Photo show on China gives US students insights

"I could get on a plane and fly to China tomorrow," Monika Hoffarth-Zelloe says, as she marvels at photos on display at a community college in the US state of Virginia.

The photos are part of the China in My Eyes exhibition Hoffarth-Zelloe put together to promote Chinese language and culture in local communities.

This show, which began on Feb 1, is the sixth for the touring exhibition.

The 70 photos on the walls of the Northern Virginia Community College Library are an odd collection taken over three decades. Some are the works of National Geographic photographers while others are casual snapshots of amateurs, but they have one thing in common: They all reflect the photographer's thought of what the "real" China looks like.

For example, a vendor who displays dozens of pairs of shoes on a car is depicted in a picture, while a grandmother and her grandson playing cards on a busy public square are shown in another. In East China's Jiangxi province, a family bearing gifts takes a strenuous hike on a mountainous trail to visit relatives, while thousands of miles away in Northeast China's Jilin province, a barbecued fish stand is considered to carry the true Chinese flavor.

The exhibition is helping students at the college see what China is really like from various angles.

Matt Todd, associate dean of the college, says the exhibition has received "very positive responses from the students, many of whom studied the photos along with the captions".

Benefiting from the gallery, Chinese-related books have also seen a bump in checkouts, says Paul Chapman, a librarian.

The exhibition aims at helping people get rid of their prejudices against China.

"The more people are informed, the less fear they will have," says Hoffarth-Zelloe, a language specialist at the Goethe Institute.

Once a staunch China skeptic, Hoffarth-Zelloe had no interest in visiting China while growing up, but that changed when her son, Alexander, decided to take a Chinese course in high school.

In 2010, Hoffarth-Zelloe accompanied her son on an exchange visit to China, touring Beijing and a school in Central China's Henan province.

"People were really nice to us and made us feel welcomed," Hoffarth-Zelloe says, and at that moment, she realized how her previous impressions of the country were detached from reality.

Hoffarth-Zelloe returned to China in 2011 and again in 2016. She says she now looks at China "mostly in a positive way".

Now all four members of Hoffarth-Zelloe's family have started studying Chinese. Alexander and his sister Natascha are both learning Chinese in school, while Hoffarth-Zelloe has signed up for a Chinese course at a local Confucius Institute.