I want to lead the kids ... but get an even better lesson back

My name-card collection bursts out of several boxes and runs the gamut of professions and personalities.

This is thanks to the Chinese custom of exchanging cards with nearly everyone you meet, no matter how fleetingly.

But the card I cherish most was given to me by Yang Zhouxing. It came into my possession while I was speaking to a class of middle school students in rural Sichuan's Pingwu county, a quake-affected area where the youngsters, who studied in makeshift classrooms, had never glimpsed a foreign face.