Ever look up into the night sky at just the right moment and see the most extraordinary shooting star hurtle across the brilliant heavens? Something very similar to that happened to me just a year ago.

A group of fifteen students visited the school where I teach. These kids were from China. They were polite, shy, appropriate, and very friendly. Most spoke no English. The ones who did were very limited in their skills.

Five of the guests joined my students in our classroom – lambs thrown to the lions, except, in this case, the lions lied down with the lambs quickly. My students were just as eager to get to know our new friends and, within minutes, computers were blazing with GoogleTranslater. I watched, amazed at how quickly children from two nations, separated by half a world and a greater cultural chasm, smiled and laughed and chattered with each other, connecting like they had known each other for years. I wondered how this was possible.

Then, I met Yang Xu, one of the teachers who accompanied the students from China. Yang Xu was about 25 years old, very cute behind her serious glasses, and quick to smile and engage with me in her broken English. Yang Xu gushed with fondness when she talked of her students and how much those kids wanted to bond with our kids. She so much desired to see her students develop relationships with their English counterparts.

As I listened to the earnestness in which this teacher spoke, I thought of the fear American politicians and pulpit pundits try to instill in us about the Bear in the East. I thought about how China is quick to cast aside females and how China isolates its people socially from an ever-growing integrated world. And I thought about Yang Xu, proud teacher of some very remarkable young people from Beijing.

That day, the world seemed a little safer. The world seemed a little friendlier. And the world seemed a lot brighter. All because of a young woman from China, Yang Xu, a shining star from the East.