In June, 32 Prep students and five teachers embarked on a 10-day trip to Chongquing and Chengdu, China, and immersed themselves in Chinese culture. This was a unique experience for Prep students as it was not a prerequisite to take Mandarin, and many students walked into the trip with very limited experience with the culture and language. Despite the language barrier, Prep students had a transformational experience.
Prep participants were only responsible for their airfare; otherwise, the trip was covered by the Chinese government. The Chinese YES program, Young Envoys Scholarship, is an effort to foster acceptance and friendliness between young Chinese and American students. YES connected Prep with several schools in China, allowing a full exchange to take place.
Some highlights of the trip included a visit to a Panda breeding sanctuary, observing a UNESCO heritage rock carving site, and learning and performing songs for Chinese students. Prep students got to try authentic Chinese hotpot, a famous Sichuan cuisine, and were even featured on national news to display a bridge between two cultures.
When asked what she hoped students learned from the trip, Seattle Prep Mandarin teacher Xiaofeng Foster – Laoshi to her students – responded, “China is different from what the media and general population would think, and being there gave students a sense of what the people and modern culture is like.” Laoshi chaperoned the trip to the Sichuan Province and got to see firsthand the unique and transformative experiences the Prep students were having on the trip. Previously, she has traveled with other groups of students to Hong Kong and hopes to continue traveling with students in the future.
Senior Audrey Trinen shared that the students in China “aren’t that different from us and have many of the same interests.”
Over the course of the trip, students got to visit several high schools and universities, including Chongqing Jiaotong University, Yucai Secondary School in Chongqing, and Pidu No.4 Secondary School in Chengdu. The Chinese students at these institutions spoke English very well and played a large role in shaping the experience for the Prep group. When asked about her favorite part of the trip, Bella Huynh ’26 noted, “forming close relationships with students at these schools who led them around the city, introducing them to the pop culture, and even shopping with them.”
Each of these 32 students were out of their comfort zones on this international excursion and connected with Chinese students who ultimately had much more in common with them than they initially expected. More, the trip brought together a group of Prep students who didn’t know each other beforehand, described Joe Lauinger ’28.
Seattle Prep impresses the Catholic Social Teaching of Human Dignity for every person on its students through service and theology classes. The Chinese exchange trip was an extension of this, as Prep students uniquely saw see how education and community are similar even on the other side of the world. In the future, Prep hopes to offer more exchange opportunities for students. To address this, Frau Khouri recently took the role of Global Programs Coordinator. Her goal is to establish more educational and service trips for Prep students. She explained that, through these excursions, “Students will get a broader outlook into the world, be better citizens in general, not only as men and women for others, but also gain more perspective by going outside of the country, coming back and understanding your own life better.”
As for the Chinese program, Laoshi hopes to embark on another trip to Taiwan this upcoming June. This too, will be an opportunity for all Prep students to explore how other cultures are not so different from their own.
