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“The ping heard round the world”: Nixon’s trip to China

Mike Shen

NHDI 2023 State Top 3

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The Green Cultural Frontier

Aidan Zhang

NHDI 2023 State Qualifier

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Jazz Diplomacy: Use of Soft power and Cultural diplomacy during the Cold War

Aidan Wang

NHDI 2023 State Qualifier

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“Help Indians Help Themselves”: Zitkala-Ša's Legacy in Establishing a New Frontier for the Preservation of Native American Culture and Expansion of Indigenous Civil Rights

Jason Tang

NHDI 2023 State Qualifier

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An Uneasy Frontier:
Covert Foreign Policy and Democratic Tension in America’s Secret War

Natalia Somma Tang

NHD State Qualifier

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“A Thousand Deaths” of Anna May Wong: Crossing the Frontier from Yellow Peril to Hollywood Star

Andy Gao, Tammy Wang, and Tony Zhou

NHDI 2023 State Top 6

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“A Thousand Deaths” of Anna May Wong: Crossing the Frontier from Yellow Peril to Hollywood Star

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Cost of Expanding Frontier:
Chinese Laborers in the Construction of the Transcontinental Railroads

Bowen Xiao

NHD 2023 State Champion

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Home

Thesis

Although the Transcontinental Railroads stretched across and developed the frontier of the West, it came at a great cost to Chinese laborers, who built much of the western railway. Chinese laborers suffered from harsh working conditions and rock-bottom wages and were later deported by the Chinese Exclusion Act.

This photo depicted Chinese workers building a trestle in 1865. (Smithsonian)

Bowen Xiao
Senior Individual Website
Process Paper: 499
​​​​​​​Multimedia Length: 1:52
​​​​​​​Website Word Count: 1184

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Home Although the Transcontinental Railroads stretched across and developed the frontier of the West, it came at a great cost to Chinese laborers, who built much of the western railway. Chinese laborers suffered from harsh working conditions and rock-bottom wages and were later deported by the Chinese Exclusion Act.

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Mme. Chiang Kai-Shek’s Speech to Congress: A New Frontier in the Sino-American Relationship, Race and Gender

Ashley Zheng

NHD 2023 State Top 3

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Great Wall of China, Huairou District, China

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Great Wall of China, Huairou District, China

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Great Wall of China, Huairou District, China

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William Edgar Geil: An Explorer of Changing Horizons

Kevin Zhang

NHDI 2023 Regional Submission

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Geil at the end of the Great Wall, 1909, Internet Archive

In the early 1900s, William Edgar Geil led multiple expeditions to China. In these expeditions, he systematically recorded and studied the Chinese culture and religion across the Yangtse River basin, the eighteen provinces of China, and surveyed the entire length of the Great Wall. At a time when the knowledge of China is limited, Geil extended the horizons of his time and opened the doors for the world to understand Chinese culture and religion.

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Geil at the end of the Great Wall, 1909, Internet Archive In the early 1900s, William Edgar Geil led multiple expeditions to China. In these expeditions, he systematically recorded and studied the Chinese culture and religion across the Yangtse River basin, the eighteen provinces of China, and surveyed the entire length of the Great Wall.

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Humanity during World War II

Jishen Gao

TeenInk Contributor

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World War II was a devastating, brutal war in which around 3% of the world's population perished. It was especially costly for China, which became the country with the second-highest WWII casualties behind the Soviet Union as 20 million Chinese died countering the Japanese invasions. World War II, known to the Chinese as the Second Sino-Japanese War, was a national peril, whose terrors are remembered by the Chinese people to this day. Modern Chinese cultural creations such as plays usually depict the Japanese negatively, as evil, barbarous, and ugly perpetrators of war crimes. These negative portrayals often lead to cultural disgust toward Japan, creating and maintaining a cultural atmosphere of hostility.

My grandparents were born in Central China, once the frontline of fighting in WWII, and they often tell me stories about their youth during the war. However, despite Chinese hatred for the Japanese war crimes, my grandparents retain respect and friendliness toward the Japanese, as they learned a lesson from a life experience during the Second World War: it is wrong to maintain a negative stereotype of the Japanese, as not every soldier committed war crimes, including slaughtering and robbing. Even under imperial Japan's command to invade and annex Central China, both peoples could still maintain humanity and care.

By 1938, Japan had already occupied Korea and Manchuria. With a base in mainland China, Japan started to further annex the Chinese territories. Soon, the battlefield extended to Henan Province in Central China. My great-grandmother, a many-ways typical Chinese woman born in 1908 at the end of the Qing Dynasty, had her feet bound and never left her village. Experiencing the political change from Qing to the Republic of China, my great-grandmother adapted to the changes, and she worked as both a merchant and a sugarcane farmer to sustain the family and my ill, weak great-grandfather, who was unable to farm. Although illiterate, she taught herself how to count and calculate. Even though she experienced foot-binding, she endured the pain, and she toiled and ensured the family's adequate food and clothing. She gave birth to my grandfather in 1930. The family became richer and happier with the wealth my great-grandmother amassed until 1938, when Japanese soldiers reached Henan and, unfortunately, my grandfather caught malaria.

Because of my grandfather's illness, he was unable to move. In addition, due to their village's poverty and lack of communication with outside, nobody in the village was able to cure my grandfather. When everyone learned the arrival of the Japanese, they fled from their homes and migrated to safer places; however, my family was unable to move because of my grandfather's illness. Hopeless, my great-grandmother sat on the doorstep in front of her house and cried day after day with my grandfather sitting on her lap until the arrival of Japanese soldiers. A Japanese medical officer noticed my crying great-grandmother and identified my grandfather's illness. Subsequently, he selflessly provided my great-grandmother with medicine for malaria. Eventually, my grandfather was cured. Then, the medical officer aided my family to flee into a safer zone where the war could not reach.

The Second Sino-Japanese War lasted until 1945, when the United States dropped two nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Japanese surrendered. By then, the Soviet Union had also come to Manchuria, expelled the Japanese from the region, and returned the land to China. After 8 years of war, happiness and cheers of victory spread all over China, except amongst the Japanese soldiers, who were too poor to go back to Japan. The Japanese had to sell their possessions to Chinese merchants, who would take advantage of the soldiers' desperation to buy their high valued products and jewelry at low prices. My great-grandmother, who was also a merchant, seized the opportunity and decided to trade with the Japanese. However, different from the other Chinese merchants, she insisted on paying a fair price for the Japanese soldiers' possessions. My great-grandmother believed in mutual kindness and trust among peoples, and she continued to teach this value to her offspring.

My great-grandmother also wished her offspring to receive better education and to experience the world beyond China one day, as the cultural exchanges brought by war convinced her of the importance of knowledge and horizons. With mainland China finally achieving its peace from World War II and the Chinese Civil War, my grandfather grew up and became the first person in his family to attend college. He studied meteorology and biology, and researched pathogens such as the one that caused his illness. My grandfather had 5 daughters, all of whom went to college, a phenomenon still not prevalent in China at the time. His youngest daughter gave birth to me, and she made the decision for me to study abroad, finally realizing my great-grandmother's wish. Throughout the years, my family has continued to visit foreign countries worldwide, learning about different cultures and traditions. My family passed on my great-grandmother's teachings to me, showing me the importance of mutual kindness among people. Although the negative portrayals are mostly true, they could never by themselves represent the entire story. We must not cling to a fixed mindset that refuses to accept stories of humanity.

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World War II was a devastating, brutal war in which around 3% of the world’s population perished. It was especially costly for China, which became the country with the second-highest WWII casualties behind the Soviet Union as 20 million Chinese

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Sino-American Relationship in 1970s

Anthony Zhang

NHD 2022 State Qualifier

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Sino-American Relationship in 1970s (Final Version)

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To the Country Sitting in Darkness: Mark Twain’s Satirical Debate on American Diplomacy

Emilia Murphy & Maya Jyothinagaram

NHD 2022 State Qualifier

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“I Despise Those Who Despise Peasants": Bai Qixian and Debates about the Marriages of Educated Youth during the Cultural Revolution

Tammy Wang

NHD 2022 State Qualifier

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Count to Ten and Fire: Dueling, the Wrong Answer to the Lock of Disputes

Fisher Xiong

NHD 2021 State Top 7

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Caesar Cipher’s Impact on WWII Communication

Peter Wang, Richard Conlon, Kevin Zhang

NHD 2021 State Qualifier

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Revolutionary Communication: Thomas Paine and the Forging of a New Political Language

Steven Su

NHD 2021 National Qualifier

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Bruce Lee: Communicating a New Image of Asian Masculinity

Natalia Somma Tang

NHD 2021 State Top 7

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Natalia- Bruce Lee, Communicating an image of Asian Masculinity

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The Boxer Rebellion: Various American and Chinese Perspectives

Andy Gao

NHD 2021 State Qualifier

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Miscommunication on Destalinization: Khrushchev's Secret Speech and the Hungarian Revolution in 1956

Anthony Zhang

NHD State Qualifier 2021

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Expanding the Empire: How Zheng He's Voyages Transformed Ming Diplomacy

Thomas Guo

NHD 2022 Participant

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The Great Debate in 1895: Debate about Women's Suffrage at the Utah Constitutional Convention

Linda Su

NHD 2022 State Qualifier

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Vaccine: An Essential Innovation

Justin Hou

NHD 2022 Participant

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“Seward’s Folly”: The Political Debate Over the Alaska Purchase

Bowen Xiao

NHD 2022 State Qualifier

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Dirty Diplomacy: U.S. Diplomacy, Human Rights, and the Argentinian Dirty War

David An

NHD 2022 National Qualifier

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The Failure of Árbenz is the Failure of Democracy: Anticommunism and U.S. Diplomacy in the 1954 Guatemalan Coup

Ashley Zheng

NHD 2022 National Qualifier

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The Unsigned Treaty: The May Fourth Movement and the Fires of Chinese Nationalism

Andy Gao

NHD 2022 State Top 7