Rose Jang Oral History Interview

Item

Identifier

JangRose

Title

Rose Jang Oral History Interview

Date

30 August 2021

3 September 2021

Creator

Rose Jang

Contributor

Wenhong Wang

extracted text

Rose Jang
Interviewed by Wenhong Wang
The Evergreen State College oral history project
August 30, 2021
FINAL
Wang: Good morning, Rose. Thank you for doing this interview. Today is August 30, 2021. I’m
Wenhong Wang. I’m interviewing Rose Jang over Zoom. This is a new type of interview.
Jang: Good morning, Wen. Nice to see you.
Wang: Nice to see you. I’m so glad that you’re taking time from your busy schedule doing this. Can
you start by talking about your important memories before college?
Jang: My upbringing and my early education. I was born and raised in Taiwan. Growing up in Taiwan, I
was studying a lot of traditional Chinese culture until I finished college at the age of 21. After that, I
came to the United States and went to Northwestern University to study theater, and eventually got my
PhD there.
While in Taiwan during my childhood and youth, Taiwan was under the rule of the Nationalist
government. I believe that most people nowadays are more familiar with the political tensions between
China and Taiwan. Politics aside, during the time when Taiwan was under Nationalist rule, because the
Nationalist government wanted to declare themselves as a vanguard of traditional Chinese culture—
Wang: By the way, was it during 1960s, ‘70s, ‘80s? Which period?
Jang: 60s and 70s Exactly. The Nationalist government came to Taiwan in 1949 to flee the
Communists. To compete with the Communists, to show that they themselves are the legitimate
government of China, they wanted to preserve everything traditional about Chinese culture, so all the
educational systems are based on traditional Chinese cultural programs.
I studied traditional Chinese history, language, literature, philosophy—Confucianism, Taoism, all
that, and Chinese geography. I was very good in schooling, and I was definitely a very dedicated and
very successful student. I became very good in writing, writing a lot of prose, essays, always getting
good grades or awards. I was good at calligraphy—everything that the school was trying to promote.
At the same time, although Chinese theater wasn’t considered orthodox or official educational
agenda, I somehow became fascinated by Chinese theater. What I mean by Chinese theater is
traditional Chinese performing arts, especially Beijing opera. It was really because of my family
connections. My father was a big fan of Chinese theater, so I was taken to watch Chinese theater from a
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very early age, and I became absolutely fascinated—obsessed—by this beautiful, exquisite performing
tradition. As I grew older, I went to theater by myself.
I was very courageous in the sense that I would sneak into backstage and watch the performers.
They were not that strict, so I could hang out backstage watching the performers putting on their
makeup and costumes. I watched all these beautiful, fabulous, spectacular costumes and weapons and
props laying out in the backstage.
When I went to college, I became even bolder. I would go to the training schools, several of
them. Again, the teachers and the officials at these traditional professional Chinese Opera schools did
not mind people like me going there and hanging out, because very few of us would do that.
Wang: Were you enrolled in classes?
Jang: No, I wasn’t enrolled in classes. I would just contact them and say, “Can I come and just take a
look at your rehearsals?” Sometimes I went with my friends, sometimes I went by myself. They
welcomed all these young college students to watch them perform or rehearse. The students were very
curious about schooling outside of their professional school settings, so we were just hanging around
and having fun. At the same time, I watched them rehearse.
I was just curious and fascinated about every aspect of traditional theater. It was just part of
growing-up process, not really entering my mind as a future career concentration or anything like that.
As a literature major, I chose, as the popular trend went at the time, to study Western literature.
English. I majored in English at college. I went to the National Taiwan University and studied English for
four years. Among all the Western literary accomplishments, I definitely liked Western theater the
most. I enjoyed reading plays and imagined the productions, which would come out of these literary
works.
With my original interest in Chinese theater, and my growing interest in Western theater, when
I decided to come to the United States to continue to pursue my graduate studies, I decided that I would
study theater, which was kind of a bold decision. None of my friends or classmates or people I knew of
in my generation would consider theater as a graduate study major, simply because it didn’t sound like a
popular choice.
Theater was definitely considered entertainment, a pastime, in the cultural thinking in that
atmosphere. “Who would study theater? You’re not going to be a performer, are you?” No, I wasn’t
going to be a performer, or maybe I would be. I had no idea. I just wanted to know more about theater.
To really study theater as an independent, profound art in the literary field is indeed a very big
attraction to me, so I did.
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Wang: Was it Western theater or Chinese theater or theater in general? Did you have a focus before
you applied?
Jang: At that time, I wasn’t thinking about pursuing Chinese theater in the United States. That
wouldn’t be a necessity. I could stay in Taiwan to do Chinese studies. I certainly wanted to come to the
United States to study theater in the Western tradition. But at the back of my head, I already thought
about incorporating my interest in Chinese theater into my study in the Western tradition. I had no idea
what that meant, but I just wanted to study theater as a literary discipline, or artistic discipline, and to
study everything about theater—theoretically, practically, aesthetically, literally, artistically. Everything
about theater.
At the time, there was no computer, there were no Websites for searching for schools in US. At
the time, there was a special place in Taiwan organized by the equivalency of an American embassy. It
was like a library. You could go. I just looked through all these big books and found the schools. I found
some of the best theater schools—universities—which had the best and most reputed theater
departments, and I chose them all, and I was accepted by Northwestern University, which happens to be
offering one of the best theater educations in the United States. The theater department at
Northwestern was ranked either one or two, somewhere between Northwestern and Yale, as the best
theater departments.
Wang: What year was that?
Jang: That was in 1980. When I went to Northwestern, I was the only foreign student. Actually, I
should say that I was one of the two foreign students in that department who were accepted. Before
me and the other girl—now I can’t even remember whether she was from Japan or Korea—just two of
us, two young Asian girls. Before us, I don’t think they ever had any foreign students from Asia.
That was the year they decided to accept two students from Asia who they liked to just work
with, I think maybe for the first time in the department. I thought that was revolutionary on their part
to do that. My impression was that they had to make special effort to accommodate us. I was lucky
enough that they treated us with I would say special favor. They really wanted us to succeed because
that was their experiment to admit Asian-oriented students from outside the United States.
Wang: Was that the beginning of admitting foreign, international students? Did they have more and
more, for instance, students in their department?
Jang: Yes. Let me just explain it in this way. Northwestern has a lot of—had a lot of—foreign students,
from Taiwan. Not so many from China. In 1980, very few students from China came. Before China
opened up in around 1990s, the Chinese students coming to the United States or Northwestern were all
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older students, just out of the Cultural Revolution. But that’s a totally different story. We don’t have to
go there.
But there were a lot of Taiwan students studying at Northwestern University, and so I wasn’t the
only Taiwan student going there. But those students were all engineering students in the Technical
Institutes on the far side of the school, which I didn’t go to at all. [laughing] Far away from my world. I
was isolated in the Theater Department. I think in theater, I was a very rare entity. There had never
been Asian students. I really could say that I had not encountered any record of Asian students at
Northwestern Theater Department at the time. I believe the only two were there for the first time, the
Asian girl from either Korea or Japan, and I myself. We were the first experiment.
After me, there were more. Again, they were isolated cases. I think I remember two others at
different times after I had left, a girl from Thailand, and later, another girl from Taiwan. They were there
for a couple of years, and both of them, I believe, got their master’s degree, and left. That’s my
knowledge. I didn’t trace what happened later. I believe there could be more.
I just wanted to say that theater wasn’t a popular choice for a student fresh out of college from
Taiwan. I was very lonely because the other girl only stayed there, I think, for maybe a quarter. I’m not
even sure. Because the challenge and the demands were still severe and intense, and the cultural shock
was inevitable. You were very young. You had to deal with a lot of new things in your life and in your
environment. You were worried about your financial resources. None of us had an assistantship or
fellowship or any financial support, because we were there to study for a master’s degree. We were not
qualified to do anything beyond that.
Wang: I see.
Jang: Fortunately, I had family support from really a very resourceful mother who managed to get
enough funding for me to cover my first year. I was there trying to do my best and just go with the flow
and see how I could manage to continue, if I could ever continue to the following year. And I did. I
actually did.
That’s a long story, and probably not worth talking about now, but it was a difficult period in my
life. The school was new. The language, of course, was difficult. I studied in English for four years in
college, but that wasn’t enough for me to deal with the day-to-day conversation, to be a pal with my
graduate friends.
Although, I have to say, I had a pretty lucky experience at Northwestern because I did have a lot
of support. I found that my newness, my appearance as a foreigner, brought some new energy to the
department. I had a wonderful advisor who really, really wanted me to succeed, who gave me extra
4

support, even giving me extra time in taking tests. Other people were doing their testing in this
classroom during a defined period of time—for an hour, for example. I would get an extra half an hour
in different classroom just by myself.
Wang: That was amazing.
Jang: It was really amazing. That was really helpful. Even that half an hour did not make much
difference because I was still writing and struggling and all that. Although I always got As. I don’t know.
I did manage to do well because I studied so hard. But beyond that, I think just the mental and
emotional awareness of the support really helped me to move forward. I did study really hard, and with
the support from my advisor, I responded to the challenge with extra effort. I hardly ever slept. I was
just reading and writing and doing everything I could. I was also having a job.
Wang: Oh, really? [laughing]
Jang: Which financially supported me for another year. I lived with an old lady who needed someone,
a caretaker, a caregiver, who gave her regular injections of insulin. I had to give insulin shots to this old
lady twice a day. Whenever I was there with her, I had to watch her. I had to keep her company. But it
was easy because she also had two daughters living in Evanston. In exchange for living with this old
lady, I got free room and board, so I was able to save money for my second year of tuition. My life was
packed for my first two years at Northwestern. It was incredibly hard but incredibly fulfilling because all
I cared about was to study.
I got my master’s within a year with the agreement I would continue with my PhD, which could
last legitimately for another five years maximum. It was all arranged between me and my advisor with
her generous support and encouragement. I was able to continue and got my PhD.
I left Evanston after three years because I got married and followed my husband to Pittsburgh,
but I finished my dissertation away from the campus, continuing my research and all that. It was a long
period. I think everybody going through the process of study, getting PhD, finding a job, trying to
manage life and marriage—everything—knew how that was. But it was also rewarding because, looking
back, it really toughened me up.
Then to just put Chinese theater into the perspective, my theater education at Northwestern
was purely traditional Western. I studied everything in the Western tradition. Northwestern is a very
strong, solid, well-established theater department in higher education. It has two mainstage spaces
[and] it has two black box theater spaces. A strong team of faculty members covering all aspects of
theater. You pick classes—of course, there are requirements, prerequisites—and you just go through
everything in the curriculum. You also have experiences doing productions. From a very early time, as a
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freshman, you had opportunity to do freshman scene works, organized by the department, supervised
by graduate students. For graduate students, you can also do senior thesis studies or other thesis
productions. There are many, many opportunities, but there are also intense competitions between all
these opportunities.
Wang: Were you involved in some of the productions then?
Jang: Yeah, I was involved in the freshman productions, supervising their productions, organizing the
events. I did some small directorial works as a graduate student. I had to do a lot of technical work as
part of my design courses. I was involved in a lot of different aspects of theater. I studied acting
through acting classes, but the majority of my graduate works were in theater history, theory. I did
most of that.
While I was trying to figure out my PhD dissertation, I worked with my advisor, and eventually
landed on a topic, which incorporates Western and Chinese theater together. It was to use the Western
theoretical foundations—different theoretical works and beliefs and values—to a specific Chinese
traditional play, which also has a long tradition of thematic and historical development from earlier
Chinese history.
Wang: What was the play you were researching?
Jang: The Chinese title is 新繡繻記, or 李娃傳 from the earlier time. The English translation is The
Embroidered Cloak. The play that I was focused on is actually a modern adaptation, still in the
traditional Beijing opera fashion. It was the one that was written by
俞大綱 in Taiwan. It used a lot of elements from the earlier period.
新繡繻記 started with a piece of fiction in Tang Dynasty in China and went through different
adaptations, different versions or dramatizations through historical periods. You can trace the
development of that story through Chinese folklore and Chinese literary tradition, into this final version
of Beijing opera, which I was looking at. You could tell that it has a rich source of material, imagination.
It has a lot of traditional Chinese values and cultural interests in it.
It’s a rich material that could reflect a lot of things about China. Then I used a lot of theoretical
understandings of Western origin, and you can also identify values from the Western tradition.
Basically, my intent is to use this play as a cross work or bridgework, which can combine all these
different sources of energies together. That was my intent.
I was very happy with my advisor—her name is Linda Jenkins. I will never forget her. I don’t
even know where she is now. She actually left Northwestern. Right around the time when I graduated
from Northwestern, when I received my PhD, she left Northwestern. She was finishing her career at
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Northwestern at the same time I graduated. She became a businesswoman. She transferred to
California into running a business. She had had a wonderful successful career at Northwestern, but she
decided that that was the end. She’d had enough of theater in her teaching and in her career and she
developed a new career interest.
I was so lucky to have my years of graduate study with this wonderful woman who treated me
as one of her success stories, I think. She was very proud during my defense and my final meetings
when I was officially awarded the PhD. I really think I owe a lot to her--along with very many other
students at Northwestern, who were also very supportive and very encouraging to me, simply because I
was a foreign student, still very shy with limited language skills.
I have to say it’s not untrue that foreign students had to encounter some really difficult—I
would even say unfair—treatment in the traditional institutions like Northwestern. I had experiences
with that, both from other students’ experiences and naturally from my own experience.
I just suddenly remember. There’s another Asian student who came after me. She was not a
foreign student. She was an Asian-American student, meaning she was born in the United States
speaking perfect English, native English-speaking skills. She’s of Asian descent. The treatment she got.
She stormed out of the department because she felt she was treated badly by one particular faculty who
just trashed her work.
She complained with me. We became good friends. When I was still finishing my PhD
coursework and she just came in. I don’t think she even finished her first year. She felt that the faculty
treated her unfairly. I gave her all my sympathy. I couldn’t really quite remember what happened, nor
would I really evaluate the situation because I wasn’t in that class she suffered. But it could be true.
I even had a personal experience myself. When I was putting together my proposal for my
dissertation topic, we had to first get approval. Everyone knows that. I wrote the proposal and I had to
put together a committee. My advisor suggested these faculty members and professors as my
committee members. I had to show them each my proposal and invite them to come and join the
committee. My advisor was the leader of the committee, and I got another faculty who agreed to be on
the committee.
There was one more who was a popular faculty member, a seasoned veteran faculty member
everybody loved. Adored. I went to him, and I showed him my proposal. “Dr. Bob”—I still remember
his name. He summoned me to his office, and he told me everything about my proposal was wrong. It
was inferior to what he considered a standard proposal. He criticized my wording, basically my
grammatic structure. He considered them as vague, unclear, and not sufficiently scholarly.
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I was completely crushed, and so I went back to my advisor, thinking I wasn’t worthy. I told my
advisor about this, and I said, “What should I do? Should I rewrite the whole thing?” My advisor told
me—I still remember she was so angry—she told me, “Forget him! Get someone else.” She told me,
“Don’t believe anything he said. It was only because of his insecurity about the subject.”
That was a very revealing incident. I realized even someone who was so admired could be also
lacking. I didn’t know that anybody could be lacking in that position, but I started to realize now. I
wasn’t truly understanding that at that point. I just knew I was so happy my advisor didn’t criticize me
along with that negative feedback and make me rewrite the whole thing.
“Go find this person,” she suggested, this other person who’s not a Theater Department
professor, but whose course was associated with the Theater Department in many ways, and I had taken
classes from that professor, too, who was always widely admired and popular with students. I went to
the other professor, as directed by my advisor, and he came back to me saying, “I will be your
committee member.” It was as simple as that. I dared to ask him, “Did I say anything inferior, not
clear?” That professor told me, “Oh, no, it’s fine. I understand you.”
That’s just an incident that a foreign student could suffer, for instance, from prejudice like that.
But I survived it. I survived it because I was not lonely. I wasn’t forgotten, and was not abandoned, I
was supported by more people to help me to turn things around. That was just a small incident.
Talking about prejudice and injustice in this interview helped me remember things. I have to say
that today I understand why higher education needs to include diversity and inclusion and all that,
because the cultural sensitivity is important, and I benefited from it. I suffered from the lack of it, but
also benefited from the right attitude at the right time.
Wang: What happened after that? How did you make the decision to come to Evergreen?
Jang: Coming to Evergreen was a stroke of luck. When I was finishing my dissertation, I started to look
for jobs. I surveyed the Chronicle of Higher Education, looking at all the job openings. There were many
schools I was interested in.
One school, I don’t think I was particularly interested in, but was curious about, was Evergreen,
because the wording in Evergreen’s advertisement included this term “multiculturalism,” and there was
a very strong intent in their language that the school was looking for faculty members of non-white
orientation to bring more cultural understandings to the school to further multiculturalism in their
institution.

8

So, I applied, and pretty soon, I got a response. Someone called me, and that someone I again
always remember, and I owe him a lot of gratitude, because he also was a great support for me. His
name is Chuck Pailthorp.
Wang: The philosopher?
Jang: Yeah. He called me up and asked me a lot of questions. I think I was able to answer his questions
well enough. Later, I got an interview, and from that, one thing led to another. I was hired and I came
to Evergreen as one of the faculty of multiculturalism with many other faculty of cultural differences
from the mainstream white culture. There were a lot of faculty hires in the same year I was hired.
That’s how I came to Evergreen.
Wang: How did the first years of Evergreen look like to you? What were you teaching?
Jang: I was hired to join Bud Johanson, a dance faculty, and Ingram Marshall, a music faculty—who left
Evergreen the year after that first year—to teach a program, I believe it’s called Interaction in the
Performing Arts. That was an introductory program for performing arts, including theater, dance and
music, and I would be teaching the theater part of that introductory performing arts program.
The first year was wonderful. I taught with two really wonderful faculty members. Bud
Johanson was a mentor me, very understanding, very tolerant to me, I think, because I was so new and I
had some difficulty understanding Evergreen’s structure, Evergreen philosophy, although I had studied
it. I heard a lot of explanations during the interview and orientation, but coming from a very traditional
cultural background and educational upbringing and all that, and also coming directly from
Northwestern, which was a very traditional Theater Department, I really had to adjust my perspectives
in a very wild, big way to understand the functions and the structures of Evergreen programs.
I had never taught in such an academic structure, which includes so many aspects in one place. I
had to give a lecture for two, three hours, and lead a seminar with 20-some students. Simultaneously, I
had to give a workshop, which I had to teach students acting and other production aspects of theater.
That was never heard of and never practiced anywhere else. Not at Northwestern. At Northwestern,
every aspect of theater was taught by a specialist. You never crossed to teach other things if you’re not
regarded as a specialist or as an expert.
But here, you’re an expert in everything. You know everything. You had to do everything. I felt
insecure. I felt inadequate in some aspects. I didn’t feel I was fully prepared for the first year, but I
learned. I think what happened with Evergreen faculty teams is that people really help each other, and I
was able to work with people who were critical but were also encouraging to a new faculty.

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I was lucky. I wouldn’t say that for everyone else. I know some new faculty members, especially
faculty of multiculturalism, suffered from some treatments or misunderstandings that they just couldn’t
tolerate. I know about some really severe conflicts and fights between faculty during the first couple of
years after I was hired. I don’t want to go into that too much, but I believe there was a big
misunderstanding of the term multiculturalism among faculty. The misunderstanding is that
Multiculturalism simply means to have a group of faculty with different cultural backgrounds to be
together, but still grouped around the mainstream, white-oriented cultural perspective as the anchor or
the core of education.
There could be that misunderstanding, or that kind of perception was reflected in the practice.
That definitely could lead to some really big fights and conflicts. It did not happen to me, so I don’t want
to go there. I was having enough problems trying to fit in with my teaching style, my teaching practices
within a program structure. I was too occupied to even worry about that.
I slowly got used to it. I was not totally unfamiliar with the seminar structure. When I was at
Northwestern as a PhD student, I had two years of teaching assistantship in which I had to teach the
freshman students. I had to lead mostly seminar discussions with these freshman students, so I was
kind of comfortable with seminar even before coming to Evergreen, and I was definitely qualified to
read papers and all that kind of thing because that was what I did most as a teaching assistant at
Northwestern: to read and critique freshman student papers.
But giving lecture for two hours, that was just impossible for me. I think I struggled most with
that. I had to learn from faculty colleagues how to structure lectures. In the beginning, my lecture was
full of information I’d gathered from all the readings and the studies myself. I gave a lot of facts and
dates and all that. I found that kind of lecture totally unsuccessful. Students were quickly bored and
distracted, and they didn’t give me good evaluations.
Evaluations were hard to swallow but they were helpful. That’s one of the Evergreen things that
I had to get used to because students were honest, as I soon learned the first year. I got some really
good evaluations because students were kind. Most of the students were kind, but the critical part of
the student evaluations showed me that I was not yet ready to give lectures in a productive, efficient
way.
I learned from Bud Johanson, and then the next year, when I taught with another very seasoned,
very popular faculty, Terry Setter, a music faculty member, I learned from Terry Setter how to give
lectures. Terry Setter was incredibly efficient and effective as a lecturer. He would give interesting
stories, anecdotes, quotations from various sources together in a very coherent, good narrative, and
10

then played music and showed videos. All kinds of things. I had to learn that. I had to learn how to mix
things together, to structure things in a good way with just the right amount of information. I learned
that through the first two years, and I thank Bud Johanson and Terry Setter for helping me.
The third year I taught with Ainara Wilder and the fourth year I taught with Doranne Crable.
Both women were strong in teaching. Incredibly well read. Knowledgeable in their disciplines and
everything else, too. They also pulled me under their wings. Unfortunately, Doranne Crable passed
away in 2007.
Ainara Wilder just treated me as almost her friend—definitely her friend if I wasn’t her
daughter—because she was older than I. She was the founding member of the Theater Department, the
theater program, at Evergreen. She gave me a lot of good guidance, as a mentor and a friend. I visited
her home. I sipped tea in her living room watching this big collection of books she had on the wall. She
told me so many stories about her rich life experiences. It was just wonderful. (It is sad that while I am
revising this transcript, Ainara just passed away in April 2022.)
I learned Evergreen teaching through these interactions. Teaching became comfortable, and I
became secure and self-trusting. I developed skills in lecturing, in workshops. I had to trust that I could
do workshops. In workshops, I developed exercises. First was my Western training, and then I slowly
also put in my Chinese training and worked it into my workshop exercises. It all happened gradually.
The first few years were a struggle, but these were really good, productive, necessary struggles
to prepare me for my later teaching life at Evergreen.
Wang: What year did you join Evergreen?
Jang: In 1988.
Wang: You were the vanguard of China study at Evergreen. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?
How did it get started?
Jang: To go to China programs, I think I still have to go back to performing artist programs first, because
really, the China program is an outgrowth of the performing arts program. Performing arts is part of this
big specialty area called the expressive arts area when I first joined Evergreen.
Just within the performing arts area, we had a very strong interest in cultural studies. The
faculty members in music, dance and theater agreed in our curricular planning that we would always
emphasize different cultural performances and traditions in performing arts.
Sean Williams is a famous, well-known scholar in ethnomusicology. The dance faculty, Ratna
Roy, is a professional in Odissi dance, an Indian dancer. She taught Indian dance in every subject she
taught in performing arts. Andrew Buchman is a classically trained Western music composer and
11

pianist. He is deeply interested in cultural performances of other cultures, so he always wanted to
include performances in music traditions of other cultures in his program planning and teaching.
I was encouraged, of course, as a faculty of multiculturalism to teach Chinese performing
traditions in my performing arts programs. I did that faithfully for every program, year after year. I tried
to teach Chinese theater in my teaching of theater, and I always found it a little hard because Chinese
theater could only occupy a week of study out of this ongoing theater syllabus.
It was hard to take students out of the ongoing theater tradition in the West and put them in
the Chinese tradition, and to teach them something that is totally new and different from whatever else
they had just encountered and explored. Students usually got really interested and curious and
fascinated, but they were also understandably lost and completely overwhelmed. They came out of that
week of study having received some impressions, some flashes of memory, but the impressions and
flashed didn’t last, and it didn’t really affect them to any substantial extent.
I always felt that I needed to go to the center. I needed to go back to Chinese culture to really
explore, with the students, where Chinese theater came from. Put China in the center as a foundation.
The culture is the foundation, so we could then go to an artistic expression of that culture. It had been
my desire for many, many years.
During all these years of teaching performing arts programs with my performing arts colleagues,
I became very close with Andrew Buchman. We were just a wonderful faculty team. He had repeatedly
encouraged me to teach China. I don’t know why, but he’d developed an interest in China beyond
music. He had studied some Chinese fiction and Chinese poetry along the way.
We finally decided at one point to design a program together. That was my first attempt at a
China program. That’s the program which is titled East Wind, West Wind: Chinese Culture in a Global
Context.
Wang: That’s a nice title.
Jang: It’s a really nice title. That was in 1999. The title, East Wind, West Wind, was suggested by
Andrew Buchman because he had just read a few novels by Pearl Buck. The first novel Pearl Buck ever
wrote is East Wind, West Wind. We later studied Pearl Buck in the program. We didn’t use East Wind,
West Wind, we used the other, more famous work, the one which she received the Nobel Prize with,
The Good Earth.
That’s the first China program that we started. In that program, because we both were
performing arts faculty members, we put in still quite a bit of performing arts elements in it. We made
students study music—classical and theatrical music-- and have them perform.
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Slowly, slowly, with the following China programs, I decided to reduce the performing arts
elements. We still studied it—we still practiced music—but I became more interested in covering other
aspects of Chinese tradition and culture. Starting with China: The Waking Lion, I made China program
more a humanities program with different aspects.
Each China program, I decided to cover different aspects of China, depending on who I recruited
to work with me. Those programs were inspired and encouraged by the success of my first couple of
China programs, which I taught with Andrew Buchman. Andrew was so nice. When we were teaching
East Wind, West Wind, we already planned the next program in two years, another China program,
which is called China: The Waking Lion.
These early programs with Andrew made me really get used to teaching China in a systematic
way. I then took more initiative and leadership in planning for the future China programs. I told my
performing arts colleagues I would do China program every other year, alternating with my commitment
to the performing arts program. I would be the coordinator for each China program, which gave me the
authority to find faculty members that I would like to work within the next China program, which was
geared toward the specialty, the scholarship, the academic strength of the faculty member I recruited.
Each China program became a very different China program, depending on who I worked with.
That way, I could learn. I could learn from the faculty member I recruited, I solicited, to help build the
program. I could also still bring my interest in Chinese history, Chinese literature, Chinese philosophy
into it.
I found out that I really had a strong cultural base with my early education in Taiwan, and I had
prepared myself solidly with all the authentic, original materials I had studied over the long years of
growing up, and that facilitated me to continue to find materials, to find scholarship to enrich my
understanding of China in the United States at the current time.
I had also gone to two NEH Summer Institutes paid by NEH to study Chinese culture, particularly
in philosophy and religion, as well as contemporary issues. I traveled to China with a group of faculty of
different colleges and universities from all over the United States to study China firsthand. I also went
to Hawaii to study at the University of Hawaii East West Center through a NEH summer institute.
All these faculty development opportunities, combined with my earlier training in China, really
helped me to solidify my China study programs, and gave me the freedom to use and pick the materials I
wanted to cover for any program I was designing.
Then I developed interest in many other things about China. For example, the year we taught
together, Wen. What year was that?
13

Wang: 2008.
Jang: Yes, 2008. Changing China. That year, I was just interested in political and social developments
of China, and I knew I had to get an expert to do that with me, so I requested—I think you were hired to
fill that request, right? For that particular program? Because of your background in communications
and sociology and all the social science subjects you’re good at. I was able to work with you and David
Shaw, who is a business faculty, to look at China not only in earlier times, but its continuous
development, its integral cultural development in society—the social movements, the ideology, the
economic development, toward the modern times. It was a very interesting, successful, and very wellrounded program, utilizing disciplinary trainings and strengths of all three faculty.
Wang: I was forever grateful for your invitation.
Jang: Thank you for helping me out, because I’ve learned so much. I think in that program, although I
was the coordinator, I actually did not teach as much as you. I thought you made a huge amount of
contributions in terms of readings and lecturing. The modern Chinese development, especially the 20th
Century Enlightenment movement and the movements under the Communist rule, especially the
Cultural Revolution—all that, I did not have any firsthand knowledge or experience with, and I depended
on you. You provided such substantial information to the students, and to me.
I think, in a way, we learned from each other probably more than our students learned from us.
I believe that our students learned a lot from us because they caught our energy, our passion, our
knowledge. But China is so huge and so profound, and students coming to these programs with such
desire to learn, but they still were all new to this, so they had to really struggle and learn; sometimes
had to scratch over the surface without going in depth. However, we had our training, our
understanding, [and] we could spring off of the foundation and really capture the essence of what each
other said. I think we learned a lot from each other.
That’s one great thing about Evergreen programs. It was so fulfilling and enriching, exactly
because of that.
Wang: Mm-hm.
Jang: That’s what the China program is. It was really, first, an offshoot of the performing arts program,
and then became a totally independent entity on its own. It was a struggle, however, in the sense that
the school did not really endorse China program. It’s more like a whim of faculty interest and they just
let it go, let it happen.
The cultural studies used to be part of CTL specialty area, and CTL supported four cultural
studies—Japanese, Russian, French and Spanish—in the sense that they would provide faculty hires and
14

funding and faculty development, whereas China studies was just a special, isolated faculty interest. The
school did not promise any hiring, so I had to look for faculty members who were willing to join me on
my own. It was not supported by the specialty area, not by CTL.
But it did not hinder it. I thought it was a pretty fun thing to do when I did not have to report to
a specialty area. [laughing] I just got whoever I wanted to get to teach with me, and they were always
willing. It’s not to say that I was the only one teaching China. That’s not fair, because sometime later,
Hirsh Diamant also developed China studies at EWS as his own interest on his track of teaching. That
also worked well. We didn’t really coordinate together much, but the students, having finished one
program, could also go to the other one, so there was an innate continuity, which was not intended, but
somehow accidentally happened year after year, so it was a really positive thing.
I eventually got to teach with Hirsh Diamant, again, out of my initiative. I invited him in because
I had known that he had been teaching China at EWS for a long time, and I was interested in soliciting his
help and having him join me in the full-time program. We had a good successful teaching experience
together. We’re very different. I think students got to experience very different faculty and very
different teaching philosophies and styles, and that was a good thing for students.
It was good. The China program had a life of its own. I hope the program is still continuing at
Evergreen. I had a hope, Wen, you could carry the torch to some extent—maybe you’re too busy
teaching something else—and fulfill the obligations to the school, to Evergreen disciplines. But at some
point, I’m hoping you can also teach China as part of your scholarly interests.
Wang: Mm-hm. Yeah, I’ve been teaching a lot of topics on sociology. When opportunities arise, I will
definitely dive into that. Mingxia Li probably sometimes also incorporates some kind of Chinese poetry,
literature elements in her teaching in Tacoma.
Jang: She’s a famous Chinese poet, and I was fortunate to also teach with her in two programs. One is
a program which is focused more on Chinese literature. Again, I designed that program to really take
advantage of her strength in poetry. That’s a program in 2011, Roots of China: Culture, Arts and Poetics.
We were delving into the poetic tradition of China.
After that, we also taught together in a theater program with a theater production at the end of
the program. The program is basically in China studies, too, because you use three pieces of Chinese
poetic drama in traditional theater as a foundation of that production. That program happened either in
. . . what year was that?
Wang: ’14 or ’15?
Jang: Yeah, 2014. Theater of Fantasy: Performing Chinese Drama on the Western Stage.
15

Wang: Those are fascinating programs. I think we were invited to watch your final production the
students were performing in the Communications Building. [laughter]
Jang: Right. That program is really unique, and I think it could only happen on the Evergreen campus,
thanks to Evergreen program structure. Because this is a program which really bridged Chinese culture
with Western theater exercise. It bridged China and the West, East and West. China’s rich tradition in
performing arts -- rich poetic tradition, poetic structures, poetic writing, poetics in performing arts-- is
able to be embodied by the Western technology on stage. I thought it was quite an accomplishment.
Wang: Oh, yeah.
Jang: It was a noble idea, and it was quite an accomplishment for me to brag about. Here we have a
faculty member who is a poet, who knows the ins and outs of Chinese poetry, and we have a faculty,
meaning me, who is specialized in theater, both theory and practice. We have a third faculty, a visiting
or guest faculty member, all the way from PLU who came to help us without pay.
Wang: Oh, yeah.
Jang: Simply based on his love of theater and love of Chinese music, Gregory Youtz, who came every
week for more than three hours. When we had the production rehearsals, toward the end of the
quarter when the production was close, he practically was there every day for two weeks. It was
amazing that he also taught fulltime at PLU. Luckily, he was teaching graduate students with more
conference-type of teaching, so he was able to come to our productions, rehearsals, and final
production week with all these intense preparations for production.
I really was very proud of the program. I am actually proud of all the China programs and all the
performing arts programs in which I used China or Chinese elements. If I can just make a summary of
that. It’s really hard to go into specifics about my teaching in every program and what I have
accomplished. But I think what I am really proud of is my identity and teaching as a faculty of
multiculturalism, or a faculty of diversity—because I was from a different culture. I came from Taiwan. I
fundamentally am a Chinese American. I have a strong foundation in China.
I felt that I had finally—with years of teaching of Evergreen—able to come to a point where I
was able to take things out of each culture or each tradition, East and West. These are broad terms and
specifics would be hard for me to give examples of. But in a broad term, each culture gave me nutrients
that I can use to fertilize a particular program based on a particular theme.
In my teaching of Greek theater with Andrew Reece, for example, in Dionysia: Enlivening Greek
Theater: that program was my initiative and mostly under my coordination. I invited Andrew Reece—a
Greek scholar in Greek literature and mythology—to teach with me because I wanted to stage Greek
16

theater in that year. I was able to use a lot of Chinese performance elements and theater training
regimens in the teaching of students in performing for Greek theater.
I had no idea how theater was trained in Greek time. We definitely had a lot of information, a
lot of readings, discussions and studies done in the program to understand Greek theater, Greek
philosophy, Greek mythology, and the staging of festivals, but we had no idea how we trained
performers for that stage, for that Greek open space.
Theater is universal. Physical, emotional elements of theater performance are human. They go
back to our needs as humans—our experiences, our emotional energy, our psychological setup. Every
theater—Greek, Shakespeare, modern, Western and Chinese—came from same roots of trying to
express human experience through physical and emotional identification. The training is a specific
system developed within its own cultural setting, which could be different, but the same source, the
same roots, are still there waiting to be discovered. I found [that] Chinese theater training system,
performance elements, ingredients, and all the philosophies and aesthetics of Chinese tradition of
theater could help me go there, go to the universal source, help me discover things in Greek theater, in
Shakespeare, in modern theatre.
I use a lot of those in my teaching, and I make students practice certain Chinese regimens that
are useful to them. They proved useful again and again. Make them focus. Sometimes they didn’t
understand why, but they understood that theater is not only inspirational and spontaneous, theater
training is also disciplined and rigorous.
How do you train spontaneous and natural and genuine through rigorous and disciplined
training system? That’s the balance. That’s the dilemma.
Wang: Right. Sounds like a paradox. [laughing]
Jang: Totally paradoxical, but it’s totally harmonious. That’s what art is. Art is different from reality.
The most spontaneous thing is real—it’s about real life—but that’s not art. So how do you extract
reality? How do you extract art from reality? How do you make art out of reality? Students need to
learn that. They had to go through a pathway, and I found that the Chinese training system, Chinese
cultural foundations, the thousands of years of Chinese wisdom through documentation and exercise,
through the preservation of theater performance even today helped me do that, to go to the
fundamental principles of how to extract arts out of reality.
I made students do improvisation exercises, go through some assimilation, systematic work, and
I really designed a lot of things out of my Chinese background, and they proved useful.

17

I am actually very, very happy with what I had accomplished because I have found what is
bridgeable between China and the West. I have found the connection between theater, my academic
discipline, and China, my lifelong identity and devotion. I found a way to connect them to each other in
my teaching. Because basically, it is also my life, isn’t it? I live in both worlds.
Wang: Yeah, absolutely. On that note, in expressive arts, you incorporated a lot of productions in your
programs. Right? Can you talk a little bit about that?
Jang: I think production is a very important part of performing arts curriculum. In a traditional school,
like Northwestern, there was emphasis in production. But production is a very rigorous aspect of it,
meaning that you really have to earn your due. You had to become really good at performance or in
directing, proving by passing serious tests or auditions or having a degree at some point, then you were
given the chance to mount a production. That’s the experience I had with Northwestern education.
The great thing about Evergreen theater education is that you are encouraged, no matter what
level you are, to experience production, to experience performance. Performance is part of learning
about the art, not a reward for your learning abilities of the art. I think it is really a unique concept, but
it’s a really wonderful concept. You learn about a very important part of theater by actually doing it.
You know that all learning of theater—the end result—is to be able to embody it. The drama, the
literature you read, is not for reading alone. It’s not complete. You have to embody it. Whether you
can do it well or not is another matter. The writing, the drama of the play is for that embodiment.
I think that continuity, that holistic sense of theater as a whole as an art form, is very well
introduced at Evergreen. In every program, we tried to incorporate workshops, which gives students
little projects, so they can do performance from the beginning to overcome their insecurity, their fear of
performance. Later on, the projects become bigger—bigger performance opportunities, studentoriented performance productions. Sometimes, in some cases, if the students really work hard, the
faculty will arrange a production, which is a full-fledged mainstage production with the support of the
technical staff, the space, costumes, lights, and all those technical facilitations.
At Evergreen, I had many theater productions coming from the theater program teaching and
learning, and those are wonderful things to happen in theater education. Every one of the theater
productions, I would say, was very successful in bringing all the materials together. Each one is
different.
I had, as I said, the Greek theater production, which I was able to work with a Greek scholar.
Really, we studied mythology and Greek gods and the energy of the psychological influences of the
mythology and human emotions through performing these classical plays. Trojan Women and
18

Lysistrata. We work with students in understanding the profound sorrow and the loss of the Trojan
women after the Trojan War.
Mythology became really approachable and accessible, to student, and to the audience, to us as
human beings. It was no more a classical, imaginative or imaginary thing, it’s a real-life suffering. We
really worked hard in getting that realized on stage.
We had musical theater productions, which I worked with Marla Elliott. Marla is a wonderful
theater director. She’s also a great music teacher and music director. We connected several times—
twice. One in the program Musical Theater in Cultural Context. Another, titled The Play’s the Thing:
Study of Theatre and Drama, without much music but more around the study of modern play. The
musical theater production we did together was The Beggar’s Opera by John Gay. It was, again, very
successful. The students really worked hard.
Marla was the music director and I served as the director. Basically, we collaborated on it
together. The students learned to perform, to sing, to play music, and also to understand characters in a
very particular historical period, the early 18th Century London suffering, the slums and the thievery, the
crime. All that. We studied musical theater at the same time we studied the English history through the
play, so a lot of things were able to come alive in students’ body and mind through the program and the
production.
The ones I loved most out of all my productions are, first, The Bacchae, which I did in 2007, I
think, with Kabby Mitchell. With the help of technical staff, we turned the Experimental Theater into this
wonderland of Pantheus’ palace and wild mountain scenes. We brought Dionysus to the Experimental
Theater and really worked with psychological energies and forces embodied by the Greek god who dealt
with the complex, the psychological inferiority, the complex, the opposites, the shadows—all these
things in psychology and psychoanalysis in Jungian psychology. It was just wonderful to see all these
things could come together to reinforce each other in a theatrical, artistic work.
Another production I was proud of and still am is in the program Theater of Fantasy, the play
The Blooming Season, because it’s such a collaboration between faculty and students, between faculty
and staff on so many levels. The play itself is a really authentic, wonderful, rich, modern musical theater
work written by a student of ours. His name is Nick McCord. He just wrote this excellent, modern
musical play as an adaptation of three classical Chinese dramas. The kind of work and creative
imagination that can come from such work is just amazing, and it could only happen at Evergreen.
I think at this point I would say that students were always our best collaborators, and the
students were the core creators. A lot of programs depended on students to make them successful. All
19

my theater programs depended on theater students’ collaboration and their work and their hardcore
energy and their final realization, their success.
All my China programs depended on students’ response to the faculty’s energy and dedication. I
really had some of the best students in China programs who gave me work on the graduate level that I
couldn’t possibly have imagined from another institution.
I had a book-length paper given to me about Chinese Taoism from a student.
Wang: Oh, really?
Jang: Pages and pages of exploration, joining so many different works of Taoist philosophy, including
Taoist folktales. It’s amazing that he would be willing to do such work because he cared about the
materials we gave them, and he was responding to my critical invitation. He wanted my response, so I
spent hours responding to that work.
What happened there is just this critical energy between faculty and students, this collaborative,
responsible, interactive, reciprocal relationship between students and faculty that really was thriving in
programs that I have taught. That really made Evergreen teaching so unique and so wonderful and so
successful for me.
Wang: Yeah, absolutely. Is there anything else that we haven’t touched upon that you would like to
mention? Any memories? Nuggets?
Jang: I think there are way too many memories. I wish China program can continue. The Chinese
language class seems to be in continuation through EWS. That’s good. Although we always had
problems with language because language studies require consistency. Because of the Evergreen
program structures, we couldn’t create that consistency. That’s kind of sad.
Other than that, there have always been problems in performing arts in terms of the sharing of
facilities, but those were in the past. I think Evergreen has come to a different phase of its life and it’s
going to have so many different things, and so many changes. But there are things in the past which I
hope that I can still preserve in people’s memories through this interview.
Another thing that I want to mention is that I believe the faculty is really unique at Evergreen
because we care about our teaching, and always continue to develop ourselves because we care so
much about our students. I personally never stopped faculty development. Evergreen also encourages
me and has given me travel funding to attend conferences, allowing me to continue my scholarship in
the field of China studies.
I also continue to perform and study Chinese theater through performance and through working
with professional teachers as a way to help me understand what it takes to be a performer, so when I
20

work with my students, it’s never just theory, it’s also a practical, literal understanding of the mindset of
the performer. I could always incorporate those understandings, those firsthand experiences, into my
design and my structure of workshops and my production work.
Those things are important parts of Evergreen. The faculty development, the faculty-student
interactions, the strength of program structure in every discipline, despite the forever lack of continuity
in certain disciplines which require that. They’ve also been part of my teaching life and experiences at
Evergreen for 30 years.
But there have never been any regrets of my life about those 30 years. I learned a lot, and I can
still continue to thrive on those memories after I retire. That’s what Evergreen has given me. I am
forever grateful. I hope this is enough for this interview. [laughing] Thank you so much for spending
the time with me and listening to all my babbling.
Wang: No, not at all. It was such a great pleasure just having this interview, and reading your five-year
reviews, I learned a lot, a lot of things. Thank you so much. Take care.
Jang: You’re welcome.

21


Rose Jang
Interviewed by Wenhong Wang
The Evergreen State College oral history project
September 3, 2021
FINAL
Wang: Good morning, Rose, again. Let’s continue our conversation. Today is September 3, 2021. I’m
Wenhong Wang. I’m interviewing Rose Jang over Zoom. Last time we talked about your teaching at
Evergreen and your pedagogy, but we missed a large chunk of your teaching and contribution at
Evergreen, which was study abroad, specifically, study abroad in China. Can you talk a little bit about
how it got started?
Jang: Sure. Thank you, but allow me to elaborate a little on that part of the China program, because
indeed, study abroad in China is a very important and significant part of China program. I am very proud
of all the trips I took. We took students to China, and I thought they have learned a lot, and I have
learned a lot from those trips, to be literally in there with firsthand experience.
It is a little difficult for me to start a study abroad in China because I was from Taiwan—I wasn’t
born in China—and I didn’t even go to China until in my thirties, because China was closed to the outside
world when I was growing up. Even for the first few years when I was in the United States, we were not
permitted, or it wasn’t very convenient to go to China till ‘80s. Late ‘80s, I think China started to open
up, welcoming the outside foreigners to go in to visit. Of course, during Cultural Revolution, there were
still foreign visitors there, but it was all government-controlled.
Here, finally we were able to go to China. I did go to China first with my family. I went with my
mom to visit my family, my relatives that we had not visited or seen for a long time.
Wang: When was that?
Jang: That was in the early ‘90s. I can’t even remember which year that was, but I went with my mom
to visit her family.
Wang: I meant where did you go?
Jang: I went to Hunan Province. It was a little bit complicated because there were family members all
over the place. There, we had many family members come to join us in Hunan Province. We stayed
with one family, but a lot of associated family members or extended family members came to visit us, so
we were all together.

1

That was how I was first exposed to China. It was certainly an eye-opening experience. My
mom was definitely emotionally, I would say, devastated. She certainly was very happy to finally see
these people, her own brother, her own sister, who she had not seen for a long time. The so-called
“long time” was 30, 34 years. It was not just a few years or few months, it’s like all their adulthood.
Wang: They moved to Taiwan around 1949?
Jang: My mom was the only person of her family who went to Taiwan with the government, because
she was working for the Nationalist government at the time. Only select few who had direct connection
with the Nationalist government were given opportunity to go to Taiwan.
It was an emotional family reunion. But also, it was a very new experience for me. At that time,
China’s infrastructure was still pretty rough, I would say. We had a lot of inconveniences in China, but
you could tell the energy. You could tell people’s eagerness to start business, having ideas to open their
own stores, shops and business. People were wanting, were ready to make money. You could tell the
energy, and that was an energy that had long been suppressed in the political system, but now they
could launch into their own free enterprise. You could sense that. That was the feeling I had about
China when I first went to China.
The irony is that I had studied China all through my young years, my childhood and youth. I read
about the people, the places, the rivers, the mountains—everything—but I’d never been there. Those
were images of my home, but I’d never been to my home. Another irony that was very funny.
It was a pretty shaking experience for me to have that, to finally come to a place where I had
studied a lot, but I had never seen with my own eyes, touched with my own feet, my own hands. That’s
probably things that people outside the Chinese culture couldn’t understand.
There was another trip to China, which prepared me later for my China study abroad program.
That was my trip to the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995. That was a pretty big deal, I think.
All over the world, women went to China—to Beijing—to participate in this world conference. I went
there as well with a group of women artists from Olympia.
I experienced China again. That was my second time going to China, in 1995. It was, of course,
very difficult in a lot of ways in terms of living conditions, in terms of traveling. Pretty much, we were
controlled. We were not allowed to visit places at our own will. It was always difficult going in and out
of our hotels, and everything was watched over and censored. I remember that experience. China was
still opening.
During that trip, I got to meet a Chinese opera professional, which I will talk about later. A lot of
my companions couldn’t speak Chinese and they counted on me being the translator, because I had the
2

benefit of the native language speaking. Also, I had the advantage of pretending to be a Chinese, so I
could kind of sneak around, although it was not easy. It was not easy because they could tell instantly
that you were not Chinese, real Chinese Chinese, although I could speak good enough Chinese Mandarin
without maybe that distinct accent, but I could imitate the Beijing accent.
At that time, people were afraid of taking foreigners around. I was talking about the taxi. The
taxi drivers would refuse to take the foreigners because they were afraid of making mistakes, things like
that. Or there were designated ones. The only taxi drivers with certain license or something like that
could take us, so we had some difficulty getting taxi drivers to take us around. But because of my
language skills, I was able to get taxis sometimes for my companions. I myself could go around and visit
places. I made arrangements to go to the Chinese theater school when I was in China visiting in Beijing,
and also being part of the World Conference participants.
I met Cao Chen, the Chinese opera professional actor. I want to mention his name because he
helped me to stage a lot of authentic Chinese opera productions on Evergreen campus. After I worked
with him in China during that trip, I eventually got him to come to Evergreen as an artist-in-residence. I
managed to convince the Evergreen administration to hire a Chinese professional to come all the way
from China to Evergreen to work with my students, with the support from the administration—Jose
Gomez, who was the Dean of International Travel, International Affairs, at the time. With their
support—with Jose’s support particularly—we managed to hire Cao Chen.
That helped me to strengthen my China studies in my performing arts program, and arouse
people’s interest in Chinese studies and in Chinese theater performance, too, because I was able to put
on, I feel, really fantastic productions, both on Evergreen campus and also in downtown Olympia in the
Washington Center for the Performing Arts, and the students were trained by Cao Chen. Cao Chen
himself performed part of the play, being the lead. Of course, he had all the martial skills, all the
acrobatic skills of Chinese opera.
But he was also an incredibly gifted teacher. He was part of my program, giving my performing
arts students training in the Chinese opera skills, and they followed him and performed parts of
characters in the production that he put on. We staged these plays at Evergreen and in Olympia.
It was pretty exciting that I had these things going on, but that was only for a period of time that
I ignited students’ interest in Chinese opera in this way. Students who were interested in Chinese opera
would come to my China study part of the performing arts program, until I finally established my China
program. Cao Chen worked with me around 1996-97 for two years.

3

Then I took a leave of absence because I was pregnant and had my son, in 1997. I came back
and I decided to not do too much of that kind of work because having students train in the Chinese
opera mode and performing was really time- and energy-consuming. I also had made the decision
around that time that I wanted to go back to the foundation of China studies. I wanted to create a China
program, because all the work I did with Cao Chen was still part of the performing arts programs, not
China program. China program wasn’t born yet until 1999 when I designed and taught East Wind, West
Wind with Andrew Buchman.
With that program, the China program was literally born in terms of having that foundation, that
continuity. It also has the focus on everything China, from Chinese history, tradition, to philosophy,
always China at the center and not just as an additional element, or as part of a performing arts
program, which has a different focus.
But here, we have now China program. I worked with Andrew Buchman for the first two China
programs without the China study abroad component, because these two programs were my testing
programs, feeling programs, whether I could continue doing that, whether it was a program I would be
interested in continuing. And it was. They were good enough for me and they were satisfying and
fulfilling to me, and felt significant enough for me to say, “Yes, I want to do China program from now on,
every other year.”
With that commitment establishing, I decided to really enrich it with the study abroad program,
or the study abroad component as part of the China program.
In 2001, I participated in the NEH Summer Institute to study Chinese religion and politics. In
2003, I believe, just two years later with another NEH-sponsored Summer Institute, I got to travel in
China, I got to go to China with the East West Center faculty, and many other professors from all over
the United States. We had this faculty travel group to go to China.
Peking University was the major sponsoring university of that NEH program, so I established a
connection with Peking University. I thought I could count on Peking University to start this study
abroad program. However, Peking University was simply too important to accommodate me. [laughter]
They practically ignored my continuing e-mails and phone calls. By the way, the program that I started
the China study abroad was not a China program. That was the program right before my third China
program, Searching for Modern China, in 2006.
It was in 2005 that I decided that I wanted to go to China. That’s the program Asian Culture and
Arts. In that program, I worked with three other faculty. Ratna Roy, who is the Indian faculty, had made
arrangements to take her dance students to India, so I thought, okay, I will do the same. I will try to take
4

the China studies students, the China part of the students, to go to China in the spring. I had fun
working with that idea and trying to establish the study abroad component for that program. No matter
how many times I contacted Peking University, I got no response.
Wang: Yeah. It’s also Beijing University now, right?
Jang: Yes, at the time it was called Peking University 北大. But their translation at the time is still P-EK-I-N-G.
Wang: Oh, that’s right.
Jang: I don’t know whether they changed to Beijing or not.
Wang: They’re using both. Originally, it was Peking University and then Beijing University.
Jang: Right. I think I was lucky. Luckily, at the time, Evergreen’s study abroad opportunities were
probably not as restrictive. Nowadays, or later, when I had to apply for a study abroad component—a
trip—I had to apply two years ahead, along with my curricular proposal. Luckily, at that time, I was
allowed to propose a little later. I did propose, I think, a year earlier before the trip, not two years
earlier, and I was still trying to get a school.
It was the restriction or the policy of later times that I got to have everything in place because
they needed to make a contract, they had to put the money, the school, everything in the contract. The
contract creating process was really long and tedious, but at the time, in 2005, it wasn’t that restrictive,
so I was able to use a little time, a leeway, to try to figure out which school to take students to.
Luckily, just at the last minute, when I almost was ready to give up, I found a school, and that’s
the school called Capital University of Economics and Business. The beautiful thing about that school is
that school is not a national school. It’s not a school which is that big, that famous, which is too
cumbersome to create an international study program for students from the United States.
But it’s also a school which is in Beijing, so I was able to take students to Beijing, which is what I
wanted. That’s where all the cultural sites and establishments, historical places are located, and that’s a
beautiful place to start. Capital University of Economics and Business—CUEB—gave me that first step. I
took students there the first year, the second year, and the third year. We had a great relationship.
I took students kind of blindly to that school for the first year, but everything worked out so
beautifully, I was able to have a wonderful syllabus. It was also very cheap—economic, I have to say.
Students spent so little money, considering. The tuition, compared with the school tuition here in the
United States, was awfully cheap.
Wang: What did the students study there?

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Jang: They studied mainly language, but they also took courses in cultural studies, in history and
politics. Simple things, not too deep, but good enough for introductory understanding. They also took
students to different places. We went to Great Wall, to Forbidden City, to Ming tomb—all these
important places. They also took us to theater to watch martial arts. It was fantastic. Lao She
Teahouse. Places where tourists would go. For students, that’s good enough.
It was really eye-opening. I’d never been to a theater where we could see these incredibly
fantastic and just breathtaking martial arts performances by Shaolin monks. You probably went to some
of those. Those are, of course, tourist places. All tourists going to China would probably go to these
typical places. But they were really well-established tourist places with wonderful performers. They
were not second-rate performers. They were the top-ranking martial artists doing incredibly impossible
things for the students.
Wang: Did you go to good restaurants?
Jang: C’mon, you’re talking about China. [laughter] I remember the first experience we had in China
was the night we arrived in China, they took us to this Beijing duck restaurant. The students got to eat
the authentic Beijing duck, with, of course, many other delicious dishes. The food there, it goes without
saying that the food is the biggest attraction. They took us to all these restaurants. We—the faculty-ate in so many different restaurants, paid by the school as a gesture to welcome us.
The students went to different restaurants themselves. They didn’t need any guidance or
advice. They found them. Kids are kids. The students were 19-, 20-year-old American adventurous
youths. They would know. They went out of their dorms, and they took it on themselves to go to
different places. They had probably more feasts than I could even venture myself.
Yes, food is the number one thing. Not only the restaurants. The street food—the exotic things,
the stalls, the stands, the street food markets—whatever—they took on themselves. They
experimented with all kinds of food. So, yes, they enjoyed food. They enjoyed everything in China.
I think that’s really the education they received. Not only the classroom learning, the teachers
teaching them these things that are in the so-called established, official curriculum or syllabus. They
really experienced China firsthand by exploring the food, going around to different stores, different
shops. They communicated with people with their own very bad Chinese, but they managed, through
their body language, their gestures. They made friends. My goodness! They not only made friends,
every trip we had a couple of students—usually male students—having romances, getting themselves
girlfriends who were coming to our campus. Of course, we tried to make sure everything was played
safely. We definitely established the study abroad covenant to make sure they know that they were
6

allowed to do some things and they were not allowed to do some other things, so they knew. I
definitely had to really watch over them seriously.
Another thing that you need to be careful about is they went to bars. They got themselves
drunk, and that would be a problem. There were accidents—no real big incidents, but there were
incidents—and I really had to get students into my room and give them a good talk-to. Things like that.
There were incidents of people not behaving well in class or getting themselves in trouble by getting too
drunk. And losing their passports. All of that. Things like that did happen.
But in general, definitely the benefits, the advantages, and the students behaving well, making
everyone proud was more than the things they did badly. Overall, the benefits still outweighed the
problems. I took students to BECU—
Wang: BUEC, right?
Jang: Right, Capital University of Economics and Business. I’m sorry, CUEB . . .
Wang: Yeah, CUEB. [laughter]
Jang: . . . for the first three times. We always ended the trip with travel, just one week of travel, touring
around China. We left Beijing for the last week and we made arrangements—through the school, with a
travel agency—to go to different places in China. We got to go to Shanghai and Xi’an, we got to go to
the Terracotta Soldiers’ tomb, all these famous tourist places, cultural places, for students to have
experience beyond Beijing.
The last two trips, I took students to the National Academy of Chinese Theater Arts,
中國戲曲學院. That school is a professional school to train professional Beijing opera professional
actors.
Wang: That’s a top school in China.
Jang: The top school for professional theater actors. Because I got to be in China a few more times, and
I went to China myself on my own for professional training to learn from professional teachers myself, I
got to visit the school and establish a connection with that school.
I decided that I could take my students there. It was a sort of risky attempt because the
Evergreen students are not professional students. Even the theater students or the music students,
they’re not trained to the professional standard to ever go to that kind of school. They’re not
compatible on the professional level, any level, of artistic standard in that school.
But the school itself, having heard my request, believed that it could be a good cultural
exchange program. because although that school is a professional training school for Beijing opera, it is
also a school which promotes international relations. There is a department called International
7

Relations in that school, training the cultural ambassadors, maybe ideally to take professional actors or
Beijing opera to the outside world, so they could help train those students to have them communicate
with our students, to establish an interchange, more cultural exchange relations, so they welcomed us
to come to study theater and music and makeup with their professional teachers, but at the same time,
to establish more cultural exchange with their International Relations students. Those students became
our pals, our guides, and translators. They came to all the classes to translate the teachings. I’m talking
about those students who were in the department of International Relations.
They used the opportunity to speak with our students to understand American culture, to
understand the language, and they got an opportunity to learn about the Western literature and
culture, and arts through working with our students, too. That’s a good opportunity for the school to
broaden their scope of learning with American students. Our students, of course, benefited from talking
to the students who could understand their language, who could talk in English, along with their learning
of the traditional arts.
It’s a learning or a study opportunity on many, many different levels, not just on the traditional
arts level, but more on the cultural level, in a modern sense; to understand Chinese modern culture,
contemporary culture by working with these students from the International Relations.
But the students from our school did focus on learning about traditional theater, traditional
music and makeup in a traditional theater sense, and they definitely learned a lot. That’s one of the
things I think, with my background in Chinese theater, that they got to experience, they got to do,
because I don’t think any other China studies professors were able to do that without the traditional
Chinese theater background.
Wang: Absolutely.
Jang: I was kind of happy that I was able to do that. It was a kind of risky job on my part because I had
no idea whether the teachers there would even understand our students and why they were there,
because their skill level and their performance level were very low compared with the professional
students there. I was afraid that the professional teachers couldn’t tolerate our students.
Those fears were legitimate and were practical, but it turned out that the professional teachers
there were so understanding. They understood that these students were here just for the cultural
exposure. They never put too much pressure on them. They were incredibly tolerant. I shouldn’t use
tolerant. I should say just understanding and compassionate, and so they led them through a very
interesting process. They guided them. They understood what they were there for, so they gave them
assignments that they could handle, so all my students were able to produce something.
8

They had a showcase at the end of their study program. It was a wonderful experience. They
got to go on stage and did a little bit of Chinese theater performance. The music students would play a
little piece of Chinese music on traditional Chinese instrument Jing Hu or Yue Qin, the moon guitar or
the moon lute—all these traditional Chinese theater instruments or music instruments that would take
years to master. [laughing] But the students got to do that.
I think, for them, it was such a rare opportunity. It did lead to something. I do have students
who are still there in China, still studying music. I also have students who stayed in the Capital
University of Economics and Business for years studying Chinese. A student stayed there to become,
first, a language teacher teaching English to their students in CUEB, and then became an employee in
International Relations and also a curriculum administrator. I would say the relationship continued after
the study abroad program finished.
Wang: Normally, these study-abroad programs happen in spring?
Jang: Yes.
Wang: A one-quarter experience.
Jang: Right. I thought that would be a very natural outcome or ending—conclusion—of the yearlong
China program. Study abroad could be a good conclusion to China program. For the first two quarters,
the study would be focused on literature, history, or anything that we want to focus on, theoretically,
historically and culturally on China, so students had enough information for them to literally go to China,
to come out of two quarters of preparation with a better, solid understanding of China before they go
there.
When they were there in China, they would have had enough language training. They usually
had taken two quarters of language study, so they could speak a little. Not much, but enough for them
to survive. They also understood, to some extent, some Chinese culture, so they would not make a fool
of themselves talking to people. Things like that.
I think spring is definitely a better time to go to China, although in my last year, we did raise the
time a little earlier. I went to China with Hirsh Diamant and he had a different idea. We extended that
time from four weeks to six weeks, but that was a different story. We still managed to do everything
very well. I think it was because Hirsh Diamant was not hired for the spring quarter part of the program,
so we had to do that in winter quarter, but that was a totally practical concern. Ideally, it’s arranged in
sprint quarter.
Before I finish, I don’t want to forget to mention my faculty colleagues who went to China with
me. Hirsh Diamant went with me because he taught with me, and he arranged part of the China study,
9

too, so he played a big role in arranging the study abroad for the China program. We taught together
for that year. The title of that program was China: Religion, Folklore and Arts.
All the earlier China programs were all coordinated by me, and the study abroad was solely
arranged by me because I was the only Chinese faculty who had a connection with China. No, actually
Zhang Er too. Zhang Er (Mingxia Li) did not arrange the study abroad, although she played a very
important role later when we were in China to arrange a lot of work or study sessions and seminars with
Chinese poets there. She did help a great deal in China.
But the Chinese study abroad, that program and syllabus, the institutional connections were
made by me most of the time.
Jang: I was talking about my faculty team going to China. I think it is important to have a study abroad
faculty team instead of one faculty going to China with students. Luckily, that never happened to me,
but because all the experiences I had experienced in China with student problems, I realized upon
reflection how important it is to not be the sole faculty member in China, taking a group of students
there all by yourself.
The first time I went to China, although I was the only faculty teaching China in that program, I
made arrangements with Capital University of Economics and Business by myself. As I said, that was my
first attempt. It was a very risky one. It was happening at the last minute. I was fortunate enough that
Andrew Buchman—who had taught with me in performing arts programs, and had been my best
colleague, my best support in all my programs, including China program—was interested in going with
me, although he wasn’t teaching with me in that year. He wanted to grab the opportunity to go and
explore in China, too, because he knew he would be teaching with me again in China programs in the
future.
I had him with me, and my goodness, that was so helpful, because the students needed, as in
every program, two faculty to reinforce the message. Once I told something to the students, they could
hear it again from another faculty, so they knew that we meant business. Otherwise, they would take
advantage of you. It’s not to say that students were not good. I think students are students. They were
students. They were still young, and they were suddenly exposed to things so new, and they were
bombarded with excitements. They could sometimes lose themselves in the colors and the sights and
the excitements.
So, with someone who was with me, and not on the students’ side but on my side to make sure
everything was in a good place, everything was settled and agreed on, and we would follow through is

10

very important. Luckily, I always, always had Andrew Buchman on my side, although he didn’t go the
last year. That was too bad.
With Andrew Buchman, I also recruited other faculty, not like recruiting efforts but more like
people had heard about this, and they were interested in tagging along. One other faculty who went
with me to several of the China study abroad is Sandie Nisbet. I want to bring her in because Sandie
Nisbet is my best friend—one of my best friends. Because she taught theater, so we were colleagues on
a very professional level.
But we had very different backgrounds. She is trained in Stanislavski system. She was a student
of Stella Adler, the founding Stanislavski system in the United States. She taught workshops to
Hollywood actors. She had her own traveling company, a feminist theater company. She wrote for TV
programs. She has tons of experiences, but she had never been to China.
She went with me, and she was fascinated by the program, the theater program particularly.
But before that, she went to China to just experience China. Let me see. Did she go to the other one?
Maybe not. She went to China with me to the National Academy of Chinese Theater Arts.
So, a Western-trained theater faculty—a scholar, a practitioner—going to professional theater
school, for her, it’s one of the lifetime things, and it’s so revealing and helpful. It’s helpful for her
theater knowledge and training, and it’s helpful for me because she could tell her experience to me and
share her learning, her realization, her discoveries with me, and I learned from her perspectives. She
became a really wonderful springboard, or sounding board, for me. My ideas, my understandings of
Chinese theater would go through her, and through her Western theater training, to come out with a
more coherent understanding of what theater is about, and what connects Western and Chinese
theater together.
She just adored whatever was happening in China in that school. She thought the training was
outstanding. The students were amazing. She just experienced one of the best theater training systems
in the world, and she could relay that to me. They reinforced my belief in the value, in the excellence, of
traditional Chinese theater education. That was wonderful.
I just want to say that study abroad, if you take the right faculty colleagues with you to China,
you’ll not only benefit the students. You’ll also benefit your faculty colleagues. When they bring that
knowledge into their own teaching, they definitely know what they’re talking about. They could add so
much more to their teaching. I think Andrew Buchman going to China year after year with me is not just
because he liked to go or enjoyed traveling. Of course, he did, but he also benefited from the

11

experience for his own teaching. I thought that was one of the greater things about study abroad in
China.
The school paid for my travel. That was one of the best things, that I didn’t have to spend
anything. My expense in China was completely covered. My goodness, it was so wonderful. My
colleagues, when they decided to go with me, they paid out of their own pocket. But it was so
economic, considering. Everything in China was much more economical, much cheaper. The airfare, I
was able to get really wonderful group rate through the travel agencies in the International District in
Chinatown here in Seattle. Everything was cheap. They went there, really had the best experience.
Everything was arranged, and they also learned a lot.
I think the study abroad is perfect for any cultural studies program, and for China program, it
has been incredibly successful and fruitful and productive. It took a lot of work on my part to arrange
with students, to establish relationships to make sure the curriculum and the syllabus were all in good
place. Make sure the students’ living situations were well arranged and covered.
Those things took a lot of time. I had to budget the money. I had to make sure all the money
was deposited in the right place and spent in the right place, that every money is well documented. I’m
not at all a good person with money. I don’t budget my own money at home. [laughing] But I spent so
much time doing that.
But everything was well worth the effort—the planning, the preparation—because everything
coming out of it was so enriching and so fulfilling and so educational and informative in the long run.
I’m grateful for that. I’m grateful for the students who gave me the chance to do those things to help
them and to help myself. I’m grateful for our institution which allows such opportunities to continue for
so long, and for me to benefit, to learn.
Wang: It was so wonderful for the students to have that kind of experience. Studying China. I talked to
some students later on. It was apparent that it was an experience that would stay with them for the
rest of their lives.
Jang: Travel is not that difficult. Well, actually, travel is very difficult now (because of the pandemic).
[laughing]
Wang: And super-expensive.
Jang: I want to say that without the pandemic, travel would be easy now. China is such a powerful
country, and everyone wants to go to China, and China is also welcoming visitors. It’s a totally different
situation from when I first took students to China.

12

But I think the experiences my first few groups of students experienced in China were most
valuable because I think we met the best people. [laughing] I really thought so. The mindset, the
attitudes. I’ll bet the schools in China have been through a lot of changes, but when you first had
students coming to the United States to your school, and you were really trying very hard to establish
long-term relationships, that was a different time.
The attitude, the welcoming gestures, the arrangement, everything—the program itself, and just
in general, China was a different place than—even the people on the street, they were so nice to our
students because they didn’t see a lot of foreign students yet. They were not used to having such
conversations, having such young, happy people who were coming to their stores, shining with curious
eyes and questions. I think those times and those exchanges, those spontaneous and natural
engagements, were indeed more genuine at the time when China study abroad first took place, the first
few years.
And I was involved in it. It was difficult to establish, but it was also most rewarding when it
became successful.
Wang: Absolutely. Thank you so much, Rose, for sharing this major part of your teaching and major
contribution to our college. It has been so enriching for our students and also our faculty and
curriculum in general. Is there anything else on this topic or on the previous topics that you would like
to add?
Jang: There are so many things that I talked about. Maybe talking too much, but there are so many
other things I didn’t get to cover, such as I know there was—whether it’s still going on, I have no idea—
the exchange program with Xin Wei University in Shanghai. That exchange, I did take part in a little bit
during my last trip, and I know that there were Chinese students coming to Evergreen for a little while,
but I didn’t get to know what’s going on because I soon retired so I couldn’t say anything. I hope there
are students or continued exchange things going on.
I wish everything good in China studies at the university. I hope that you yourself and Zhang Er
(Mingxia Li) will continue to carry the torch and make China studies still part of curriculum, because I
think it is important.
That’s my only and last thing to say. I don’t think I made many contributions. I think I was just
doing my job, but I think if there’s anything I did that made a difference to the school, I really do want to
see it continue . . .
Wang: Yes, I feel the same way.

13

Jang: . . . to have a long life there. Thank you for letting me participate in this interview and letting me
refresh my memory by talking about it through this project. I think it’s such a wonderful project. It
made me feel like I had done something worthwhile. It made me feel like the faculty who had left are
being respected and remembered. That’s what this project has given me, and I want to thank you for
doing this. I want to thank all the people who are supporting, making this project possible. Other than
you and Sam, I cannot name names, but there must be a lot of people. Thank you so much.
Wang: The pleasure was absolutely mine. Thank you so much, Rose.

14



Item sets

The Evergreen State College Faculty and Staff Oral History Project

Media

JangRose_20210830_Transcript_pt1.pdf

JangRose_20210903_Transcript_pt2.pdf