Jackie Tao

Jackie Tao is the self-described “poster boy” for Chinese youth. “My province’s newspaper ran a five-week series on me,” he said. “Going abroad so young and getting an education at an American school is not something that happens so often in China.”

In fact, Tao figured maybe only about 100 Chinese undergraduate students are allowed into the United States each year.

For Tao, it was something he always wanted to do. “I have been working on my English since I was 16 years old in preparation to come to the U.S.,” he said.

Speaking fluent English was one of the reasons Tao was admitted to the United States, he said. Meeting some Calvin alumni was another reason.

“I studied English in high school with Calvin alumni,” he said. “I also met some CRWRC [Christian Reformed World Relief Committee] volunteers who were from Calvin. They were very impressive.”

Having grown up an atheist, Tao was brought to the faith by some of these individuals. Through them, he also gained an interest in Calvin College.

“My parents were very supportive of me coming to the United States,” he said. “They never opposed the faith part of it, either; they kind of thought of it as my little joke. But now after so many years my mother has started going to church, and my father has started listening to Christian broadcasts on the radio.”

Tao, now a senior, came to Calvin in the fall of 2000, in the midst of the presidential election. “I was very interested in American politics,” he said. “Most of the people involved in politics had law degrees, so I figured I would do that.”

Pursuing that goal, Tao spent a semester of his sophomore year in Washington, D.C. with the Calvin program. “Being there made it very clear that I wanted to be involved in politics in the future.”

Not in the United States, though — in China. “I feel I can make so much more of a difference there,” he said. “Here, I am maybe one of a million people in the same boat; there, I could be one of 100 or one of 50 people in the same boat.”

The “boat” Tao is talking about is that of an educated person, especially with a law degree. He has been accepted at Columbia Law School, in New York, where he will study this fall on a full scholarship.

“Ninety percent of my classmates there will be Ivy League graduates,” he said. “I don’t feel any less prepared than they are. A Calvin education is not any less than Ivy League, as long as you are serious.”

And Tao has taken his education here quite seriously. Beyond the classroom, he has been president of Calvin’s International Student Association Committee, director of Rangeela, staff writer for Chimes, and a Chinese teaching assistant.

Leadership skills are something Tao hopes to be able to directly apply back in his own country someday.

“I feel like there is great social injustice in China,” he said. “When I live there, I don’t see it so much, but when I come here and watch documentaries about China, I see more about the reality of China. Calvin has shaped me such that I want to live a life that attracts the interest of others. I can think of no better way of doing that than to be a servant — to make the people around you see something different.”