She found it at the doorway to the Sandhills in northern Nebraska, in a town with one Chinese restaurant and a giant shamrock on its main street.

In O'Neill -- population 3,700, Asian population, less than a dozen -- Wang is a teacher, ambassador and high school students' most ardent cheerleader.

She came to Nebraska -- a place she'd never heard of -- as part of a teacher visitor program through her country's education ministry.

"I just wanted to experience a different challenge," she said. "I like challenges."

And so she left her city and its 22 million residents and became part of a small farming and ranching community. A village, she calls it.

It's different, yes. To the 29-year-old who grew up among the first generation of China's one-child-only policy, it's also wonderful.

"Here, I don't know why I love it," she said. "Maybe it's the people."

In the year she's taught here, they have become her people, O'Neill her second home.

She is at every basketball game, speech tournament, drama production, football game and volleyball match, cheering in the stands.

She bowls every Monday with a group of farm women who call themselves the Power Pics.

She maneuvers the wide streets in her bright red Volkswagen Beetle and lives in a neat ranch home with a couple and their young son.

She spends her days in the classroom, teaching Tai Chi and the art of eating with chopsticks, helping students navigate a new alphabet, a new language and a different culture.

"I bring some culture here, to let them know about the Chinese," she said. "If we know each other more, then we understand each other and there are not misunderstandings."

She teaches 14 high school students at O'Neill, Chambers and West Holt High in Atkinson, using flatscreen TVs and distance learning technology to communicate between classrooms.

Wang also teaches elementary students and co-teaches a middle school world cultures class, taking students into the kitchen to cook rice dumplings and leading them through Chinese history, helping them understand her country's festivals, celebrations and traditions.

"We taught her tag, she taught us to use chopsticks," said O'Neill seventh-grader Natalie Brodersen. "I like it. It's fun."

Wang hands out high-fives and answers to any question, because she wants her students not only to understand Chinese but to believe in themselves.

"Who knows what they'll be in the future," she said. "Maybe the next Obama. Maybe the next teacher to cheer a student."

High School Principal Steve Brosz said he worried about whether students would want to take Chinese.

"Obviously, it's not a common language around here," he said.

But educators also know it's an emerging language on the global stage.

"So we decided to go for it."

The subject came up -- a passing comment during a discussion about foreign language -- in January 2009, when area superintendents got together to talk about the future of rural education, said O'Neill Superintendent Amy Shane.

O'Neill is known as a progressive district, offering distance learning and laptops to all of its middle and high school students.

So when Shane got an e-mail from the state Department of Education about the foreign language programs, she contacted her colleagues. We could teach Chinese, she told them, if anybody's really interested.

Superintendents from Chambers and West Holt County in Atkinson responded.

A $13,000 grant from the state helps pay Wang's salary. O'Neill pays $16,750, and the other two school districts pay $5,580 each.

She'll teach here next year, and the grant could be extended for a third year. Shane said she's willing to continue the program as long the district can afford it and interest holds.

The district is becoming increasingly diverse, with nearly 13 percent of its 800 students Hispanic, drawn to the area by jobs at a potato plant, feedlots and a hydroponic tomato plant.

A growing number of Hispanic students, because they already know Spanish, are opting next year for Chinese, Brosz said.

Jeanne Crumly, the high school media specialist, said some in the community questioned why O'Neill needed a Chinese teacher.

But Wang has immersed herself in life in O'Neill, and she has offered students a window to another world in a town where such glimpses are rare.

"Even if (students) don't major in the language, they've opened their minds to other cultures, and that's amazing," Crumly said.

In February, Wang's students organized a spring festival, sold 135 tickets and introduced their audience to the lunar calendar and rice dumplings.

Three of her high school students -- Jordyn Johnson, Molly Anson and Yo-Yo Teepatiganand, an exchange student from Thailand -- won first place in a poster contest at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's modern language fair. Chambers senior Jackie Lemmer took second-place in the poetry contest.

"She really connects to us more than anyone I've had as a teacher," Anson said. "It's nice to learn Chinese from someone from China."

The Education Department hosts visiting language teachers to teach around the state. It also works with UNL's Confucius Institute, and Omaha and Lincoln each host a couple of teachers from China.

But it's unusual in a town the size of O'Neill, said Vickie Scow, director of world language education for the Education Department.

So when Wang arrived, Scow took her to her own hometown of Shelby.

"She loved it," Scow said. "Then I knew it was going to be OK."

Shane, along with the superintendents from Chambers and West Holt, interviewed Wang in an online video conversation. And that was it.

"She chose me," Wang said of Shane. "I think I'm not excellent but she chose me. I'm lucky."

At first, Wang lived with the pastor of the Presbyterian church. Now she lives with LaDonna and Montie Werth.

The Werths heard about her arrival on the radio, and it seemed like a perfect opportunity. They have a 5-year-old son and are adopting a daughter from China.

And so at Christmas, as a snowstorm raged outside, the Werths and Wang made old-fashioned ribbons for the tree and topped it with a Chinese knot, a symbol of the country's unity, how everyone is connected.

The knots are red, the color of passion and the Chinese flag. Also, the color of Wang's car, and, she points out, of the Huskers.

"It maybe is fate," she said. "Nebraska is red, too."

Wang grew up in northeastern China in the Heilongjaing Province in a city of about 3 million.

Her mother is a doctor, her father the head of a college. She attended a top academic school, went to college, then moved to southern China, where she taught for three years. She taught three more years in Beijing, where she also got married.

Then she read about the teacher exchange program on the Internet.

"I think I can do it," she said.

And although she misses her family and her home in China, it turns out rural Nebraska is just what she was looking for.

"I really have an adventure," she said. "Here, it's a really big adventure for me."