While international Intensive Learning trips come and go each year, one that is offered time and time again is the China trip. Led by Chinese teachers Li Li and Cathy Wang, the trip will be held once again in March 2024 and will feature returning values and new experiences. 

This year, all of the students who are participating in the trip are Chinese language students. To accommodate this structural change from previous years, the trip is designed around the Chinese curriculum, with an emphasis on Chinese culture and history, as these topics correlate to the in-classroom learning.

Emmie Huynh ’27, a student taking Chinese and attending the trip, noted how the emphasis on culture and history will help her overall understanding in the class:  “I think that even though I’m a freshman, actually going on the trip earlier instead of later is going to be able to enhance what I’m learning right now and add on to my later years … As my years go on in the class, I’ll be able to connect what I’m learning to real-life experiences I had in China.”

Wang and Li can offer a unique perspective to students traveling on the trip since they have both previously lived in their anticipated destinations. Wang said that the group will visit Taiwan, where she was born, as a newly added destination to this year’s itinerary: “We add different locations and different cities to ensure that the trip has variety…I feel like I know what to share with them.”

These locations include four different cities in the span of a week and a half. This variety is exactly what students like Andrew Zhou ’25 are looking forward to.

Li echoed these views, noting that, although things in China have changed, her prior experience there offers her a unique perspective. Li said, “I’ve been [living in the United States for] almost 30 years, so when I show [the students] China, it’s different from my own experience.”