1,580 apiece, an effort that Walz aided by recruiting local businesses).¹⁴ (A report on the trip featured a rare but heartfelt moment of criticism of an aspect of Chinese culture. Walz responded to one student’s interest in hearing Chinese opera by saying he’d “rather eat glass” than see another Chinese opera.) Later, they married and moved to Minnesota, where they formed a private company to organize summer trips to China for American high school students.

Still later, he entered politics.

1. “CSC student going to China”, The Chadron Record, 11 April 1989, p. 7.

2. Juanita Mitchell, “Walz Uses Travel Adventures To Keep Geography Interesting,” The Alliance Times-Herald, 3 April 1993, p. 1.

3. The Alliance Times-Herald, 16 May 1989, p. 5.

4. The Chadron Record, 17 February 1989, p. 4.

5. “Special awards presented during Ivy Day”, The Chadron Record, 5 May 1989, p. 4.

6. Facebook was founded 2004, which, difficult as it is to believe, was 20 years ago; Walz went to China in 1989, and 2004 minus 1989 equals 15.

7. “Teacher treated like king”, The Chadron Record, 29 September 1989, p. 3.

8. “CSC Graduate Teaches in China”, The Alliance Times-Herald, 13 September 1990, p. 2. This was apparently a reprint of Con Marshall, “Chadron grad gets royal treatment in China,” The Chadron Record, 4 September 1990, p. 9, but because I opened the tab with this article second, the quotations are taken from the Times-Herald. It’s interesting to see this attributed to various newspapers—small-town papers reprinted each other a lot.

9. Mary Wernke, “Honeymoon in China”, Scottsbluff Star-Herald, January 9, 1994, p. 9. Folks, literally this is an article that is two-thirds of a page long. I honestly didn’t think there would be this much to write about but the local media covered him like he was a celebrity. And, honestly, maybe he was.

10. Juanita Mitchell, “Walz Uses Travel Adventures To Keep Geography Interesting,” The Alliance Times-Herald, 3 April 1993, p. 1. Yes, this is a page-one story about lesson plans.

11. This specific point is likely an error introduced by the reporter because Mandarin has fewer tones than Cantonese.

12. STG. The Alliance Times-Herald, 25 April 1991, p. 1. Page one. Above Lee Greenwood! Seriously! Here’s the screenshot! And it wasn’t even a slow news day!

13. Belinda Amerman, “AMS Students Receive Letters from China”, The Alliance Times-Herald, November 12, 1991.

14. Jan Treffer, “Boarding the Orient express,” Scottsbluff Star-Herald, July 25, 1993