A Great Wall, and a Great Adventure: Fay Students Travel to China
welve Fay students participated in a unique adventure this year: a weeklong trip to China during their spring break. The trip, which was sponsored by Fay’s World Languages Department and chaperoned by teacher Qianqian Huyan and department chair Alina Argueta, was designed to introduce students to the history and culture of China.
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Of the twelve students on the trip, seven of them are studying Chinese at Fay, and two are native Chinese speakers. “We were lucky to have Yolanda [Dong ’14] and Jaiyue [Bai ’13] with us to help us understand the language and aspects of the culture,” Alina says. Focusing on the cities of Beijing and Xian for the duration of their stay, the travelers packed a lot into a short period of time. Students visited historical sites like the
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I liked going to China and seeing how it is so different from the United States. It was great to visit the Folk Art Museum and see the Chinese paintings, drawings, and sculptures. I liked the paintings of birds and flowers. I also liked seeing the giant pandas because they were so cute! –Lea Steinberg ’14 Temple of Heaven, a Taoist temple constructed in the early 1400s; the Forbidden City, the imperial palace built during the Ming Dynasty; and the Wild Goose Pagoda, a Buddhist temple. Students also saw sites that have featured prominently in modern Chinese history, such as Tiananmen Square. Students immersed themselves in Chinese culture, with a visit to a teahouse for a traditional tea ceremony and lessons in calligraphy at the Folk Art Museum in Xian. Meals were also an opportunity to experience life in China, as the students ate traditional food, including a “hot pot”
dinner where students cooked their own vegetables at the table. “The tour guides were willing to incorporate an American meal into the trip, but the kids were against it,” Alina says. “They were only interested in having real Chinese food.” Ask the students about the highlights of the trip, and the answers are almost too numerous to mention: the twelve-hour overnight train trip from Beijing to Xian, where students slept on bunks in sleeper cars; a visit to the giant pandas at the Beijing Zoo; an excursion to the site of the Beijing Olympics.