ABSTRACT
A caterpillar turning into a butterfly presents different levels of creativity and shows that creativity comes from our daily life and everyone can be creative. This chapter describes creative learning by Chinese students within an activity structure that explicitly values creativity and its cousin, criticality. China's education system is often portrayed negatively by the global press and citizens worldwide, including from within the People's Republic of China (PRC) itself by its political leaders, parents, and students. Students' apprehensions about communicating in English came through in some of the personal essays, but this was a catalyst for creative problem-solving. The Chinese students applied their understandings of a psychological model of creativity to their own conceptions grounded in progressive levels of creativity from the intrapersonal, to the professional/cultural, to the societal/global. Chinese education uses 'methods of instruction rely heavily on rote memorization and in-class recitation that produce students with excellent memory skills but weak creative and analytical skills'.
