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How China Made Me Appreciate My Freedom
Why singing the National Anthem is important to me
What my kids couldn’t understand about singing the national anthem
When my daughters were younger, they would groan the all-too-familiar phrase: “Mom! You’re embarrassing me!”
They’d roll their eyes and hang their heads: “Stop it. No one else is singing!”
They told me in no uncertain terms that I couldn’t sing at the ball games when they played the national anthem. “No one else sings, Mom. Everyone can hear you!” they’d sputter in mortification.
I responded with the primal response they usually threw at me. “You just DON’T UNDERSTAND!”
There was no way that two pre-teen girls could grasp my strange stubbornness on the subject of vocal patriotism. I hadn’t understood it myself until I traveled to China on a Fulbright-Hayes Study Abroad trip with other teachers.
Lessons from China and Tiananmen Square
The heat was sultry on a hot July night in Guangzhou, China. My colleagues and I met in a small, private banquet room five years after the Tiananmen Square Massacre. That day, we had heard firsthand accounts of the horrific aftermath of the Massacre at…
