The group set out March 29 and visited Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong.
After nearly a decade apart, Yoshi was greeted by his mother and a gaggle of other relatives in Shanghai.
“They cried and cried with joy,” said the school’s founder and president, Carol Van Asten.
Yoshi’s mother arranged for a vegetarian meal for the entire group in a Shanghai temple and even gave every student a pearl necklace and silk scarf.
It was a special occasion for Yoshi, but a wonderful educational opportunity in Van Asten’s eyes. The school’s junior high class takes one such trip every school year. In years past they’ve seen Vienna, Paris, Rome and London.
Students experienced China’s rich culture as they walked the Great Wall, and explored the Emperors’ Forbidden City and the Empresses’ Summer Palace.
They hopped a high-speed elevator to the top of the 1,614-foot-tall Shanghai World Financial Center and mingled with Emperor Qin Shi Huang’s 2,200-year-old Terracotta Soldiers.
“It shows you the old and the learned and then you get the newest,” 13-year-old Celina Huynh said.
The trip becomes an extended geography lesson each year. Students study the macro and micro economics, the history and culture of each country. They even learn about the political systems, which the students observed full force in the communist country.
Students observed China amid conflicts with Tibet and controversies over the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Students visited Tiananmen Square, the site of the 1989 protests for Democracy, which they had learned about in class.
They were told the event had been a parade — the Chinese government’s official version of the protests.
Jennifer Nguyen, 13, fluent in Cantonese and semi-fluent in Mandarin, spoke about pollution in the air. “It got kind of hard to breathe, and your throat chokes a bit.”
