GUILDERLAND — A great red dragon with more than 100 faces roiled through the corridors of Pine Push Elementary School on Friday morning.

Students and their teachers stepped out of their classrooms to watch — some of them silent in awe, some of them waving and cheering.

The red beast drew admiring parents in its wake, some of them flashing pictures of its grandeur.

A girl in an embroidered red shirt giggled behind her brightly-crayoned dragon mask. A boy in a bright red T-shirt brandished the accordion-style paper dragon he had made, raising its wooden legs high over his head.
"Gung hay fat choi! "called out the students as they ushered in the Chinese New Year — the Year of the Dog.

Earlier that morning, Martha Beck, the school’s principal, had bid a fond farewell to Zhou Ji during a school assembly. Ji had spent the semester at Pine Bush Elementary as a cultural exchange teacher from China. He will now move on to Guilderland High School.

Ji is a husband and father, living with his family in Jiujiang. He is a middle-school English teacher, the head of the English department, and a head teacher.
He is spending 10 months here as part of the American Field Service International program. He has been staying with Jean Michelle "Mickey" Nieman, who has been involved with AFS for more than a decade.
AFS’s slogan is: "Walk together, talk together, all ye people of the earth, then and only then shall we have peace."
The program was founded in 1914 by a volunteer ambulance corps during the first world war that "thought that, if students from different countries saw what it was like to live somewhere else, it could prevent war," Nieman said earlier.
In his application to the program, Ji described himself as "a peace lover, and ready to devote my whole life to a peace-making career for our human beings."
"He has been an observer, a learner, and a participant," Beck told The Enterprise this week of Ji’s role at Pine Bush Elementary. Ji worked with Audrey Jurczynski in her second-grade classroom, and visited other classes "to share his culture," Beck said.

He was particularly helpful to the third-graders who study China as part of their curriculum, Beck said. The third-graders study three countries from three different continents — Kenya from Africa, Brazil from South America, and China from Asia.
"They’re at an age when they’re very open-minded about learning the way other countries do things," said Beck of the third-graders. "They haven’t formed opinions that one way is better than another," she said.

Beck said that, while the students and staff had gained much from Ji, she thought the learning had been reciprocal. She recalled a conversation she had with Ji at a farewell get-together on Friday.
"He’s happy he got a true picture of America," she said. "Before, his perception was shaped by American movies.... He’s very pleased with the warmth with which he was received and he values the personal relationships....He said he will go back and tell his countrymen."

Beck said at Friday’s early-morning assembly that one of the good ideas he brought from his country was exercise at school. And, after the assembly, a group of kids energetically performed a set of calisthenics.

Zhou Ji flashed a bright smile as he accepted a book picturing New York wildlife from Beck.
"May our two countries always experience peace and friendship," he said.

Later, he took pictures of a presentation a Guilderland High School student made to classes of third-graders; Zhou Ji beamed as Paul Jones described many of the wonders of China, his homeland.

International traveler

Jones was one of 42 students to travel to China with the People to People Student Ambassador Program. The invitation-only program was started in 1956 under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, after the second world war, with the goal of achieving understanding among citizens of all nations.

Paul’s mother, Karen Covert-Jones, told The Enterprise he had received a letter in August of 2004, inviting him to participate and, after attending an information session, he was eager to go.

His trip to China was his first time away from home, she said, but she wasn’t worried; she was buoyed by her son’s enthusiasm, and by her own youthful travel experiences.

She had been an exchange student to Belgium when she was 15, said Covert-Jones.

Her son is now pursing more international travel. He’ll leave for India in three weeks, she said, traveling with two Guilderland friends, one whose father is from India. (The boys are currently collecting used solar calculators and laptop computers to give to students at a poor school they will be visiting, she said. Anyone wanting to donate can call the Covert-Jones household at 356-1167.)

Virtual tour

Paul Jones mesmerized the third-graders with his PowerPoint presentation about China.
"He’s one of our students," said Beck with pride.

The virtual tour of China began with pictures of Beijing and the Forbidden City, located at its center. The imperial palace was built during the Ming and Qing dynasties.
Jones termed the Forbidden City, "One of the most phenomenal historic sites I’ve seen."

He asked how many third-graders had seen the movie Mulan; all hands went up as Jones indicated what should be familiar from the movie. The Disney movie, based on a 1,500-year-old Chinese ballad, tells of a girl who, disguised as a man, fights in her father’s place to save China from the invading Huns.
The Forbidden City has 9,000 rooms, Jones said, with "dragons all over, symbolizing the power of the emperor."

Jones’s tour moved along quickly as he next showed a picture of scaffolding, made of bamboo, and then photographs depicting the process of making cloisonné objects of brass and porcelain.
He had pictures of Xian, which he described as "the only city in China still completely surrounded by a wall."
He had pictures, too, of the Terra Cotta Warriors and Horses, "a huge cavalry made for the first emperor of China to protect him in the afterlife." Jones said, "Each soldier is different, with a different facial expression and hair style."
Shanghai, with its 17 million residents, Jones described as the "fashion and style capital of China."

He said it was his favorite city.

Jones next described the silk-making process — beginning with the worms, and moving to the cocoons, which are soaked and baked. And then he showed pictures of women doing silk embroidery.

In the factory he visited, Jones said, all the lighting was natural and no magnification was used by the workers. One particularly stunning photograph showed a woman at work, facing a copy of the Mona Lisa, recreating the Da Vinci masterpiece with silk threads.
Jones described Hong Kong as a "mix of new and old"; one of his pictures, taken during a boat tour, showed the modern city skyline in the background with a traditional boat in the foreground.
When Jones described the Great Wall, he sounded like the teen he is: "It was pretty cool," he said.
He reported the steps were uneven — some two or three inches and the next "a couple of feet."
He showed a picture of his "home-stay family" — an extended family complete with aunts and grandmother. One photo showed Jones with his Chinese brother.
"He has an American shirt on; I have a Chinese shirt on — go figure," said Jones with a shrug.

Photos taken at a culinary school showed an exquisite dragon’s head carved out of a radish, and carefully made spring rolls.
"Ours fell apart in little tiny pieces," said Jones of the visiting students’ efforts at making spring rolls.
As he flashed pictures of a Buddhist temple with prayer ribbons, Jones explained that Buddha has a third eye on his forehead. "That’s so he can see into your soul," he said.

Moving from the religious to the commercial, Jones displayed a picture of bags of potato chips from his hotel.
"Have you ever had cool cucumber"" he asked the third-graders. Other Chinese potato-chip flavors included five-flavored fish, and Jones’s favorite, Beijing duck.
His show ended with a picture of his favorite sign — a yellow street sign that said in Chinese and in English, "Appropriate Parking."

Eastern treasures

The third-graders pressed about Jones to see the treasures he had brought from his travels — a small replica of a Terra Cotta Warrior, a tiny cloisonné elephant.
"Please be careful of him," said Jones, as each child wanted to touch the brightly-colored elephant.

The stuffed panda bear he brought was strictly off-limits for touching; it was a gift for his younger sister.
"She said I could bring it only if no one touched it," said Jones. This assertion was greeted with solemn nods from the children.
Behind Jones was a display he had made showing "all the different kinds of foods in China."
"He ate his food with chopsticks the whole time he was there," said his mother.
Jones also held up the "passport and key we got when we entered Xian."
"Did you go in every room"" asked one of the third-graders.

The key, Jones explained, was symbolic.

As Jones displayed a motif with the Olympic rings, he explained the world games would be held in Beijing in 2008.

His tour group visited an Olympic school where the People to People Ambassadors played Ping-Pong with the Chinese students.
"They killed us," said Jones with a smile.
The last item he displayed was a sword, which, Jones explained, is "strictly ornamental" — it has no sharp edge.
As he pulled the sword from its sheath, a wave of "oohs" skittered across the group of young students.