Is it in English or Chinese?

We have an eight member delegation coming from China to the Arts & Crafts Festival this Thursday and Friday. Sonya Harmon has been working on the details for months and months. It has been a monumental task that she has given Herculean effort toward. This cultural exchange began with Elkhart County and Jinhau, China becoming sister county/city. A delegation, including Amish Acres resident artist Jeff Stillson and Angie, from Elkhart County visited Jinhau in the spring. While there Jeff painted a quilt mural and presented it to the deputy mayor of Jinhau.

Now we are hosting five artists who are bring their woodcarving and bamboo weaving to the festival as an exhibition of their ancient crafts. Saturday we learned that the pieces being brought range in price from several hundred dollars to nearly $15,000! I remember Aaron Zou telling me that if the Chinese community in Chicago knew that artists from Dongyang Woodcarving City were going to be in the United States in Indiana, they would beat a path to our door. This all came together at about 8:00 p.m. I Googled the Chinese daily newspaper in Chicago's China Town, called a phone number and Marilyn answered. We arranged within minutes to purchase a full page ad for tomorrow, send her a press release, set up credit, arranged deadlines. The one question I forgot to ask was if the paper was in English or Chinese.

Today Marilyn sent me an ad she designed in Chinese at the same time Jeff was designing a similar ad in English! They crossed over the Internet. So we have ended up with a press release in Chinese and an ad in English. The paper has a circulation of 35,000 and is distributed in 18 news stands across China Town.

The world keeps getting smaller and smaller.