“The U.S. California Governmental Commendation Award” Committee chose Mr. Mianjun Li as the 2014 “U.S. California Governmental Commendation Award” Winner, with the reasons as follows:
 
In the time of educational revolution and development of China, for 16 years of effort, Shenmo Education Institution has explored a route of quality education, which has made a contribution to the development of Chinese education, and will even have a significant influence to the world in the future.

The franchise schools of Shenmo cover from county-level cities to towns and even villages. With its systematically high-quality teaching centers and wide coverage of teaching network, Shenmo stands at an unsurpassable place in the field of Chinese non-governmental education.

The franchise management pattern in education initiated by Shenmo is not only a pioneer in China, but also in the world, which benefits not only China, but the world.

Shenmo has achieved support and approval from the children and parents of China and even the beyond, greatly promoting the international exchange on education and culture for 39 countries and regions worldwide including the United States.

To sum up, Shenmo Education follows the philosophy of “Equality, Respect, Trust, Admiration, Attention, and Inspiration”, and enlightens kids through a “Happy Education” approach so as to fulfill its mission “to help children reach their full potential” and thus promote social development and progress. It has made a great effort for the Chinese project of building a learning society and for realizing the Chinese Dream. Shenmo not only becomes the pride of Chinese, but receives attention, approval and respect from the United State.
 
In accordance with the above reasons, after recommendation of Sino-American Cultural Exchange Committee and strict research of “The U.S. California Governmental Commendation Award” Committee, Mr. Mianjun Li was honored as a respectable Chinese educator with an international perspective and thus was authorized with the 2014 “U.S. California Governmental Commendation Award”.
 
Starting Point: “SHENMO CUP” International Competition: the First Step Towards Internationalization

On June 11th, 2013, the 4th “SHENMO CUP” Little Scholars International Mental Arithmetic Competition was held in Beijing, China. Through 2 months of strict selection of competition, more than one thousand of contestants from 260 China representative teams and 7 international representative teams won from the millions of contestants of preliminary and got the opportunity to participate in the Final Competition in Beijing. From the scale and quality of the competition to the brand power and education level of Shenmo, the present were all visibly shocked. After the competition, couples of American influential experts in fields of education and culture postponed their schedule back home and paid a visit to Beijing Shenmo headquarters driven by curiosity and exploration and had a thorough communication with Shenmo leaders there. The experts all showed a great interest to the core concept when talking about the students scale and management pattern, especially to the Shenmo education and management philosophy with its unique charm of oriental wisdom.

Shenmo, the education brand with 16 years of accumulation, is gradually rising in the world stage.

On Oct 8th, 2013, the Sino-American Cultural Exchange Ambassador Mr. Kevin Lee visited Shenmo headquarters and had a thorough talk with President Mianjun Li on the issue of Chinese culture reaching out to the world. Afterwards, Mr. Rober A. Mundell, the father of the euro and the winner of the Nobel Economics Prize of 1999, came to visit the Shenmo Abacus Museum and presented his inscription: “An impressive museum which is helping us to preserve Chinese culture in this historiography of the Abacus!”.

While being introduced with the treasure of the museum--the Eight Trigram Abacus, the giant abacus made of rare stones and casted with bronze, Mr. Robert A. Mundell felt amazed that every bead of the abacus was made from the unique stone of every city of China contributed by Shenmo schools nationwide. So every bead represented a school and a unique place of China.
 
On the next day, Ambassador Kevin Lee and the “U.S. California Governmental Commendation Award” Committee, together with President Mianjun Li of Shenmo, president of Economics and Management College of East China Institute of Technology, President Xiaoming Zou of MyWorld HM Center, and representative of Shenmo school (United States), had a 5-day visit and survey to Shenmo schools in Yunnan province.

The committee had a cordial talk with Shenmo teachers wherever they stopped, and was touched by their optimistic attitude and enthusiasm towards their career. When talking about the miraculous education pattern of Shenmo, the committee said that, “Shenmo is a place that creates happiness. It’s such a way of “happy education” that Shenmo applies to carry out the mission of ‘to help children reach their full potential’, and such kind of education with emphasis on inner part of children will further promote the social development and progress together with the growing social value of Shenmo.”

Mianjun Li:
As an international education institution, Shenmo always focuses on the construction of enterprise culture, and Shenmo believes that, an enterprise should benefit not only itself, but also the development and progress of the whole society. The culture accumulation of Shenmo for the past 15 years is one of the crucial reasons of Shenmo for realizing the leap-frog development. We put “Human” first.

Xiaoming Zou:
The franchise pattern in education that Shenmo has explored is not only initiative in China, but in a leading position in the world, which has become the research object for the world franchise education institutions.
 
The “U.S. California Governmental Commendation Award” Committee:
Shenmo Education has a wide coverage of students, not only in China, but the world, which has greatly promoted the international cultural exchange on education.
By now, Shenmo has built a deep foundation of education, so in the future, we hope that, Shenmo could spread its unique management pattern and happy education philosophy to the world through more ways to benefit children in every corner of the world.

On Nov 1st, 2013, President Mianjun Li of Shenmo Education, with Mr. Kevin Lee, attended Los Angeles County-Government to receive the certificate of “The U.S. California Governmental Commendation Award”, where he met with Mr. David the spokesman of the United States Congress, Mr. Bill the film producer of Hollywood, and some movie stars, when he presented the masterpiece of Meilin Han the great Chinese artist to the United States Government.
 
On the same day, Producer Bill Mundell of Hollywood signed with Shenmo to film the Sino-American Cultural Exchange Documentary, which would be directed by Malcolm Clarke, the winner of 4 Academy Awards for Best Director.
Bill Mundell：

Bill Mundell, the producer of the Sino-American Cultural Exchange Documentary:
It’s well known that teaching math has been among the toughest challenges facing early education educators for most countries, but we hope that, by utilizing the Shenmo teaching system can foster fresh interest and excitement in the principles of mathematics and other fields that could remain with these young students for the rest of their lives. Already, schools in California and New Jersey of the United States, Asia, Australasia, etc. have adopted my approach, and the successful results mirror those already achieved in China. While the parents in many countries worldwide including America are conditioned to believe that their children are locked in a zero-sum competition with Chinese students for the highest math and science scores, but I believe that the education of China and beyond can be mutually strengthened by embracing the ancient tool for learning. We hope that, by utilizing the Shenmo teaching system can foster fresh interest and excitement in the principles of mathematics and other fields that could remain with these young students for the rest of their lives.
 
The formal award ceremony was held on Nov 10th, 2013 at the San Diego State University, afterwards President Mianjun Li gave a speech at the International Education Forum at the Confucius Institute of San Diego State University.

The core philosophy of Shenmo is “to enlighten kids”. As children are born with abilities to quickly collect the information, figure out the important and get rid of the irrelevant, what we do is to enlighten the nature from them. Once they possess the nature, they will have extraordinary ability in deciding matters and dealing with informations.

We have put this philosophy into all our courses. In China we have an enormous school network. Lots of parents and students asked us to develop more courses apart from mental math. So from 2006, we successively developed eloquence, go game, robot, painting, etc. that children may have interest in. These courses all follow the philosophy of enlightening children’s nature, such as, the eloquence course helps children to express free and accurately, the painting enlightens their imagination and the go game practices their logical thinking. All these courses together enlighten children with abilities to quickly collect the information, figure out the important and get rid of the irrelevant.
 
 After the award ceremony, at the invitation of Mr. Chuck Hansen, the president of Barona Museum, Mr. Mianjun Li visited the Barona city and museum together with Mr. Kevin Lee the Sino American Culture Exchange Ambassador and the president of the museum presented them the cultural gifts of the museum.

On Dec 13th, 2013, Mr. Kevin Lee the Sino-American Cultural Exchange Ambassador and Mr. Jianyu Mao the CEO of the Sancel Group of Spain came all the way to Shenmo (Linyi) Teaching Base to visit and exchange. They had a thorough talk on the strategic cooperation between Shenmo and Confucius Institute of the United States.

Soon after the visiting group returned, on Mar. 2nd, 2014, Shenmo officially signed with SDSU (San Diego State University) of the United States to build a Chinese Abacus Museum in SDSU, which met the Shenmo plan of building 100 abacus museums worldwide, aiming to carry abacus arithmetic, the centuries-old traditional culture of China, to the world.