27 Southland Students Win Trip to Orient

Question: What is Hong Kong’s greatest value as a port for China?

Andrei Cerny, 14, a student at North Hollywood’s Walter Reed Jr. High School, approached the microphone to give the answer. He cleared his throat. He rubbed his sweaty palms on the sides of his trousers. He glanced at his five schoolmates.

Answer: “Hong Kong provides a port through which China can trade with countries which it has no diplomatic relations with.”

With that--the last correct answer given in the first Ambassadors to Asia contest--27 Southern California honors students from five schools became unofficial diplomats. As winners of an essay and oral showdown about Pacific Rim nations, the students, who competed on school teams, will spend a week in Hong Kong this summer.

The five winning teams survived six rounds of grueling competition Thursday, answering questions on topics ranging from culture and customs to geography and current events. They also endured two hours of nerves and queasy stomachs waiting for the brain workout to conclude at the Harry Chandler Auditorium of the Los Angeles Times.

In all, 54 students on 10 teams vied for the top spots in the winners’ circle and the educational trip to Hong Kong sponsored by Cathay Pacific Airways and the Los Angeles Times In Education Program.

Paula Poindexter-Wilson, the Times’ special projects manager and a contest coordinator welcomed students, parents and teachers, saying, “The message has been clear. To be prepared for the ‘90s and beyond, students must not only know how to read, write, compute and think, they must also be Pacific Rim literate.”

She said the importance of students learning more about the Pacific Rim countries is “visible in news reports, advertising messages, new airline routes, and new investments in American institutions.”

Among the winners were Kimberly Lim, Shirley Lo, Ashok (A.K.) Roy, Jenny Wang and Jilan Zang of University High School in Irvine; MeriAnn Freestone, Kris Roth, Christina Buhl, Angela Bunker and Julie King of San Gorgonio High School in San Bernardino, and Jennifer Albright, Angeline Koo, Jason Lukaszewicz, Manoj Mate, Julie Redman and Derek Welsbie of Valley View Junior High School in the Simi Valley.

Also headed for Hong Kong are Cerny, Samidha Ghosh, Laura Johnson, Matthew Landler, Daniel Lehrer-Graiwer and Jeremy Lehrer-Graiwer of Walter Reed Jr. High School, and San Diego County’s La Jolla Senior High School students Mike McDaid, Brandon Kessler, Colin Campbell, Mary DeNora and Jean-Paul Jassy.

While in Hong Kong, the students will conduct an education summit with Chinese students as well as visit cultural exhibits, museums and schools.

More than two months ago Southern California students were invited to enter the contest by submitting an essay, “Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow,” comparing any facet of Hong Kong--from education to politics to health issues--to one other Asian country. Almost 2,000 ninth- and 10th-graders, on 362 teams, entered the essay contest. The top 10 essays qualified for Thursday’s final competition.

Among those students and essayists were Lorena Palagonia, 15, and her teammates, Cherish Fawson, Gina DiBella, Tracy Schofield and Stephanie Allen. The five young women, who attend Lakewood High School, had exchanged good-luck charms before the contest started. The team was stumped in the first five rounds, missing all the questions. During the last round, it scored a correct answer to cheers and shouts from the audience.

“We’re glad we made it this far and we’re proud to have been here,” she said. “We didn’t know anything about Hong Kong before we wrote our essay. But now we know a lot of new things.” Their essay compared the past and present educational systems of Hong Kong and Japan, and projected what the future might hold.

Like the other students in the competition, Palagonia and her teammates immersed themselves in encyclopedias, atlases, magazines, newspapers, almanacs and State Department pamphlets written about Asia. They drilled each other very night, devised daily index cards with questions on one side and the answers on the other and met before school started, during lunch and in the evenings.

Roy, team leader from University High School, relied on newspaper articles about the Far East, printed material from embassies and the expertise of teacher Vicki K. Lindblad, who teaches an honors class called Global Perspective for research. So did his teammates.

The University group worked around the clock before reaching the finals. They read materials at the dinner table and shut themselves in their bedrooms after dinner to study, Roy said.

Cerny and his five teammates prepared for the contest by drilling with teacher Paul W. Mertens during lunchtime.

“It’s been a total brain overload for us,” Cerny said. “Every breathing moment we’ve had we’ve been studying for this. I was in charge of learning everything I could about China, South Korea and the Philippines.”