Vice President Harris’ running mate has lived in China and traveled there many times. His relationship with the country has been under scrutiny, especially from Republicans.
When Vice President Harris picked Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate on the Democratic ticket earlier this month, a Chinese woman in Western Australia, thousands of miles away, couldn’t contain her excitement, shouting with joy at the news.
“When I realized that he was the Tim that [was] in my memory, I was amazed, and felt so proud of him,” Christy Dai told NPR by phone from Perth.
In 1989, a 15-year-old Dai met Walz, who became her first foreign English teacher at Foshan No. 1 Middle School in southern China. During that school year, Walz taught English and U.S. history to around 300 students, she says.
For Walz, it was an introduction to a country that he would return to about 30 times in the ensuing years, by his own reckoning — a cumulative experience that has come under a spotlight since his addition to the Democratic ticket.
But Walz’s record on China, based on the accounts of people who interacted with him on some of those trips, as well as his own words, is hard to put in a box.
At the age of 25, fresh out of college, Walz signed up for Harvard University’s WorldTeach program and traveled to China, where, according to his online biography, he became part of one of the “first government sanctioned groups of American educators” to arrive after the country opened its doors to the world in the 1980s. The ’89-’90 school year started shortly after the Chinese army crushed pro-democracy protests centered on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in June 1989.
“It was my belief at that time that diplomacy was going to happen on many levels, certainly people to people,” Walz recalled during a 2014 congressional hearing commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown. “The opportunity to be in a Chinese high school at that critical time seemed to me to be really important.”People-to-people communication
At the high school in Foshan, Walz made a good impression, according to Dai and a former colleague.
“He was quite lively and very approachable. Whether people understand English or not, he always greets them with hand gestures, appearing friendly and cheerful,” says Lee Nai-Tim, a retired teacher of Chinese language and literature, who was in charge of a class when Walz was teaching there.
Walz was given the nickname “Ah-Tim” by his students and colleagues. In Cantonese, the word “Tim” can be represented by a Chinese character that also appeared in Lee’s name. Lee recalled Walz, with a big smile, saying in Cantonese: «Both you and I are named Tim.»
Lee says Walz was thoughtful and cared for others. Walz was the only teacher at the school who was provided with an air conditioner, but he often left it off.
“At that time, our electricity supply was sometimes unreliable,” Lee says. “Mr. Walz would turn off his air conditioner because when he used it, the lights nearby would dim. It was very hot in the summer, but he chose to go without air conditioning.”
For Dai, Walz represented one of the first opportunities for a close encounter with a person from the West.
