ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author begins by a work of art called Collected Letters by Liu Jianhua in the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. Shanghai was a city with a history of colonial powers vying for control and multiple “foreign concessions or enclaves” of a wide range of nationalities as a consequence of the brutal colonial enterprise otherwise known as the Opium Wars. It was a port city with people from around the world and around China trying to make a life. The museum description of the work of art inspires the author's to be open to new ways of interpreting and reading the work that her students create in their learning spaces. It also forced her to rethink her own experiences and roles as reader, writer, and teacher of writing. “Porcelain Western letters and fragments of Chinese characters, suspended in midair, mingle in a silent symphony of symbols, open to interpretation and a new reading”.
