Rao Jin: A Dream of Becoming a Lao Teacher

By staff reporter LI GUOWEN

RAO Jin leaves university this year, but she is not busy looking for a job; she has a dream of becoming a Lao language teacher. Earlier this June, at the time of this interview, she was doing a Lao translation job for the first China-South Asia Expo, such is her proficiency in the language.

Rao was born in Pu’er City in Yunnan Province. Her father is of the Hani ethnicity and her mother is a Han. At the age of 19 she left the care and protection of her parents to major in Lao at Yunnan University of Nationalities in Kunming, the provincial capital.

“The language of Dai, another indigenous ethnic group in Yunnan, is quite similar to Lao, but I am a Hani and had to learn from scratch,” Rao recalled.

When choosing her major, she had not been sure about Lao, and was not confident when she asked about it. But with the development of China and Laos’ economic and trade relations she has gradually felt more assured about her choice and future career.

Rao Jin’s university had an exchange program, so as a junior she spent a year studying at the National University of Laos. She was impressed by the scale of the campus there. Located 35 km away from the capital, Vientiane, the campus is quite spartan and less modern than the city, but the students have land to grow their own vegetables, and some teachers even breed cattle.

During her final year back in Kunming, Rao Jin was thinking about her future. She did three things that she regarded as a key to success: she attended the postgraduate admittance examinations, applied for the civil servant qualification in Pu’er and got an internship opportunity at a Lao magazine. Subsequently, she got admitted to university for a Master’s degree, achieved the highest scores in the civil servant examinations and was offered a job by the Lao magazine.

Rao’s mother expected Rao Jin to take a civil servant job because it was stable with less pressure, while her father encouraged her to make her own choice but suggsted three criteria for a good job to think about: salary, self-fulfillment and being respected by society.

Rao Jin had dreamt of becoming a teacher since she was a young girl, so she chose to continue her master’s studies for another three years and become a university teacher. But she also accepted a part-time job at the Lao magazine, as she relishes the opportunity it offers to better learn the Lao language and culture.

“There is a reporter station in Laos, and doing this job builds a bridge between the two countries; to a great extent, it is for my country.”

Most of Rao’s classmates are female and some of them chose to work for trade companies or Chinese enterprises in Laos such as China CAMC Engineering Co., Ltd.

“Although jobs in Laos are well-paid, as girls, we have to think about marriage and our personal life. So after working for several years abroad, they [her female classmates] have to come back to get married at home. And I have to hurry too, otherwise I’ll be left out,” Rao said jokingly.

Over the next three years, Rao Jin has to be well-prepared and study hard to fulfill her dream of becoming a university teacher. She told us that only Beijing Foreign Studies University, Guangxi University for Nationalities and her university offer Lao as a major, althrough some other universities in Yunnan are planning to set up this program. “This is an opportunity for me.” Right now, there is no PhD education in this major in China.

Becoming a teacher, being a translator and encouraging cross-cultural Chinese-Lao exchanges are Rao Jin’s passions in life.