The Chinese program is taking its annual trip to China this summer, and the itinerary, which includes train rides and the visiting of a Jade Buddha temple, is packed. Students from all levels of Chinese are seizing the opportunity to travel oversea for the nearly month-long vacation.

Dingman Yu, the Chinese teacher at South, is the leader of the trip and designed the schedule for it. “You have to fit the schedule to what I think the students should know and what they have learned,” says Yu. The main difference to this year’s trip and last year’s is the lack of a visit to the Beijing Royal Academy, which, Yu explains, is because “the schedule is very tight. If we had planned to stay there longer, we would have stayed at the Royal Academy for a couple days.”

“I think it’ll be a good learning opportunity,” Sophomore Rachel Stiyer says enthusiastically about the trip. She also says that what she’s looking forward to the most is “going to Beijing and spending a day with a host family.”

“It’s cool that the characters represent something,” continues Stiyer, now commenting on what drew her to the Chinese language. Junior Rachel Hutt started taking Chinese for different reasons: “I didn’t want to take Spanish or French since I was bad at both, so I thought I would do the opposite.”

Sophomore Zosha Carroll was drawn to Chinese because of her heritage, but in addition to that she says, “I want to learn it for the future; it would be helpful for a career.” Carroll says her desire to go on the trip stems from “just the experience of being able to see China.”

Yu is a strong believer in the power of the Chinese trip to affect both the students at South and those in China. “We can learn from each other,” says Yu, who explains that the students should go on the trip “to broaden their insight on the future of China; we can learn from what they’re doing. What the Chinese can learn from us [includes] environmental protection and conservation of nature.” Sophomore Elsa Hoover agrees, noting that “they’re really behind, ecologically.”

Hoover, who went on the trip to China last year, said that it was “awesome, but strange, because China is really strange.” She emphasizes how the best part of the trip was driving through the mountains, where “you can really see the train, we would stop at shrines and markets for lunch. You don’t expect anything like that to exist.”