Expats

High-wire hopes for expats

By Todd Balazovic (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-01-25 10:01

Positioning himself in front of a mirror, American Noah Yang gives a quick flip of his foot, launching a blue and white jar, tattooed with tracings depicting dragons intermingled with flowers, through the air, arching his back as it comes to balance on his head.

He holds the jar steady atop his head, eyes turned upwards, arms held outwards, watching as it wobbles. He holds the pose for two minutes before, finally, the jar topples.

It's a typical school day at the Beijing International Arts School for Yang. For the last two months he has woken up every morning at 8 am and trained in his favorite acrobatic art, Tanzi, the art of balancing jars, until 6 pm.

Being able to engage the body while in the classroom is exactly what drove the 21-year-old Washington native to seek out the school. Traditional education in the United States wasn't suited to his style of learning, so he looked to develop his skills elsewhere, said Yang.

"I got tired of going to classes and sitting at a desk, so I began looking at alternatives," he said.

The Beijing International Arts School, China's largest secondary art school, recently expanded its branch designated for foreign students, setting aside an entire floor comprising four large gymnasium-style rooms and one small juggling room. Previously, the foreign students occupied one room in total.

"We want to get more foreign students here and help spread the art of Chinese acrobatics," said Pei Jiesi, international student advisor at the school.

The expansion came soon after the school celebrated its 10th anniversary in October 2009.

While learning there is enjoyable, Yang admits lessons can prove to be a lot harder than regular school.

"Acrobatics takes a lot of patience and perseverance," he said. "It's an artistic form of physical discipline."

At $5,000 a year, tuition at the Beijing International Arts School costs about the same as a year at an average US university.

During the past few years, the Beijing International Arts School has seen a dramatic increase in the number of expats moving to Beijing to study acrobatics, Pei said.

Since its opening in 1999, the school has had more than 200 foreign graduates from more than 30 countries. And those numbers continue to grow, she said, noting that expat numbers have more than doubled during the school's 10-year history.

Currently, more than 50 foreign students work under 10 Chinese teachers. Almost all teachers have held prominent positions in national circuses and acrobatics troupes, said Pei.

Most students are around 20 but one bright young talent is just 7 years old, said Pei.

Yang discovered the Beijing International Arts School after searching on the Internet - the way most expat students find the school. Schools offering similar tuition in the US are either too expensive or poor quality, he said.

Most foreign students at the Beijing International Arts School attend for one or two years.

When his year at the school is over, Yang is not sure where he will go, but he says he will perform onstage somewhere.

While Yang doesn't speak Chinese, he is learning. The school offers students two classes a week so future acrobats can pick up Chinese language and culture.

But language is not much of an issue when learning acrobatics.

"The language barrier is very easy to overcome in acrobatics, because the instructors use mainly body language to teach the lesson," Pei said.

The main place where a lack of language is a problem is outside the classroom where it restricts interaction between students.

"We don't get to know the foreign students very well," said 18-year-old acrobatic student, Xu Yu.

"Though they seem quite easy-going and hard-working, we do not usually hang out together," the Harbin native said.

The application requirements for the school, though not particularly stringent, are designed to help the school select only the most dedicated and physically qualified.

There is no significant difference between the bodytypes of Westerners and Chinese people and anyone is capable of learning acrobatics as long as they are willing to put in the time, Pei said.

"We rarely have to turn away an applicant," she said.

In addition to accepting applications from overseas students, the school, in cooperation with the Ministry of Culture, has arranged several cultural exchanges with government institutions.

Almost half of foreign students at the school have some sort of government sponsorship, Pei said.

The first cultural exchange began in 1997 when 20 14-year-old Russian students began studying at the school. They studied there for six years and returned home to become performers in the Yakutsk National Circus.

"They have since become famous performers in the Russian national circus," Pei said.

"The president of their province has called them a 'National Treasure'."

It is not an uncommon fate for students graduating from Beijing's International Arts School to become well-known, said Pei. "Almost every student that graduates from our school goes on to be famous," she said.