With a simple but tasteful dress, big, bright eyes and long black hair, Sarah Tsien looks no different from any other Chinese girl when she walks the streets of Beijing.
No one actually realizes she is not a native of China unless they hear her still slightly stilted Chinese.
The 22-year-old only moved to Beijing from the Silicon Valley in the United States after she graduated from Harvard University in June this year.
Despite her youth, Tsien is Head of Mission with Planet Finance in China.
Planet Finance is an international non-government organization dedicated to eradicating poverty by using information technology and the Internet to develop microfinance worldwide.
Although Tsien grew up in California, she seems to have easily adapted to life in Beijing. She is now used to bargaining with peddlers, riding a bicycle to her office and eating hot pots in cheap but good restaurants, she said.
"I don't understand China sometimes. I am still learning," Tsien said modestly in English.
Few can understand her motivation for working in a place so faraway and unfamiliar.
But she said the reason was simple: "I feel like I belong here and this is the place where I've found my roots."
To be different
Sarah Tsien now has a Chinese name called Qian Xiangmin. She came from the same family as Qian Xuesen, who is a famous Chinese rocket expert.
Her grandfather, who is Qian Xuesen's brother, moved to the United States from Ningbo in East China's Zhejiang Province in the 1940s, studying in Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), as his brother did.
Tsien's father is a famous professor of neurobiology at Stanford University and her mother is a professor of psychology with Pacific Graduate School for Psychology.
"I come from a long line of engineers and scientists. When I was in college, I decided that I didn't want to do that.
"I want to do something that has more to do with people, something outside the laboratory," Tsien said.
In June 2002, she got her bachelor's degree in economics and anthropology after conducting 10 months of field research on rural development and the financial needs of Chinese farmers particularly in Southwest China's Yunnan Province during 2000 and 2001.
Tsien travelled a lot in her school days. She has been to Ghana, Senegal, Russia, Mexico, India, Laos, Viet Nam, Thailand and all over Europe.
And the most interesting places she found were those in developing countries, especially China, she said.
"I really feel that China is a place where so many things are happening and changing, and I would like to be part of that change," Tsien said.
Caring for the poor
The person who really aroused Tsien's interest in developing countries was an African woman from Cote d'Ivoire who lived with her when she was 14.
The woman used to take care of Tsien and her younger siblings while she studied in the United States. She told Tsien wonderful stories about her family which had altogether 14 children.
Tsien didn't understand why the woman had to leave a place where she was so happy and asked her why.
The woman's answers shocked the young Tsien - because Africa was poor and because the opportunities were few.
"How can this be - that money is scarce, education is underdeveloped, and there are no job opportunities and yet there is such a beautiful culture?" Tsien asked herself.
To learn more about research into and the practice of alleviating poverty, Tsien went to Africa in the summers of 1997 and 1999.
She worked for an international programme with local pre-school teachers. There, Tsien first touched on the idea of microfinance and realized how it could help the poor.
The project involved giving picture cards to rural families so parents could teach their children how to read Wolof (a local language) and French. It was so successful that it became a model for the country.
"It was one of the best times of my life," Tsien said.
Roots in China
Tsien felt embarrassed when she was asked by her colleagues in Africa what she knew about China.
"People asked me because I am a Chinese-American, but I really knew very little about China, which is quite a pity."
That's why Tsien decided to do an independent research-action project on microfinance in China in 2000, which was sponsored by a Pforzheimer Scholarship through Harvard.
She lived with local farmers in small villages in Malipo and Luoping counties in China's Yunnan Province for several months.
"The first thing I learned there was how to scramble through the pigpen in order to use the latrine outside the house," she joked.
However, it was in the village where Tsien learned how to survive illness and discovered what it meant to live in remote regions.
She still can't forget a woman she met in Luoping, who survived a serious head injury caused by a falling stone.
The woman, named Wang Jufen, bent in pain as the blood began to run between her fingers covering her head, recalled Tsien.
By 4 am, half the village was crowded around Wang's home, trying to comfort her.
"There was nothing more we could do at that time," she said. "The nearest village doctor lived three hours by foot away, and the nearest hospital was seven hours by truck.
"That was the first time I learned the seriousness of what it meant to live in remote regions of the mountains. When life is in danger, it is truly at risk."
Wang was later given medical treatment in town after a car was found the next day.
Wang's bravery gave Tsien courage when she had a strange illness in the village the next month. She was unable to move any of her limbs.
"My mind was alert, but I had no control over my limbs. I was virtually paralyzed," recalled Tsien.
"I didn't know what would happen to me, but I knew that Wang Jufen had been brave. And so I let my mind wander, and think of interesting things."
She lay in bed for two days until she recovered. When she left for another village, Tsien found that she was followed by a large group of local women.
And as she listened to their clear voices, rising and falling in lilting harmony, she realized they were improvising a song about her, about their lives, and about their time together in the mountain.
"They were singing a folk tune to convince me to stay. It was one of the most touching things I've experienced," Tsien said.
"There I feel that life is very real and there is richness in even the poorest of communities."
During her stay in China, the most frequently asked question was where her hometown is. "I know they didn't mean America. They thought since I have a Chinese face I must have a Chinese hometown," Tsien said.
"Honestly, at first, I didn't come back for anything because I am an American," she said.
But as more and more people kept telling her that "her roots are in China," "she should come back here," Tsien felt increasingly moved.
"If a community says there is something about your blood that makes you belong here, I would like to discover what that means.
"Now I am here in China and I know this is where I belong."
In the eyes of Qiu Mei, her Chinese colleague working as outreach coordinator, Tisen is "bright, open-minded, well-organized and sensitive to people's needs and feelings."
"I think she came to China partly because she wants to find her Chinese roots and partly because she wants to do something good for China," Qiu said.
Technology can help
Growing up in the Silicon Valley, Tsien was inspired by how the big technology companies created new opportunities.
Her study of microfinance in college and her research trips convinced her that there was a way to solve the poverty problem.
Tsien and Planet Finance are now using technology and microfinancing to serve and resource the poor in China.
She said the microfinance loan officers at county-level were very diligent and close to the farmers. But she found they lacked information and opportunities for capacity building, during her research trips in Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, Henan and Hebei provinces.
"I think the Internet can help them share information in this case," Tsien said.
Tsien has suggested that the loans officers get e-mail accounts, get onto the Web, and download documents through the Internet.
"There they can learn, they can exchange, they can participate, and that's really what it takes to create knowledge," she said.
"That's exactly what Planet Finance is doing - networking microfinance projects all over China and giving them the chance to capacity build and obtain information."
"I wish more and more technology companies could pay more attention to China's rural technology needs, especially through microfinance projects."
Tsien has established the representative office for Planet Finance in China and is working with three Chinese colleagues to perfect a newly-built website - www.pfchina.org - which provides information about microfinance in China in both English and Chinese.
Tsien hopes to set up a non-profit organization on microfinance that will be truly Chinese in the future.
"I'm not sure how long it will take to turn the reins over to someone else, but I hope that this organization develops a kind of institutional sustainability that doesn't need to rely on foreign assistance.
"Someday I dream that this programme will be funded by Chinese for Chinese, and led by Chinese."
(China Daily December 30, 2002)
