Life;s harsh lessons have given Jenny wong the resolve to pursue a class act in education

When Jenny Wong came to Britain in 1972 she was 14 years old and craved for a normal school life like anyone of her age. Instead, she worked in a restaurant fulltime as a kitchen hand.

One day a week she would take a break from the kitchen, and sit in on a primary school class.

"They took pity on me because I couldn't speak English and could not support myself financially if I went to school," Wong says.

She is speaking more than 40 years later at the Manchester Chinese Centre, a Chinese school for children and adults in the city center. Wong is its director, and in that role has helped it forge a great deal of influence in the local community.

"Nowadays many people come to the center because they feel life is a struggle, and I comfort them by telling them my own story," Wong says. "As foreigners in the UK we all have to fight to make a living."

Wong is one of about 30,000 Chinese living in greater Manchester.

The Chinese Community Centre was founded in 2005 and today holds weekend Chinese classes for 263 children, and on weekdays classes for 80 adults. In addition, it has 32 people on call to do interpreting and translation work. It also organizes festivals, dance performance, arts and crafts and community events.

In 2010 during the Chongyang Festival, a day on which Chinese visit the graves of their ancestors, the center worked with the Museum of Science and Industry to provide support to young people affected by depression and isolation.

In 2011, children who study Chinese at the center were involved in a Clean Up Chinatown campaign, and also the Manchester Day Parade, dressed in Chinese traditional clothing.

But the center's work extends beyond those who go through its doors and beyond Chinese people. Over the years it has also supported prison inmates.

"We take Chinese newspapers and books to them so they have something to read," Wong says. "Also we take Chinese food and perform dragon dances for them during festivals. We want them to feel that there are people from the outside world who care about them."

Although many of the prisoners the center helps are Chinese, its charity is not limited by race.

But even after having built such a supportive home for local children and the wider community, Wong wants to achieve more. One aim is for Chinese-language learning to enter the mainstream curriculum in British schooling. Even though the government has set that as a long-term goal, this is difficult to do, Wong says.

Before founding the center Wong was a Chinese teacher for many years, belonging to a group of teachers providing lessons to schools after normal class hours.

As someone who naturally loved teaching, she enjoyed the classes, but practical problems remained.

"Because we go to schools to teach Chinese, we had to set lessons in a way the schools were happy with. But sadly the schools just wanted the children to have a good time, and the learning was secondary."

In addition, the teachers of other languages began to see the rising popularity of Chinese as a threat. "School staff would ask me, 'What are our French and German teachers supposed to do if students stop studying those languages?'" Wong says.

These challenges inspired her to found her own school, Dragonheart Primary, and the aim 15 for it to teach 420 students.

"At Dragonheart, Chinese study needs to be an integral part of the curriculum, and every student will need to study Chinese for 45 minutes each day," Wong says.

The project has won the support of the local council, which has agreed to give a piece of council land to Wong's team to develop the school. Wong has applied for government funding of five million pounds ($8 million; 6.3 million euros) from the New Schools Network, which supports individuals wanting to set up schools. But her application has been rejected twice, because it says it lacks the funds to support such a project.

But Wong is not taking no for an answer and, realizing the limited strength of Manchester Chinese Centre, has decided to solicit support from organizations including Manchester China Forum, Manchester City Council and local companies. With newfound support, she says, she will submit an application again before the end of the year.

Wong was born and raised in Hong Kong. She spent most of her time working in the fields. Her mother's ill health is a constant in her childhood memories, but one incident, when she was nine, stands out like no other.

One day she got into a furious quarrel with her mother.

"My mother chased me into a field and hit me," Wong says. "I was trying to cross a river and running across pebbles and broke my foot."

A soldier nearby came to her rescue, tearing off a part of his uniform to wrap up the foot.

The soldier was one of many guards on the border between Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland.

Wong and the soldier became friends, and every day he would tell her stories about Chinese history, which became Wong's favorite subject to teach after she started her teaching career in Britain.

After coming to the country to join her father, who worked as a chef in a restaurant in Surrey, south of London, Wong started to give Chinese lessons.

Having spent her teenage years working part-time and dropping into various classrooms to learn with other students, she decided to take her fate into her own hands at the age of 21 by enrolling properly as a student.

She studied O-Levels (a standard secondary school exam) in Edinburgh and supported herself by working part time at Edinburgh University, initially cleaning toilets and later working again as a kitchen hand.

After completing her O-Levels she went on to study for a diploma in fashion design at the University of Leeds, and after graduating started to work for a fashion company.

She loved the job, she says, but after her daughter's birth she realized the constant travel associated with her job was impractical and decided to start teaching Chinese.

Wong says she has taught Chinese for more than 40 years, and if Dragonheart can become established she will have no regrets when she retires.

cecily.liu@chinadaily.com.cn

Manchester Chinese Centre is a Chinese school for children and adults in the city center. Photos by Cecily Liu / China Daily

Jenny Wong, director of Manchester Chinese Centre

(China Daily European Weekly 10/17/2014 page16)