Led by the China Education Association for International Exchange and funded by the Young Envoys Scholarship, the Sino-U.S. Young Elite Research Camp program invited 10 Americans to China. For nine days, from Dec. 19 to 28, students visited Chongqing and Chengdu, two vibrant cities in southwest China. Among these students were seniors Wendy Barben (any pronouns) and Arianny Huang (she/her), who learned about the program in Li Haining’s Chinese 500 class. After taking a 15-hour flight from Seattle to Chongqing, their group of 10 students, two advisors and two university students from all over the country learned about Chinese culture and language.
Each day was scheduled with tours or activities such as decorating fans, singing, Secret Santa and playing cards. Barben said they started the day around 8 or 9 a.m., but often woke up much earlier due to jet lag.
The trip included plenty of sightseeing, and the group also had opportunities for cultural exchanges. At Chongqing No. 8 Secondary School, they met Chinese high school students. Barben said it was surprising to witness the difference in school systems.
“Chinese schools are middle (and) high school combined. There’s a lot of students there,” Barben said. “I texted one of the students later on and they said, ‘Oh yeah, some students don’t go home until later on, on Saturday, and they go back to school Sunday.’ So they’re only going to see their families for 24 hours.”
Throughout the trip, Huang said the language barrier was a difficult challenge, especially for other students who didn’t speak as much Chinese.
“We had some students from a particular class that would talk to us about how AI changes our world,” Huang said. “It was kind of hard because most of us couldn’t understand what we were talking about because of the language barrier.”
Huang said she had been to China many times before. This time, however, she experienced new places as she had never been to Chongqing.
“Chongqing surprised me the most because I’ve never been there before, and it’s more of a unique experience because it’s on the mountains where the roads are the bumpiest things you’ve ever experienced,” Huang said. “It’s a roller coaster going from point A to point B. There’s a lot of steps. They’re really tiring.”
Barben said they also visited the Dazu Rock Carvings. These thousands of detailed carvings and sculptures, created between A.D. 600 and 1200 , are valuable artifacts in China’s cultural and religious history.
“There was, like, 10,000 rock carvings,” Barben said. “I think it was super cool because there’s an entire wall of rock carvings, and it told a story.”
While they mostly traveled with the entire group, at night, they were allowed to split off into smaller groups to explore.
“We were able to choose whatever we did at night when we didn’t have activities,” Barben said. “So there’d be groups going to stores, or they’d go to get skewers.”
In Chengdu, the group visited the Wu Hou Shrine, where they learned about a famous strategist from the Three Kingdoms period. They also visited various museums and saw many performances.
“My favorite (performance) was the face-painting performance,” Barben said. “But there’s also dances where you guys have these really long teapots and they pour tea or water for long distances.”
Barben previously visited China many times and loves the country. After Haining told the class about the program, Barben immediately volunteered to go.
“Even though we said we didn’t speak Chinese (there), you can practice your Chinese, and it’s good to hear other people speaking fluently but also experience different dialects,” Barben said. “Some dialects are harder to understand for some other people. And also, just getting to know the culture.”
Overall, Huang said that she enjoyed the trip much more than she expected, despite being pressured to go by her parents. Huang said she would recommend this trip to other students.
“Not only was it, I would say, a unique experience to others — because the other people on the trip have never been to China before, or most of them haven’t — you meet some really cool people,” Huang said. “I think the people were honestly my favorite part of the trip, if we’re not counting China itself. I didn’t think I was going to talk to anyone, but I ended up talking a lot more than I thought. I made a lot of new friends from the people on the trip and in China, so that was really cool. So yes, you learn the culture, you see a lot of new things and the people are really good.”
