From Small Beginnings Great Strides Are Made

A small group - about 20 people or so - sat at a conference table in Hopkinton High School's library Wednesday afternoon and talked through an intrepeter about what they have in common and what they can do to have more in common.

The group was roughly evenly divided among , a city of more than 3.5 million people on China's southeast coast; people from China, or of Chinese heritage, who live in Hopkinton; and staff and students from Hopkinton High School.

Like Hopkinton, Xiamen hosts a world-class marathon, and also like Hopkinton, the visitors from Xiamen were interested in exchanging high school students, teachers and perhaps all sorts of residents for different periods of time to knit this first connection into a fabric.

"We all live in a globalized world," said Yvette Madany, who moved to Hopkinton from China two years ago. "We have to open our doors or be left behind."

Speaking at the end of 90 minutes of discussion, incoming Hopkinton Schools Superintendent Jonathan Landman said the United States' most important relationship right now is with China.

Landman toured China for the first time in 26 years ("make that 27," he said) after spending his junior year in college living and studying there.

"There are millions of people in China learning English and not enough people in the U.S. learning Chinese," he said.

Hopkinton High Principal Alyson Geary last year and for next year obtained grants for Mandarin Chinese courses, and she talked to the Xiamen delegation about ways to further exchanges between China and the U.S., specifically Hopkinton and Xiamen.

We start small and grow, is how the administrators put it.

Student Paige Guarino seemd to delight the Xiamen delegation by addressing them in Chinese before continuing in English with a vivid account of studying Chinese language and culture at Hopkinton High last year.

The 26.2 Foundation's Tim Kilduff, who hosted Wednesday's visit, including a dinner scheduled later in the day, said he had invited the Chinese to Hopkinton to "set the table."

"It's much easier to move forward after face-to-face meetings," he said. Kilduff mentioned the success of visits earlier in the day at Hopkinton Town Hall and a tour and lunch at Caliper Life Sciences on Elm Street.

"We introduce these people to each other," he said. "After that, it's up to them."