, 
, 
, 
, 
, 
A 2009 Luverne High School graduate is spending 27 months in China serving as a Peace Corps volunteer and immersing himself in traditional Chinese culture.
Matt Christensen, 25, is teaching English at Longnan University of Science and Technology in the city of Chengxuan.
Chengxuan is located in Gansu province, which is in north central China.
Christensen, son of Tim and Pam Christensen of Luverne, began his Peace Corps experience in June of 2015 and will return to the United States near the end of 2017.
“I chose China because of its diverse culture, ownership of a language spoken by nearly twenty percent of the world, and the opportunity to learn how to teach at a university level,” he wrote in an email to the Star Herald.
While in China, Christensen is writing a blog to share his experiences with friends -
China.
“One of the goals of the Peace Corps is sharing the culture of your country of service with Americans back home,” Christensen wrote.
“My blog is my primary way of doing that,” he wrote.
World Traveler
China is not the first experience Christensen has had living in a foreign country.
While a student at Luther College, he traveled to Tanzania in 2012 and spent four months studying in the east African country.
“I studied abroad in Tanzania with the intent of seeing if I could survive in a setting completely different from my own,” Christensen wrote.
He said that experience filled him with “a travelers confidence more than any class on culture ever did.”
“After leaving Tanzania, I knew that I wanted to see more of the world and began brainstorming ways to do just that,” Christensen wrote.
Life in China
His experiences in China began with three months of training in the city of Chengdu in Sichuan province to prepare him for his teaching duties.
The training included extensive classes in Mandarin Chinese, cultural awareness, security and other topics.
In China, Peace Corps volunteers are called U.S.-China Friendship Volunteers.
There are currently 143 American Peace Corps volunteers teaching English at universities throughout China.
Christensen teaches English to six different classes composed of nearly fifty students each.
Three of his classes are university freshmen along with one class each of sophomores, juniors and seniors.
“I can kind of relate to my freshmen. They are in a new place with a new group of people,” he wrote in his blog.
Christensen was assigned to work in a city of about 10,000 people, a location considered extremely small and rural by Chinese standards.
“Most Peace Corps volunteers in China are in small-sized cities, which in China means one to two million people,” he wrote.
“My site is much smaller than that, with only two other non-Chinese ‘foreigners’ besides me in the whole city.”
Christensen said his minority status brings him a lot of attention from the locals and takes some getting used to.
Some days he has to “duck away from camera-wielding groups of local middle-schoolers,” he wrote.
Overall, he enjoys the rural setting of Chengxuan.
“It provides for intense cultural immersion,” Christensen wrote. “Living here feels like stepping back in time.”
That cultural immersion has included hiking near mountaintop monasteries, eating coagulated duck blood and running on the Great Wall of China.
Great Wall Marathon
In late May, Christensen experienced what surely was a highlight of his time in China thus far.
He completed the full Great Wall Marathon in Tianjin Province, China.
The Chinese race was the first official marathon Christensen has ever run.
“Every step of the course was beautiful and challenging,” he wrote.
Portions of the mountainous 42-kilometer marathon route included running on top of the actual 2,000-year-old Great Wall of China.
In his blog, Christensen wrote that the Wall was one of the most challenging parts of the marathon.
“I wanted to run this race so that I could conquer the Wall, but once I got back to it the second time, I knew that it had really conquered me,” he wrote.
Christensen continued the race, however, and finished with an official time of 7:00:27 and a tremendous sense of accomplishment.
“No words – just a vigorous sense of accomplishment and relief as they draped the medal around my neck,” he stated in his blog.
In the end, Christensen drew parallels between the challenges of running the Great Wall marathon and living in China as a Peace Corps volunteer.
“You need to pace yourself and stay hydrated. When you get a cramp, take a break, walk if off and continue. And counting little victories, like the halfway point, refocuses you.”