my mother's great-grandparents traveled by wagon train in the 1800s from the east coast of the united states to its western frontier, ended up in the unforgiving climate of oklahoma, a poor pack of cotton farmers. this south central state is now known for college football, oil, and the american indians the us government forcibly gathered from the rest of the country to put onto reservations. it is an arid, dry, hot place where pipelines now partition the ground and oil money mixes with the farmers and indians still living there.

urumqiis the oklahoma city of china, a dusty frontier city with sand, oil and a large ethnic group ╟ the uighurs ╟ which distinguishes the western xinjiang region from the rest of the mainland. my foreign friends marvel thati would go to such a place on a holiday weekend, envisioning me living in tents and riding camels, while my chinese friends just think i’m crazy, dropping into a city in the midst of serious conflict. but, in fact,urumqiis a bustling city of 2.5 million people, bursting at the seams from the booming market for natural resources so plentiful in the west. i saw couples waltzing in people's square, youngsters skateboarding late at night, and pretty much everyone enjoying skewered barbecued lamb in restaurants and from street vendors throughout the city.

while i was in urumqi, i dropped byour two ef english first schools, and they were full ofkinetic energy. at a kids’ school near city hall, students sat enraptured on a saturday afternoon, watching our mascot roddy explain a grammar point. i met a parent in the lobby and asked her why she wanted her child to learn english and she remarked "i hope english will give him a better future,” a phrase i've heard repeated in countless conversations with parents and students around the world.

hope for the future of china is extreme everywhere, but perhaps it is most profound in the west. the mainland government is clearly prioritizing the future development of this area, where subsidies have helped gdp growth rates grow close to those of eastern provinces. but hope is not solely the realm of parents and their children. i also met 28-year-old kuo xin rui, who was visitingurumqi to source materials for xibo, her new xinjiang restaurant in shanghai. ms. kuo is xibonese, one of the smaller ethnic groups in the province, and the restaurant will serve xibo-influenced xinjiang food. ms. kuo grew up in yili, near the border with kazakhstan, and worked for the marriott hotel group in shanghai for many years before leaving to start her business. when i asked her why she'd left a flourishing career in the hotel industry she said: "i hoped to pursue my dream.”

hope and dreams. this is what drives modern china today, and also what propelled my mother's ancestors to venture to the flat heat of oklahoma and grow cotton. u.s. president barack obama may have uttered the catch-phrase "yes, we can,” but i can think of no other country that embodies that spirit more than china. like those oklahoma cotton farmers, the people of western xinjiang may not reside at the physical center of their home country, but they are by all means at the burning hot center of the mainland’s hopes and dreams for the future.

                                        
fisher，現任英孚教育中國區(qū)ceo。fisher先生于1996年創(chuàng)辦了英孚教育網上教學系統(tǒng)englishtown，并擔任該網站的總裁和首席執(zhí)行官長達10年之久。2006年，他擔任英孚中國區(qū)ceo一職，全面負責英孚在中國的運營與管理(包括海外留學游學項目和本土英語培訓）。除了供職于英孚的執(zhí)行委員會和 englishtown.com網站的董事會，fisher先生還活躍于一些創(chuàng)業(yè)組織，比如digital divide data、gamefederation ab等等，擔任他們的理事會成員和顧問。fisher先生畢業(yè)于常春藤盟校之一的布朗大學，獲得了計算機科學的學士學位；其后，在斯德哥爾摩經濟學院攻讀經濟學碩士學位。