Global Citizenship in Action: My Meeting with Cindy
We met on the long subway ride on our way back to the university-filled suburb of Xiasha during my last week in Hangzhou. Her name was Cindy and she was studying at the Zhejiang University of Media and Communication, which probably would have been my choice for schooling too, had I grown up in China. As a matter of fact, it was the institution with which we were originally meant to have our exchange, before that plan fell through. At that moment, a dormant little voice inside me jerked awake.
This is an opportunity, it said. Go with it.
Up until this point on my trip to China, I hadn’t experienced a very high number of strangers initiating serious conversations with me in English. Cindy liked having the chance to practice her English. She had English-speaking international student friends and she helped them practice their Mandarin, she explained. She could help me too, even after I went back to Canada by messaging over WeChat. Cindy was a textbook example of how technology and global citizenship go hand-in-hand.
Suddenly I had a new reason to appreciate WeChat, which I had downloaded mainly to communicate with my own classmates while in China. Now I could use the voice messaging feature to practice language skills with Cindy, which might not have crossed my mind before. I was beginning to think of the reality of my technological tools in ways that were new to me. Meeting Cindy opened the floodgates for me to start thinking about how I could use technology to make sure my efforts at attaining global citizenship weren’t temporary while I was in China, but could become a part of my lifestyle after I returned home.
Meeting Cindy was key to unlocking how I really felt about the possibilities of global citizenship.
Having never lived abroad, part of me always felt that, although I could verbalize what global citizenship was, my words were somewhat hollow and not supported by lived experience. I would often tell myself that thanks to technology, you can be a global citizen without leaving home — but now I truly believed it. Technology is a partner, yes, but it can only take you so far. There needs to be another person for those digital tools to connect you to.
Cindy invited me to see her university campus, where she introduced me to her friend, Richard, and they gave me a behind-the-scenes tour. Richard speaks English very well and aspires to work in international media. He treated us to a performance of a BBC broadcast newspiece he had prepared for one of his classes. I complimented Richard on his very natural use of English expressions like “take it easy,” which he specifically said he got from watching the ABC sitcom Modern Family.
I studied Film & Media in my undergraduate degree but hadn’t really produced anything creative since then. It was fun to be back in radio and television studios playing “news anchor.” I was reminded how challenging it is to deliver the news with fairness and accuracy and being conscious of the type of narrative you’re creating for the public.
Having access to digital news and information from all around the world is an essential part of global citizenship (Andreotti & Pashby, 2013). People like Richard and Cindy are not only global citizens in their daily lives, but play a special role as active technological producers of the mass messages that make global citizenship possible.
© Jessica Lindal, 2015
Contemporary Issues in Communication, Master of Arts in Intercultural and International Communication, Royal Roads University
