'Power couple' makes history

In 2010, the Greater Houston Partnership named them International Executives of the Year; four years later, the Houston Chronicle named them one of Houston's Power Couples; and Chinese Vice-Premier Liu Yandong once called them "the perfect example of a China-US relationship".

They are David Leebron, president of prestigious Rice University since 2004, and Y. Ping Sun, an attorney and university representative at Rice University. Together, they have not only built a family with two wonderful children, but also forged a powerhouse serving the community at large.

"I was a very young assistant professor at NYU law school, and Ping, a Princeton senior, came to see me as an admitted student," Leebron recalled of their first meeting. "She would have been the first Chinese JD student at NYU but I failed to persuade her and she went to Columbia."

After meeting him, Sun thought Leebron's name rang a bell and later she realized she had cited one of his articles in her thesis.

Leebron, "attracted by her brains and her beauty", kept in touch with Sun over the summer. "We got to know each other over the next a few years. It took us five years to get engaged and eight months to get married," recalled Leebron.

They got married in 1990. "We went six years without children," he said. "That was nice, we traveled a lot." And China became a frequent destination for them.

Leebron's first visit to China was in 1980. Fresh out of Harvard law school, he went on a four-month world tour, including a 10-day visit to China. "It's been 35 years since my first visit. In that time, I had gone at least every two years, often every year. Most trips were a mixture of personal and professional.

"To me, it's like watching history develop," Leebron said. "It's really quite amazing. It's a privilege to look back and say I knew China in the 1980s. Now when I meet Chinese students at Rice, in a way I feel that I understand China 35 years ago better than they do."

He credits his wife as an unbelievable asset when it comes to higher education engagement with China. "When I became Rice president in 2004, Rice had not a single Chinese undergraduate student," said Leebron.

Now Chinese students account for 50 percent of Rice's international student body, far ahead of the number of students from any other country, he said.

"With Ping at my side, we have someone who understands the culture, figures out what's not done and needs to be done. She helps in terms of managing relations, establishing the connections, and making sure we do things with proper protocol. Rice hosted a high-level US-China higher education forum seven years ago, and this year we hosted Vice-Premier Liu Yandong," said Leebron.

Sun said that she feels fortunate to have the language and cultural background to help promote higher education exchange and mutual understanding between the two peoples.

"We have taken Rice alumni to China to give them a tour from a personal perspective," Sun said. "I took them to see the city of my birth, Shanghai, the city I grew up, Tianjin, and the city I went to school in, Beijing. I view my responsibility as not just representing Rice in the community, but also representing my Chinese culture in the US. Wherever I can promote that understanding, I am active."

Leebron said that it is productive that they can engage at both the administrative level with the Ministry of Education, as well as engage with very ambitious leaders of universities. "The individual universities have their own identities and ambitions, which makes it very enjoyable," he said.

Leebron and Sun's older son, Daniel Shengji Leebron, has chosen his father's alma mater of Harvard University, and their daughter, Katherine Mei Leebron, is in high school, with equitation as one of her major extracurricular activities. "She just won jumper class championship last week at the Greater Southwestern Equestrian Center," said Sun proudly.

When it comes to raising their children, the parents have different styles. "We certainly understood this is a bi-cultural family, as reflected in our son's name. Ping is a little more like a tiger mom, I am a little more relaxed, sort of like, they need to find what engages them," said Leebron, adding with a laugh that it was because "Ping was a perfect child and I was not".

"I insisted on their knowing Chinese culture because it's part of their heritage," Sun said. "They both have Chinese names and learned Chinese. They think I am their tiger mom - I wanted them to learn piano, do sports, and practice kumon. I made them memorize the multiplication tables in Chinese, and they achieved 12th grade reading skills when they were in the fifth grade."

"It's fortunate for our children to have been raised in two cultures. They benefit by having a foot in two different worlds, people like that can make special contributions to the world," said Leebron.

mayzhou@chinadailyusa.com