Category Archives: International

Vesak Celebrations

The Vesak Festival වෙසක් උත්සවය

By Saviru Bandara, age 11, Australia

My Vesak themed artwork (see above) shows how I celebrate my culture as a Sri Lankan Buddhist (who lives in Australia) during the Vesak festival.

The Vesak Festival (වෙසක් උත්සවය) is the most important and sacred celebration for Buddhists around the world. It takes place on the full‑moon day in May and marks three significant events in the life of Lord Buddha: his birth, his enlightenment, and his passing away. In 1999, the United Nations officially recognized Vesak as an International Day, showing its importance as a symbol of peace for the whole world.

Vesak is celebrated annually by all Buddhists around the world. Despite cultural differences, the central purpose of the festival remains the same everywhere—to honour the Buddha’s teachings of compassion, peace, and wisdom.

Just a few days before Vesak, I make Vesak lanterns (called Vesak kudu, in Sinhalese, our native language from Sri Lanka) with my friends at our community language school in Australia. Normally, each child makes one Vesak lantern. Then adults take it to our Buddhist temple to hang it on Vesak morning. In the evening, our Vesak lanterns are lighted.

On the Vesak Day, we go to temple and observe sill. During Sil programme, a Buddhist monks talk to us about Buddha’s teachings. Also, they teach us how to meditate. So, our mind becomes more peaceful.

When we go to the temple in the morning to celebrate Vesak we take flowers, incense sticks, and oil or wax lamps. These items have symbolic meanings: flowers remind us of the beauty (and the impermanence) of life, incense represents purity, and lamps symbolize enlightenment. I like watering the Bodhi tree on the day (Buddha received the enlightenment while meditating under a Bodhi tree).

On Vesak Day, grown-ups and kids can join in the Vesak Perahia or Vesak parade. Traditional dancers, drummers, and performers and devotees take part in the procession. In Sri Lanka, elephants decorated with beautiful colourful costumes also take part in the parade.

In the evening at our temple, we participate in giving free food or Dansala to people. We offer free tea, coffee or herbal drinks for the devotees visiting the temple. This opportunity teaches us collective work as well as the importance of donating.

Beyond the celebrations, the heart of Vesak lies in its message. It reminds people to be kind, peaceful, and mindful in their daily lives. The festival encourages everyone, regardless of their religion or background, to practice good deeds and bring happiness to others.

Vesak is a festival that combines joy, reflection, and compassion. It celebrates the life and teachings of the Buddha while inspiring people to become more thoughtful and caring. Vesak continues to spread a message of harmony and kindness that is meaningful for people everywhere. Also, Vesak helps me to preserve my Sri Lankan culture in my new home as an immigrant in Australia.

If you visit Sri Lanka, during the month of May, you can see and enjoy all of the Vesak celebrations and traditions. The festival is being celebrated this year in Sri Lanka (as in many other countries of the world) on May 30th. Because many Asian cultures still follow lunar calendar, in some communities, it might also be celebrated on May 1st.

By Saviru Bandara, age 11 Australia.

To Be A Child

By Carin A.

In West Bank, April, 2026

To be a child, here, now, is to hear and feel the massive impact of the missile striking a nearby city, and to say with confidence that you are not afraid, and then to wet your bed every night, for the first time in years.

It is to find one hundred ways to play in the long hours you must stay inside. To chase the rubber ball through the living room, in your mind a vast soccer field, to score the winning goal.

To be a child, here, now, is to see the Israeli settlers drag your father out of the car when he is driving you to school, and then to watch as they beat him. It is to live knowing that at any moment, they can come.

To be a child, here, now, is to run out to the balcony when a missile is coming, shouting with glee, “Sarookh, sarookh!” and then to watch the rocket tracing a fiery trail through the night sky, arcing downwards until it explodes with a thunderclap that shakes you to your bones.

It is to feel the love of your grandfather, as he picks you up, smiling. It is to see the web of your family surround you, laughing and talking across the long dinner table.

It is to be woken by the sound of the army breaking down your door, and then to see them come into your bedroom, blindfold and zip tie you, and take you on the floor of their jeep to the detention center, where they beat and interrogate you. It is to remember your parents, standing in front of the house, helpless to protect you.

To be a child, here, now, is to jump up and down in excitement when you see your sister, proudly playing the drums in the colorful Scouts parade that makes its way down the narrow street, lined with ancient stone.

It is to have your preschool class interrupted by the sounds of men shouting, and shooting, as the Israeli military suddenly raids your refugee camp.

To be a child, here, now, is to rejoice as you run to play with your cousins in the playground you can visit only once a month—an indoor playground, because the few outside risk the rockets.

It is to look out of the car window to see the face of your uncle, as he is humiliated at the checkpoint. It is to see the assault rifles strapped across the shoulders of the soldiers, and to know that you must sit very, very still.

To be a child, here, now, is to hear the sirens begin in the nearby Israeli settlement, and to know that those children are being whisked away to safety. To be a child, here, now, is to know that there is no safety for you.

Carin A. is a Quaker Montessori educator who has worked with children in many communities across the globe. She holds an MA in Education, and has worked internationally as a teacher mentor and consultant. She is a board member of Healing to Hope, a US-based nonprofit that works to support the psycho-social well-being of Palestinian children in partnership with its Bethlehem-based sister organization, Anar. An occasional contributor to Skipping Stones and an advocate for nonviolence and children’s safety sent it to us for publication on her behalf. We share this writing with you on behalf of children caught in terrible wars and conflicts not of their own making.

Chinese Americans of Historical Significance

May is Asian American, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander Month.

The first Asians documented in the Americas arrived in 1587, when Filipinos landed in California. In 1788, the first Native Hawaiian arrived on the continental United States, in Oregon. And, in 1900, Hawaii was annexed by the U.S. The Chinese, Japanese, Hawaiians, Indians, Koreans and other Asians have migrated to the United States over the last few centuries. Wikipedia has a great article on the history of Asians and Hawaiians that you may like to read. To observe the AAPIH Month, we are pleased to share a few writings by Fanny Wong of New York, focusing on some important Chinese personalities that have made significant contributions to our nation’s history. A few of these are:

Hong Yen Chang: The First Chinese Lawyer in the U.S.

Born To Be A Chef: Eileen Yin-Fei Lo

Polly Bemis: A Pioneer Chinese Woman in the Northwest

Hazel Lee, Chinese American Fighter Plane Pilot

King of the Soup Dumplings: Yang Bing-Yi

United States v. Wong Kim Ark

Discrimination Against Asians in the United States

Ten Times Better: George Lee, Ballet Dancer

By Fanny Wong, Chinese American Author, New York.

Young George Lee stood by himself, leaning against the fence in the playground. Other children ignored him in recess, just as they did in the classroom. He looked thoroughly Chinese, but they knew he had a Polish mother. Still, George was a happy child.

His father, Alexander, a circus acrobat, taught his young son how to do a headstand. Father and son were so proud when he finally nailed it. His mother, Stanislawa, a former ballerina, was George’s first ballet teacher. She insisted that George learn every pose, exercise and combination correctly. Not just correctly, but beautifully. George loved the lessons. He loved to dance. That’s why he was a happy child in spite of not having friends.

In 1941, when Japan occupied Hong Kong, where George was born and lived with his family, they fled to Shanghai. There he took dance lessons from Russian teachers. Dancing made him forget for a little while that his father had gone to western part of China to find work. At the age of 7, George was performing polkas and Russian dances in nightclubs to help support the family.

George was heart-broken when his father died in a traffic accident on his way back to Shanghai. Fearing the Communist takeover of Shanghai, mother and son evacuated to the Philippines and spent two years in a hot and humid refugee camp. His mother had to find a way to get out of there. She was able to contact a friend, who sponsored their immigration to the United States.

This friend not only changed their lives by being a sponsor, but he also set George on a path to a career in dance. He introduced him to the School of American Ballet, the prestigious ballet school in New York City. He received a full-scholarship, and in an advance dance class where all the students were White. Knowing how fortunate he was, he was never late for class and wished the classes lasted longer.

Balanchine, the principal and choreographer of the school, asked George what he could do. George did impressive splits, double turns and multiple turns. His dancing was masculine, graceful and joyful! Balanchine was impressed and gave him a role of “Tea” in the 1954 production of The Nutcracker. He was the first Asian dancer in the New York City Ballet. His costume—the Fu Manchu moutache, the queue and rice paddy, did not bother him. “Dancing is dancing,” he said.

But his dancing was being noticed. A New York Times critic observed, “George jumps wonderfully and exhibits some wonderful extensions in the Chinese dance.”

He was not asked to join NY City Ballet. At 5’ and 5”, he was told he was too short. He could do nothing about his height. However, his dancing caught the attention of Gene Kelly, a renowned dancer in film musicals. He cast George in the original production of “Flower Drum Song.” He did 600 performances, many in various cities. He was doing what he loved, and he was using ballet techniques in the Broadway shows.

Touring was tiring and the work was sporadic. There was too much traveling involved, and he had to stay in inexpensive hotels. As much as he loved to dance, he decided to learn a new trade. While performing in Las Vegas, Nevada in his mid-forties, he learned to be a casino dealer. He worked as a blackjack dealer for 40 years in different casinos after he retired from dance performances.

As the first Asian dancer at New York City Ballet, he led the way for the next generation of Asian ballet dancers who are becoming increasingly prominent in major dance companies. New York City Ballet features Chun Wai Chan (Chinese) and Mira Nadon (Indian and American) among others.

When they were moving to the U.S., his mother had told him that he must always remember that he would be seen as a Chinese person in White America, and so he’d better be ten times better. George never forgot that; he always tried to be his best both in school and in his work. He died at the age of 90 on April 20, 2025.

By Fanny Wong, Asian American author, New York. Her work has been featured numerous times in Skipping Stones over the years.

Fou Tsong: A Renowned Chinese Pianist

“I’m always a beginner, I’m always learning.”

By Fanny Wong, Chinese American Author, New York.

Fou Tsong, the renowned pianist, was born in 1934 in China. He was well-known for his sensitive interpretation of the compositions of Chopin, Debussy, Schubert and Mozart. Still, Chopin’s music was closest to his heart.

At the age of 21, he was awarded the third place prize at the 1955 International Chopin Piano Competition held in Warsaw, Poland. He also won a special prize for his performance of a Chopin’s Mazurka.

How did a shy, quiet young man from China reach such heights?

Fou Tsong’s father, Fou Lei, used to tell him, “First, you must be a person, and then a musician, and then a pianist.”

Fou Lei was an intellectual who translated the complete works of the French author Balzac into Chinese. His strong and heartfelt opinions shaped his son. He provided the water, soil and nutrients for his son’s growth, down to the correct elbow positions at the edge of the dinner table. He thought that people, like trees, without good cultivation, could not thrive.

Fou Tsong, under his father’s supervision, was educated in the classical Chinese traditions and grew up under Chinese and Western cultural influences. His household was full of art and music with a large collection of records.

His father noted his son’s love of piano and music, and him bought a piano. Fou Tsong began his music lessons at the age of 7. He later recalled, “When I was young, I enjoyed playing the piano so much I felt I was in paradise. A gift from heaven.”

Among his earliest teachers was Mario Paci, founder of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. After Paci’s death in 1947, Tsong studied mainly on his own.

In 1952, Tsong performed Beethovan’s Emperor Concerto with the Shanghai Philharmonic to great acclaim. The Chinese government was so proud that he had reached such prominence that it sent him at age 19, to international competitions in Bucharest, and then to Warsaw.

At the Conservatory, his teachers praised that his playing was like a flowing stream, like a river. While he was studying in Warsaw on a scholarship preparing for the 1955 competition, Communists took over the government of China. This political change brought danger, turmoil and suffering to the nation. Fou Tsong was called back to China. He was instructed to writing a self-criticism and witnessed his father being branded as anti-Communism. He returned to Poland and graduated from the Warsaw Conservatory in December 1958. After what he had seen in China, he made a decision to defect—seeking a political asylum in London, England on Christmas Eve, in 1958. His career soared from his London base.

Fou Lei’s trouble increased with his son’s defection. The Red Guards from the Shanghai Conservatory hounded him. The Red Guards were primarily high school and college students mobilized by Chairman Mao Zedong to enforce his vision of Communist society. They targeted and harassed perceived intellectuals of traditional influence and bourgeois elements. Both his parents, under great duress from the Red Guard, committed suicide. His father was 58, mother 53. His heart broke when he learned of their deaths two months later.

In 1981, a volume of the letters from his father over the years was published. It was full of advice, encouragement and stern paternal love. The book “Fou Lei’s Family Letters,” collected by Fou Tsong’s brother, Fou Min, became a best seller in China.

* * *

A Few Quotes from Fou Lei’s Letters:

• 1954, evening of 18th and 19th of January.

“If one cannot see the larger picture, one is in the danger of thinking the sky is no bigger than it appears to be seen from the bottom of the well.”

• 1955, 26th of January.

“Dear Son, Had we ourselves been in the hall where you played, we would have been unable to control ourselves. Happy at the honor you’re bringing to our country. And happier you are giving joy to so many others through your music.”

* * *

Only a few of Fou Tsong’s letters to his father survived, likely because many were destroyed by the Chinese government.

In his later years, Fou Tsong played the piano for hours every day, even as his fingers grew frail. Whenever he was criticized for defecting and of being a traitor to his country, he would say, “It’s not that I was longing for the West. I was choosing freedom. There was no other choice.”

Fou Tsong died in London of Covid-19 in 2020 at the age of 86. He left us these words, “I’m always a beginner, I’m always learning.”

He is remembered for his sensitive ear for color and the elusive gift of melody. His music swirled, twisted and soared on wings of sound.

By Fanny Wong, Chinese American author, New York. Ms. Wong is a frequent contributor to Skipping Stones Magazine. Please also read Hong Yen Chang: The First Chinese Lawyer in the U.S. that Fanny wrote recently by clicking on the title.

A Longing for Unity in a Fractured Time

A meaningful encounter with Swami Vivekananda in Chicago
By Anu Prabhala, Maryland.

With everything unfolding in our nation and across the world, I found myself longing—almost aching—for a message of unity. I have never encountered that idea expressed more beautifully or more boldly than in Swami Vivekananda’s address at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893.

What he offered was not a soft call for tolerance, but a radical reimagining of unity itself: unity across religions, yes—but also between science and philosophy, reason and faith, intellect and intuition. His words dissolved borders we insist on keeping rigid—between belief systems, nations, even between what we call perfection and imperfection—revealing them instead as expressions of a single, indivisible truth.

At the heart of his message was a simple yet demanding idea: happiness does not arise from narrowing identity, but from expanding it. As Vivekananda put it, “Happiness comes best from universal consciousness.” And to reach that expansiveness, he insisted, we must loosen our grip on the anxious, isolated self: “To gain universal individuality, this miserable little-person individuality must go.”

More than a century later, the address endures—not only for its philosophical clarity, but for its quiet poetry and moral courage.

Photo: Swami Vivekananda in Chicago, 1893 (handwritten words say, “one infinite pure and holy—beyond thought beyond qualities I bow down to thee”). Credit: The Art Institute of Chicago.

When Two Worlds Quietly Merged:
I felt the full weight of that courage standing in Fullerton Hall at the Art Institute of Chicago, where Swami Vivekananda delivered his world-altering address—just one floor below George Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, one of my favorite paintings of all time. In that moment, two long-standing currents of my life converged: my love of art, particularly French painting, and my grounding in Vedanta, a philosophy that feels like a pair of well-worn jeans: real, practical, comforting, and quietly accepting.

Art and philosophy, France and India, my adopted country and my birthplace—under one roof, they did not compete. They conversed.

That is what happens, I have learned, when we allow the world to shape us: the Self expands to make room for more of humanity, not less.

Humble Rooms, World-Altering Ideas:
The room itself was modest—neither grand nor theatrical. Its restraint felt fitting. History reminds us repeatedly that transformative ideas rarely announce themselves with spectacle. Mahatma Gandhi, a failed lawyer, reshaped a nation. Franz Kafka, an anxious bureaucrat, altered world literature. John Harrison, a self-taught carpenter, solved the longitude problem that changed navigation forever.

Photo: Fullerton Hall’s podium, where Swami Vivekananda delivered his address in 1893.

And Swami Vivekananda—a nearly penniless, 30-year-old monk from India—arrived in America after a long sea voyage to speak at what was then a radical gathering: a Western, Christian, male-dominated Parliament of Religions. His courage lay not just in showing up, but in declaring—without apology—that no single tradition owned the truth.

As he told the audience plainly, “If anyone here hopes that his unity will come by the triumph of any one of the religions and the destruction of the others, to him I say, ‘Brother, yours is an impossible hope.’”

Plurality as Sacred Truth:
For Swami Vivekananda, the universe’s beauty lay precisely in its plurality—in many paths converging toward one reality. He captured this vision with enduring grace:

“As the different streams, having their sources in different places, all mingle their waters in the sea… so the different paths which men take all lead to Thee.”

In a world increasingly fractured by certainty and fear, his tone feels almost maternal—firm, reassuring, deeply confident in the human spirit. From his very first words—“Brothers and sisters of America”—he transformed a formal assembly into a human family, drawing a standing ovation that lasted nearly two minutes.

Unity, for him, was not sentimental. It was a moral necessity.

He explained this idea through an image as simple as it was profound: a seed planted in the earth. Surrounded by soil, air, and water, the seed does not become any one of them. It grows according to its own law—assimilating what it needs while remaining true to its nature. So too, he argued, with religion, each tradition must grow in its own way, enriched by others, yet never erased by them. It was this insistence on growth and individuality rather than imitation that gave his words such enduring force.

A Childhood Trained in Coexistence:
His message resonated deeply with my own upbringing in Dadar Parsi Colony in Mumbai, where a Zoroastrian agiary, Hindu temples, and a mosque existed within a few hundred feet of one another. You prayed to your own gods, and then, as children, we came together to play. Coexistence required no explanation.

That innocence was shaken during the Hindu–Muslim riots of the 1990s, when curfews confined us indoors for weeks and fear fractured neighborhoods that had once lived generously with difference. It was my first encounter with how easily love for the divine can be manipulated into division.

That is why Vivekananda’s message feels so urgent today. He reminded the world that faith is not defined by labels, but by a deeply human plea for meaning, reassurance, and strength in moments of vulnerability. Faith, in that sense, speaks a universal language.

He said, “So long as there is such a thing as weakness in the human heart, so long as there is a cry going out of the heart of man in his very weakness, there shall be a faith in God.”

What he seemed to suggest was that true faith is not defined by religious labels at all, but by a deeply human plea—for meaning, for strength, for reassurance in moments of vulnerability. In that sense, faith speaks a universal language, capable of being heard by many names.

Not Belief, but Becoming:
Vivekananda also offered a quiet corrective: religion, he argued, is not about struggling to believe doctrines, but about realizing truth—about being and becoming. What mattered was not the form of God one worshipped, but the character one cultivated. Did faith enlarge the heart? Did it make room for others? Did it foster harmony?

In his vision, religion was not about believing in God. It was about becoming more fully human—again and again, with tolerance and acceptance at the center of the effort.

Perhaps that is why his words endure. In a fractured world, Vivekananda reminds us that unity is not an idea to defend, but a way of being to practice—and that only through a serene soul can we truly see the beauty of the world, and our place within it.

Let us learn to see beauty in unity. It is the only way humanity sustains itself.

Meaningfully yours,
Anu Prabhala

PS: Swami Vivekananda delivered a series of six speeches between September 11 -27, 1893 at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago. Read a transcript of all six speeches here. Here’s an audio recording of his first speech (~28 minutes) delivered on September 11th, 1893.

Bio: Anu Prabhala is a senior consulting writer at the World Bank and a former French instructor who has spent her career working with nonprofit organizations in international development. Inspired by Vedanta, her personal writing explores travel and cross-cultural encounters as pathways to understanding beauty, wisdom, and our shared humanity.

This article, reprinted with permission from Anu’s Substack, Imperfectly Perfect, is part of a chapter from her forthcoming travel memoir, Imperfectly Perfect: Love Letters to the World | A Travel Memoir of Beauty, Scars, and the Human Spirit. To stay informed on the publication of the book, you can subscribe to Anu’s Substack at https://imperfectlyperfect.substack.com/subscribe (Subscription is free; choose “no pledge”).

A New Year’s Message, 2026

Amma’s New Year Message for 2026

Amma, the world-renowned spiritual teacher and a humanitarian leader from India, shared her thoughts on the current state of humanity as we welcome the new year. Her talk attended by several thousand residents and international visitors at her center in Kerala (South India) was broadcast live on YouTube. She included many illuminating stories and sublime points to help us grow spiritually, and to make our lives better. To conclude her remarks she urged everyone to follow these 12 suggestions, if we are serious about improving ourselves, our family life, and our the world. While she spoke in her native tongue of Malayalam, it was simultaneously translated in several European and Indian languages. We are pleased to share her suggestions (exhortations) with a few minor edits.

—editor

1. Since time cannot be postponed or carried forward into the future, use it with the utmost care. Create a daily routine and adhere to it as much as possible, with discipline.

2. Write down your personal weaknesses and negative habits on paper. Dedicate one specific day each week to consciously work on overcoming each of them.

3. Strive to be more mature and refined today—at least in one aspect of life—than you were yesterday.

4. Spend a little time each day cultivating awareness of nature. In your imagination, embrace and love all of creation.

5. Awaken the selfless love within you. Let love express itself through you every day. Care for at least one plant with devotion each and every day.

6. When praise or blame, victory or defeat comes your way, reflect deeply and remind yourself that your true Self transcends all of these.

7. Nurture the virtue of forgiveness. Generously forgive the mistakes of others—and learn to forget them as well. This will help both you and your relationships with others.

8. Every day, devote at least a short period to performing your actions with complete awareness and presence.

9. Use all natural resources with mindfulness and care. In life, place greater emphasis on what you have been able to give, rather than on what you have received.

10. Cultivate humility and simplicity. Respect the opinions of others and move forward through cooperation and mutual understanding.

11. Meditate on the form of your Guru—your spiritual teacher (if you don’t have one, you can meditate on supreme consciousness or the flame of a candlelight) for sometime each day. Then remain silent for a while, resting your attention in your own true nature.

12. Cultivate an attitude of gratitude for the blessings you have received in life. Also, learn to accept personal responsibility for your mistakes, sufferings, and losses—what could you have done differently to avoid them?

What we need is not a mind that revels in the little, but a mind that seeks the sublime. Awaken. Elevate yourself. And uplift others as well.

From Gauls to Gummies: The International History Olympiad in Paris

From Gauls to Gummies:
A Week of History, Friendship, and Growth
at the International History Olympiad in Paris

“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”
—William Butler Yeats.

By Sahil Prasad, grade 10, Maryland.

More Than Buzzers and Scoreboards
When you hear the words “Quiz Olympiad”, most people imagine fierce competition, flashing buzzers, and rooms filled with the silence of anticipation. And they wouldn’t be wrong. A lot of that happened at the 2025 International History Olympiad (IHO) held in Paris, France, from July 20th to 26th. The amount of time and studying that goes into preparing for the Olympiad is unparalleled. I dove into the timelines of French history, art, and literature from the Gauls living in Roman-era France to the quirks surrounding the policies of the current President Macron, not to mention the enormously confusing list of kings sharing the name “Louis.” I studied the paintings of Jacques-Louis David and the classics of stellar novelists like Flaubert and Sartre. The International History Olympiad was unlike any competition I had ever taken part in.

I started academic competitions all the way back in third grade when I played at my local History Bee and joined my school’s It’s Academic Quizbowl Club run by Dr. and Mrs. Seifter who started the club as an avenue for young kids in my area to get into Quizbowl, a sport that, as you can imagine, is quite a jump from the history we were learning at school (it wasn’t even called history until Middle School).

Preparing for Paris
The Olympiad is run by International Academic Competitions (IAC), a company founded by David Madden (who was a Jeopardy! champion with a 19-day winning streak).

Moi and IHO Director and Former Jeopardy Champion David Madden awarded me my plaque; the top 20 players at the 2025 International History Olympiad received one.

IAC has held many Olympiads in the past. In fact, the 2025 Olympiad was my third time in the ring. This time, they had selected Paris, France as the host city for the competition. The event was held at the École Jeannine Manuel, a large school campus in Paris that could fit all the 400 plus students from many nations that came for the Olympiad. The school is right in the middle of the bustling heap that is Paris with falafel shops, pizza parlors, Thai restaurants, and Indian restaurants—a truly international setting that perfectly complemented this global Olympiad.

When Rivals Became Friends
The 2025 International History Olympiad certainly had all the stressful aspects: tense moments, tight scores, and many incredibly sharp competitors from all over the world. But over the years, for me, it has become something far more meaningful: it was an avenue where I could connect with my friends from all over the world and have fun as much with knowledge exchanges as playing games, while also competing at a prestigious and international level. It’s where I made some of the best friendships of my life.

The Olympiad brought together students from over 30 countries. For a week, we competed in a variety of events from the International History Bee World Championships (an individual buzzer-based history quiz competition) and the Art History Bee to Table Combined (an event dividing half the available points between table tennis games and history questions). Some of my most memorable moments included buzzing in on the Mask of Nefertiti, an Egyptian artwork I ignorantly perceived as “not famous enough” until it won me a crucial round in the Ancient History Bee and my buzz that earned me a silver medal in the Art History Bee, namely, answering with the correct answer of “Ophelia” (thanks Taylor), that I recognized from her position in the water from the famous John Millais painting.

The competition was fierce, but most of the time, the environment was far from tense. Between rounds, laughter echoed in the halls of École Jeannine Manuel. Students from different continents swapped stories about their schools, their countries, and their favorite historical figures. In one instance, we’d be debating who would win the overall championship and immediately switch to debating whether Haribo sour gummies were better plain or in the mix-and-match bags with marshmallows. It was in these moments that I realized the true essence of the Olympiad: it wasn’t about defeating others, but discovering what connects us all, our shared love of history and what matters most, the fact that we are all young adults!

My competitors quickly became my friends. We shared strategies before events, encouraged one another during tough rounds, and celebrated together when the medals were announced. I still remember standing with players from Canada, the Philippines, and Singapore as we compared scores after a particularly close History Bee, the sense of mutual respect was clear, even in the face of competition.

With my friends/competitors from the Philippines

I distinctly remember the French History Bee held under the gaze of the Eiffel Tower, we were running around, playing tag, and simultaneously discussing our favorite figures in French History before the soon to be competitive match. This drastic contrast between a game of tag and an international-level academic competition event separated by mere minutes can only be found at the International History Olympiad.

Finalists of the French History Bee waiting to buzz to win under the Eiffel Tower

When I won two silver medals and one bronze for Maryland, it was certainly a proud moment, but what I remember most vividly is the sense of belonging. The Olympiad taught me that true success isn’t measured solely in rankings or medals but in the experiences that stay with you. Competing against some of the brightest young minds in the world challenged me to think more deeply and work harder. The knowledge I gained while preparing—and the opportunity to compete on that stage—felt like a gold medal in itself.

One of my favorite parts of the Olympiad was how it blended fun with intellectual challenge. Each day, after intense competition, we got to participate in cultural excursions and light-hearted events that let us unwind and connect beyond the game. I particularly remember my visit to the Père Lachaise cemetery on the outskirts of the city with my mother and fellow competitors. I felt a sense of gratitude toward figures like Honoré de Balzac and Félix Faure, and many of the other historical figures about whom I was knowledgeable about and hence got me to Paris in the first place to compete and won me many of the medals I returned home with.

A Community I’ll Carry Forward
The International History Olympiad wasn’t just a competition; it was a reminder that knowledge can bridge cultures and unite people from across the globe. It showed me that while history may be made up of countless conflicts and divisions, studying it together and competing can bring out the best human connections. And as I returned home from Paris, with memories of laughter and moments of triumph, I realized that the real victory was not in winning medals, but in finding a community that celebrates curiosity, fun, and knowledge.

I can’t wait to return to the next International History Olympiad in 2027. It will be my last one as a high school student. I know these memories will last me a lifetime!

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The International History Olympiad is held every two years, and will next take place in Summer 2027, likely in Berlin (Germany), London (UK), or Lisbon (Portugal). To learn more about the Olympiad as well as the annual National History Bee, please visit www.historyolympiad.com and www.iacompetitions.com/our-competitions. For questions about the Olympiad or any other IAC events, please contact International Academic Competitions’ Executive Director David Madden at david@iacompetitions.com.

Sahil Prasad, grade 10, Maryland, has published a number of articles in Skipping Stones.

One Earth

We have a wonderful Earth
And we should try to preserve it
So more babies can be birthed
And introduced to our Earth
Our wonderful, wonderful, wonderful Earth
We have a beautiful Earth
With large, green grasslands and rainforests
And elegant blue oceans
With those always present sea-green waves
And filled with living beings to support
Our sweet, sweet Earth
There is much knowledge
Science, astronomy, mathematics
And they are just a small part of the knowledge
On our smart, smart Earth

Who knows what we can achieve?
All we know is we can go above and beyond
Who knows what more there is for us to discover?
Who knows how far we can go?
Let us keep on learning and understanding
And discovering new ways
To protect and preserve nature on
Our sweet, wonderful, beautiful Earth
Our dear, kind, gentle Earth
Our amazing, sustaining, ever-providing Earth
Our smart, dazzling, awesome Earth
Our Earth!

By Elodie K. Cotton, grade 7, Connecticut. Elodie is also our student intern.

In Defense of Dirt: Rewilding Our Children

In Defense of Dirt: Rewilding Our Children
Before their Bodies Forget

From Finnish forest floors to Michigan creek beds, the science is clear:
real dirt is medicine, memory, and the immune system’s original teacher

By Thom Hartmann, author, speaker, activist, and educator

I grew up on the edge of Lansing, Michigan, with a stream just down the road and woods that felt like a secret frontier. We all did: the neighborhood kids, barefoot in the damp grass after rain, boots mucked up with creek-silt, hands scrubbed raw from climbing fallen logs and digging in the undergrowth. Getting in the dirt was part of childhood. We didn’t ask permission from microbes.

So when I read the recent report in The Guardian about Finnish nursery experiments transforming children’s health by simply letting them play in real soil, sand, leaves and forest-floor, I felt the past crash into the present and I knew again that the story of our species and our health lies in that innocent, messy contact.

In Finland, at a daycare center in Lahti (north of Helsinki), the researchers from the Natural Resources Institute of Finland adopted a radical experiment: rip out the asphalt, dig into the soil, roll out a live carpet of forest-floor moss and blueberry bushes, build compost heaps for children to feed, invite the kids to play, dig, muddle, get their hands in it.

The result, in a two-year study of three- to five-year-olds, was striking: children in the “rewilded” yards had fewer disease-causing skin bacteria (like Streptococcus) and showed stronger immune regulation (increased T-regulatory cells) within weeks. Gut microbiomes were healthier, inflammatory-associated Clostridium levels dropped.

This is the antithesis of today’s “modern” societal perspective on childhood and nature.

On the one hand, we have the modern obsession with pristine, sanitized lives: rubber-surfaced playgrounds, plastic mats, antibacterial everything. On the other, there’s the simple fact that our inner biology, our immune systems, our gut and skin microbiomes, were forged in the wild: the wild of forest floors, streams, soils, plants, bugs.

As I argued in my earlier essay “It’s All One Thing – The Story of the Worms” here in Wisdom School, our estrangement from that substrate is the seed of auto-immune disorders, of chronic inflammation, and a body that’s forgotten it’s actually part of nature.

In Michigan I was lucky: the woods and stream were mine for the exploring. I remember fingers crawling over moist logs, the smell of leaves turning, the damp cold run-off water slipping under my boots. I didn’t know at the time that those experiences were more than play: they were calibration.

They were training my immune system, teaching my skin and gut to know what nature looked like and smelled like and felt like. To know that dirt is not an enemy. And those childhood experiences are probably why I’ve never been troubled by autoimmune disorders or asthma.

So let’s call this what it is: a radical restoration. Not of some exotic wilderness, but of our lost contact with the natural microbial terrains that co-evolved with our species. The Finnish results are more than a Kindergarten trend; they’re a signal of what our children—and we all—are missing.

Here are some of the stakes:

When kids play in dirt rich with soil microbes, their immune system steps into a healthier balance: fewer disease-causing bacteria on the skin surface, greater regulation of internal immune responses.
The “outer layer” of biodiversity—soil, plants, forest floor—directly influences the “inner layer” of biodiversity in our bodies, our skin, gut, and airways. This is co-evolved, not incidental.
The modern shift away from exposure—to “sterile” play surfaces, indoor confinement, sanitized surfaces—may appear benign, but it’s been quietly shaping the epidemic rise of allergies, auto-immune disorders, and inflammatory diseases that both disturb the quality of life and can shorten lifespan itself.
This is not just personal wellness: it’s ecological and societal. The health of children, the immune burdens we carry, the resilience of future generations: all of this ties back to whether we let the next generation touch the living earth.
In the Finnish classroom yard they said: “We’re moving the action from inside to outside. We want to show the children nature so they learn about it.”

That sentence is packed. Show the children nature. Let them learn through contact, through play, through mess. Not as a museum piece, not as a “nature corridor” behind a fence, but as the ground they run on, dig in, climb across, whose bugs and fungus mix with theirs.

So, I want to issue a personal call to you—if you have children, nieces, nephews—or if you’re planning for grandchildren—or if you’re simply human, who used to feel the dirt under your fingernails and the creek cold on your shins—do this: Let the next generation get messy.

Plant a compost heap. Bring real soil into the sandbox. Create a border of moss and stones. Let the rain puddle, let the bugs crawl, let the children burrow. Let the forest floor not be exotic but ordinary.

I remember that stream down the road from the house I grew up in, the woods on the edge of Lansing, the sticky Michigan clay, the little fish, frogs, and crawdads under rocks, the mud mixing into water. I remember coming home with smudged socks, grass stains and a face kissed by sap.

I didn’t know at the time that I was feeding my immune system. I simply knew I was alive and it was a thrill.

We’ve forgotten that aliveness. Our culture has prized immaculateness, separation from the “dirty” wild, the exclusion of microbes like we exclude strangers. Yet the wildness is in us. The soil is in us. We’re made of the same living matrix as the tree roots and the beetles and the moss. Broken contact with that matrix isn’t harmless: it’s a literal loss.

In the wise old words I referenced in “It’s All One Thing”: “When we remove ourselves from that web of life, we do so at our own peril.”

The Finnish story is not just cute or scientific: it’s urgent. Rebuild our contact with the living earth. Let children scoop sand and soil, let them bury their hands, let them build mud-cakes like Aurora in Finland’s day-care. Laugh as they smear soil on their faces. It’s not chaos: it’s calibration.

Yes, modernization has brought us many gifts. Clean water. Sanitation. Vaccines. But modernization taken too far, with too much separation from our biological roots, leaves us with immune systems that misfire, bodies that mistake harmless soil microbes for threats, children who never taste actual dirt. The Finnish experiment is clear: get back to the soil, get back to the forest floor, get back to the messy, ordinary earth.

And the earth—our living earth—benefits too. More forest-floor carpets. More compost heaps. More kids playing outside, fewer rubber mats, fewer sterile boxes. We begin to treat biodiversity as not just glamorous (rainforests, coral reefs) but local (yard patches, old tree stumps, rain puddles). We begin to remember that our health is tied to the health of that biodiversity.

So my invitation to you: On your next weekend, find a patch of ground the kids (or you!) can mess with. Dig into it. Feel the soil. Let a leaf rot into the compost. Let worms do their work. Let the world pull you back. Because we’re not apart from nature: we are nature. And when we pretend otherwise, we hurt ourselves and the world around us.

It’s time to stop treating microbes as abstract threats or invisible villains. They are—and have always been—our companions, our allies, our ancestral family. The Finnish children’s laughter in the sandy forest-floor yard is our ancient laughter too.

Let’s dig in.

—Thom Hartmann, educator and commentator, is the author of many respected books. Reprinted with permission. To receive new Wisdom School posts you can become a free or paid subscriber of this reader-supported digital publication, The Wisdom School: What It Means To Be Human. All Wisdom School articles are free and available to everyone. Copyright by Thom Hartmann, 2025.

Hong Yen Chang

Hong Yen Chang: The First Chinese Lawyer in the U.S.

By Fanny Wong, New York

In 1872, thirteen-year-old Hong Yen Chang was sad and excited when he boarded a ship on a twenty-five days journey to the United States. Born in either 1859 or 1860, he had seldom left his village in Heungshan in South China.

He was an exceptional student and was chosen to be one of the first of 30 boys to study in the United States. The plan of the Chinese government was to educate 120 young Chinese boys, all expenses paid, to acquire technical knowledge from the West. They were known as the Chinese Educational Mission students.

When Hong Yen Chang arrived in bustling San Francisco, he marveled at the six-storied buildings. Heat came out of radiators in the hotel that was not made of mud with paper windows. Water came out of the faucet. Riding the elevator up and down was fun.

Yen Chang noted that the men in San Francisco wore tight pants and form-fitting jackets. He wore maroon robes with blue silk coats and round, small hats. His footwear was a plain padded slipper, whereas the western footwear was laced shoes.

He and the other boys were amazed at the hundreds of people in and out of the San Francisco train depot. They called the trains “fire-cars.” They would eventually ride a train from Sacramento, California, all the way across America, to New England.

The Chinese Education Mission found foster families for the boys, and made arrangements with schools. The curiosity of the town citizens was not always comfortable for Yen Cheng. At first, he laughed it off, but then he was chased by American kids/youth. And the ogling by adults made him conscious of his queue.

The Mission moved to Hartford, Connecticut, where the Chinese had a supportive community. Foster families made great efforts in teaching the youngsters language and customs. The Mission allowed the boys to wear Western clothes, and to tuck their queues beneath their jackets. (During the Qing Dynasty from 1644 to 1911, by decree Chinese men grew their hair long and braided it into a queue.) In their new outfits, the boys looked less like foreigners.

Yen Chang picked up English at a fast pace. He soon learned that speed, strength and dexterity were desirable in America, whereas these qualities were deemed inappropriate for scholars in China.

Exercise, and a rich diet of protein and carbohydrates did wonders for the boys’ health. (In China, most of them ate mainly rice, with an occasional piece of chicken, if they were lucky). Soon, they were strong enough to play team sports with American youth. They had uniforms and tucked their queues underneath their caps when they played baseball. They took to football as well.

Studying hard was the boys’ primary duty. Yen Chang, like the others, ranked at the top of his classes. Although he was encouraged to fit in, the Mission was against Americanization of the boys. He was required to study Chinese for at least an hour each day. Every three months, the boys spent two weeks at the Mission’s headquarters to receive instruction in their native language and literature.

The boys adjusted socially as well. They attended dances and receptions and were sought out by girls to be their dancing partner. But they were constantly reminded they were to be standard bearers of a new China. Their purpose in life was to bring technical skills to their country.

Meanwhile, there was concern in the Chinese Royal Court that these boys were susceptible to foreign influences, and were immersed in the Western culture. So the mission was closed even when there were over 60 Chinese students still enrolled at Yale, M.I.T, Columbia, Harvard and other technical schools. Of these, only two received their degrees before the Mission was recalled. The others were just beginning their technical training.

In August 1881, Yen Chang was among the first group of 22 boys to leave Hartford. A train took them to San Francisco, and he boarded a ship back to China. He was now 22 years old, and he was determined that he’d return to America as soon as possible to resume his studies.

Upon his return to China, after a brief reunion with his mother, the government enrolled him in the naval school in Tientsin. He was not happy with the monotony of the school. He was used to Western training and attitude and he found the old style of the officers stifling. He obtained a release and was free to plan his future.

His brother was a merchant in Honolulu, Hawaii. With his small savings and the help of friends, he departed from the port city of Shanghai for Hawaii in 1882. There, he worked in a law office for a year. But his ambition was to become better educated in law.

In 1883, he managed to enroll at the Columbia Law School and received a law degree three years later at the age of 27. A newspaper reported that his “abilities in legal investigation” were among the finest in his class. By then had cut off his queue, having decided that he’d not be going back to China.

The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act dashed his ambition and hope of being admitted to the New York Bar along with his classmates. Citizenship was required, and he was not a citizen. So, in 1887, he reapplied to the bar after a New York judge issued him a naturalization certificate that granted him citizenship. He became the only Chinese lawyer in the United States.

Still, he faced more barriers when he applied for admission to the bar in California. He presented his New York law license along with his certificate of naturalization to the California State Bar. But it rejected his application based on the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, a law passed by Congress that prohibited the naturalization of Chinese persons. The California Constitutional Convention in 1879, in the midst of anti-Chinese sentiment, had further restricted the rights of Chinese residents.

Chang Hon Yen. Photo by unknown. Ah Tye Family Website, Retrieved on 2012-02-21, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org

With diligence and persistence, Yen Chang decided against appealing the decision and went on to become an advisor at the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco and later became a banker. He married Charlotte Ah Tye in 1897.

He eventually served as the Chinese consul in Vancouver and first secretary at the Chinese Delegation in Washington. His last position, before his death from a heart attack in 1926, was the director of Chinese naval students in Berkeley, California.

The denial of admission to Yen Chang remained as a published opinion of the California Supreme Court. But notable changes have been made since then. In 1972, it held that exclusion of non-citizens violated the equal protection clauses of the state and federal constitutions. In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court followed suit.

In 2015, the California Supreme Court, posthumously and unanimously, granted Yen Chang as an attorney and counselor at law in all courts in the state of California. It also acknowledged that the discriminatory exclusion Yen Chang suffered was wrongful.

When Yen Chang left China at age thirteen, he could not have foreseen that he’d become a pioneer for a more inclusive legal profession in the United States.

Author’s Note:
I learned about the boys who went to Yale from the book, “My Life in China and America” by Yung Wing, one of the Yale boys. Further research found the book, “Bury My Bones in America” by Lani Ah Tye Parkas. I read an excerpt about Yen Chang and saw the historical photos of his. I have always been fascinated by faces and I found his face as a young and middle-aged man impressive. A calm face exuding intelligence and competence. I would like to know him as a friend.

Art by Makayla Liu, age 12, Vancouver, Canada. She adds: “I’ve loved drawing since I was a child, and in the future I hope to work in a field related to drawing or character design.”

Scrambled Lessons

By Yimeng (Nicole) Wang Yu, age 17, P. R. China

I have an estranged relationship with eggs. We aren’t completely cut off from each other—we still cross paths on occasion—but our encounters are awkward, fleeting, and never quite right. At most, I’m allowed to see them once every couple of weeks, and when I do, they always insist on showing up in some strange outfit. Sometimes they’re draped in a heavy coat of soy sauce, other times they’re wrapped in a knitted avocado-green sweater of their own making, smugly nestled against toast. But bare? Never. On the rare occasions they appear unadorned, it feels less like a gift and more like a threat. My stomach churns, my throat tightens, and my face knots itself into lines I don’t consciously form. I try to be polite, because it isn’t every day I get to share a meal with eggs, but honestly—they make me deeply uncomfortable.

And yet, as repulsed as I am now, I’ve probably consumed entire dynasties of chickens in the form of eggs over the past sixteen years. I grew up in a household where protein was fuel, and eggs were regarded as the most reliable gas station. My parents, convinced that my athleticism required a steady supply of scrambled yellow, believed they were doing me a favor. So, for sixteen years, they placed eggs before me every morning. Scrambled, boiled, fried, buried in fried rice, floating in soup—eggs became the guest at all of my meals.

For years, I wished this unwelcome visitor would finally excuse itself from my breakfasts. I told my parents that eggs made my stomach feel as if it were gnawing on itself from within. My complaints, however, were dismissed as excuses and childish exaggerations. “You’ll get used to it,” my mom would say. “It’s good for you,” my dad would add. And so I swallowed my objections along with the eggs, because, after all, parents must know best. Didn’t they always?

Until last year.

After a lifetime of groans, gags, and grimaces, my mom finally relented and scheduled a food intolerance test. We waited one long week. When the results arrived, it felt as though the SAT scores of my digestive system had been released. My mom and I huddled around the phone, tense with anticipation. Then the screen flashed with numbers, and chaos erupted. There was screaming, crying (mostly mine), leaping, refreshing the page again and again as if the result might shift if stared long enough. The report confirmed what my body had been insisting all along: I was intolerant to eggs. Not just mildly intolerant, either—I had obliterated the intolerance scale. The threshold for high sensitivity was 200. I scored 900. Four and a half times the limit. Eggs and I weren’t simply mismatched; we were sworn enemies, cosmically opposed.

In that moment, years of swallowed frustration finally poured out of me. My intuition had been right, and science had finally corroborated it. Turns out I wasn’t a dramatic complainer. At last, my mom believed me. I was vindicated.

But looking back, I realize those mornings of forced eggs were not acts of cruelty but of love—misguided, perhaps, but love nonetheless. My parents weren’t trying to torture me; they were trying to keep me healthy in the way they knew best. Only now, with hindsight, can I see how much care went into those breakfasts. At the time, I couldn’t imagine it. I just assumed that because my parents insisted, they must be right, and because I was a child, I must be wrong.

It reminds me of the way I thought about growing up in general. As a child, I carried this foreign but persistent belief that everything would improve as I got older. I thought the world itself would change with me—that kindness and fairness were waiting just beyond the next birthday. My greatest problem then was the cafeteria bully, and even that seemed temporary, destined to dissolve once we were all old enough to know better. In my imagination, adulthood was a yet-to-be-discovered place where everyone made good decisions, where people were kinder, wiser, gentler—because they were grown.

Of course, the reality was never that simple. Growing older didn’t fix the world; it merely sharpened my vision to see it more clearly. Eggs did not suddenly stop making me sick when I turned sixteen—it took years of paying attention to myself, of insisting on what I felt, before anyone else would listen. Adulthood did not sanctify those around me—it simply gave me the ability to recognize their complexity, their contradictions, and, sometimes, their well-intentioned mistakes.

In that sense, perhaps I was not entirely wrong as a child. The world did get better—not because it grew kinder, but because I learned how to navigate it. I learned to trust my body when it screamed at me. I learned that being believed is not automatic, even by those who love you most, but that persistence matters. And I learned that the very things that cause you pain can, years later, soften into strangely tender memories.

So yes, eggs and I remain estranged. I avoid them, and I live a happier life because of it. But I can’t quite bring myself to hate eggs. They’re a part of my story, a relic of mornings at the kitchen table with my parents, who—despite their misplaced faith in scrambled yolks—were only ever trying to love me in the way they knew how. And maybe that’s what growing up really is: not escaping discomfort, but learning to hold it alongside love, until the bitterness—or the grossness—tastes almost sweet.

—Yimeng (Nicole) Wang Yu is a 17-year-old junior at Shanghai American School, P.R. China. She grew up in Spain and now lives in China, and she speaks, reads, and writes in English, Chinese, Spanish, and French. When she isn’t writing, she can be found on the basketball court, blasting music through her AirPods, or noticing the small, everyday details that might inspire her next piece—sometimes all at once.