Lyssa Freese ’12
Twelve students from the Northeast Yucai School in China are currently exploring the halls of Episcopal Academy. These students attend school in Shenyang, China, the capital of the Liaoning Province in Northeast China; Upper School Mandarin teacher Wei Yang said it is “about the best [school] in their region.” All of the visiting students will be between the ages of fifteen and seventeen. They will be making this two week long journey escorted by one of their teachers.
The students left China on January 31 and after multiple connecting flights, finally touched down in Philadelphia. They are staying at Episcopal until February 9, when they leave to go visit a few American colleges including Columbia, NYU, Yale, MIT and Harvard. Then after just over two weeks of traveling around the Northeast of America, they will return to their own Northeastern hometown in China.
This program began when Yang visited the Northeast Yucai School in 2008. The next year, seven students and a teacher visited Episcopal for one day. Then in 2009, Ned Dana and his family exchanged the visit. Episcopal took eight students and three teachers to China over the summer of 2010, to not only visit important landmarks in China and experience the culture, but also to visit the Yucai School. Then, both last year and this year, more students from Yucai have visited under the supervision of a teacher, and the exchange program has expanded.
The students are staying with Episcopal students and teachers and will be attending classes, chapel and sports like any other Episcopal student. They will have the opportunity to visit downtown Philadelphlia and Washington DC as well. The hope is that they will “better understand American people, society, culture and history, as well as the [American] education system” said Yang.