As an anxious college freshmen who traveled over 6,000 miles from China to come to the United States, Xueyang “Kevin” Ma, never would have imagined becoming the voice for over 2,500 international students enrolled at the University of Oregon.

Ma left his hometown of Ya’an, China to study business at the UO. Despite fighting off jet lag and missing his family on his first day of school, Ma was grateful for having the opportunity to study in the states. In his four years at the university, Ma has held a part-time job, studied abroad in Europe and held different leadership positions including serving as the ASUO International Student Advocate. He’s also a newly acclaimed Duck football fan.

“UO is an amazing university. The people here are so nice,” Ma said. “I made a lot of friends here … from different cultures and (who) speak different languages.”

Despite all these experiences, Ma still feels a cultural separation on campus.

Even though international students make up 10 percent of the student body and come from 95 different countries, Ma believes there is lack of communication and relationship between international and domestic students.

As the new Editor in Chief of HuaFeng Magazine, a Chinese cultural student publication, Ma is on a mission to change this.

“What I am doing is encouraging international students to go out, speak out and introduce our culture to other people,” Ma said. “And to go to other people’s events and learn their cultures … and not be shy or embarrassed to do so.”

HuaFeng Magazine was founded in the spring of 2009 by Chinese and other international students. Now in its fifth year of publication, the magazine continues to blend Chinese and local culture together by focusing its content on college life, Chinese culture and literature.

They publish three times a year, and with funding assistance from ASUO, they circulate around 550 copies each term. Its original staff has more than quadrupled from 7 to 33 students who are working to expand the magazine’s appeal to both American and other international students.

“We do have a gap between international students and American students,” said Iris Tian, HuaFeng’s public relations representative. “We want to shorten the distance as much as we can and also build a bridge to connect them together.”

HuaFeng’s Editing Director, Sijia Chen, sees the publication not only as a magazine but also as a guidebook to help international students understand the basics of the university, such as how to register for classes, the programs to call for a ride home, and who their university leaders are.

Although HuaFeng’s early issues are targeted mainly to Chinese students in an effort to better establish their culture on campus, the magazine today strives to be multi-functional. They have chosen to write most of their cultural stories in English, while the campus-focused articles are mainly in Chinese.

Ultimately, the magazine seeks to erase misconceptions each group has of each other. Ma also hopes that students will realize that different cultural groups are intended to be inclusive, not exclusive on campus.

“It is not just ‘oh I’m Chinese, so I can only be involved in Chinese organizations,’” Ma said. “That’s not true because you can be accepted into other cultures and backgrounds, and know other peoples’ stories.”