SYTA Youth Foundation

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2009 Spirit of Freedom Award Winners

Monday, September 21, 2009

Dear SYTA Youth Foundation:

On behalf of the Chinese language program, I would like to thank you for your generous Sprirt of Freedom Award in the amount of $2,000.00. The check was received yesterday and will be deposited in the Chinese program account in school to benefit participating students of the Chinese Bridge Summer Camp in Beijing next summer. I will provide you with a list of students who will have benefitted from this award by September of 2010. Your commitment to helping students in our program to travel internationally is sincerely appreciated.

Each year our Chinese program continues to advance its mission of enhancing cultural understanding and tolerance by offering our students opportunities to travel to China. Through our summer camp program (partially sponsored by the Chinese Government) and our spring-break educational tour in China, we have seen many lives changed for the better.

In particular our Chinese program has enjoyed great success in the Chinese Bridge Summer Camp this summer. I have enclosed a short description of this exchange tour and a few photos taken during the trip for your reference.

The goal of the world language programs at our school is to continue to make a difference in the lives of our students by offering them opportunities to travel world-wide to expand their vision and learn from different cultures. With the help of donations from supporters such as you we will continue to see improvements in this field.

Thanks again for your generous support of our efforts to the Chinese program at South High School.

Best wishes,

Dingman Yu

Teacher, South High School

Minneapolis, MN

Detailed Program Description

As a teacher of Chinese for many years for the Minneapolis Public School District, I have long realized the value of international traveling as a part of education and its positive impacts on students of world languages. So when we became aware of Hanban?s Chinese Bridge Summer Camp this spring, we promptly jumped on this opportunity. Eight students were able to turn in their applications by the deadline. The Confucius Institute at the University of Minnesota acted as the coordinating agency for Hanban from the start and was instrumental to the timely handling and processing of the paperwork. Even though Hanban had insisted that they would prefer applicants with minimum exposure to Chinese language instruction, all of these students were accepted regardless of their Chinese-learning background and previous experience in China (3 of the students had travelled to China in the previous year).

The delegation from our school (7 students and 1 teacher) departed for China on July 12. We arrived in Beijing on July 15 after having spent 2 days in Shanghai. Between that day and July 31 when we left Beijing for Shanghai we were participants of this year?s Chinese Bridge Summer Camp joined by 1,200 other high school students and chaperones from America and Britain. Hanban paid for all summer-camp-related expenses incurred during this period, including hotels, meals, sightseeing, and in some cases the rebooking fees for international flights when a group of participants became quarantined due to swine flu infections.

We spent the first 4 days of the camp in the Foreign Language School, BFSU, located in the northwestern suburb of this gigantic city. During the days we climbed the Great Wall, visited the Forbidden City, admired the pandas in Beijing Zoo, and went shopping in the famous Silk Street. In the evenings the students chose to attend various cultural and language classes ranging from calligraphy, Chinese chess, classic poetry appreciation, and Kungfu. Or they could choose to play sports games in the gym, frolic in the gardens, check e-mails in the computer lab, and simply jog around the campus which was enclosed with 8-feet-high iron fences. Students were put in air-conditioned dorm rooms with two bunk beds. The bathrooms were shared on each floor. All meals (except when on field trips to tourist attractions) were served on campus in the multi-level dining hall. The buffet-style meals, while not spectacular nor irresistibly delicious, was clean and plentiful.

Hanban then divided all participating delegations into a dozen of groups and dispatched them to hosting schools in different provinces. The destinations include Shanghai, Yunan, Chongqing, Shandong, Henan, Hubei, Zhejiang, and Jilin. For some unknown reasons, Hanban seemed to enjoy matching visiting school delegations with hosting schools with similar geographic traits. So along with other groups from the northern tundra, we were flown to Jilin City of Jilin Province, some 800 miles to the northeast of Beijing.

Our hosting school is called #1 High School of Jilin with a student population of over 5,000. This is considered the best high school in the region and the talented student volunteers (who helped us in many ways) served to solidify such a reputation with their enthusiasm on top of their proficient communicative skills in English. We were placed into a decent hotel near the city center, and this would enable our students to visit the local markets and food stands with ease. The school chartered tourist buses for us to commute to the school campus about 8 miles away. Each morning the students had 3 classes to attend with the afternoon hours mostly devoted to hands-on activities, which included paper-cuts, making dumplings, and making Chinese knots. Our students found these activities very interesting. The Chinese language class was focused on basic conversational skills which would fit the needs of beginners of Chinese very well. While the teachers were all very nice and approachable, students who had had Chinese before may find it a little boring. This portion of the camp lasted 12 days (July 19-30), long enough for the students to bond well with their peers from the hosting school.

The Chinese Bridge Summer Camp is a precious opportunity for students who are currently studying Chinese or considering taking Chinese to get to know China on a first-hand basis. It will serve to strengthen learning and make it easy and entertaining. What better place do we have to take the lessons of Chinese history while we wander in the Forbidden City and similar historic sites? What are the more efficient ways to learn China?s geography than visiting different regions on the trip? The students cannot get a whole picture of China?s booming economy without a visit to the mall by the Bird Nest and to a rural market in Jilin. A conversation to negotiate prices or talk about the weather is infinitely more life-like than those simulated ones taking place in the classroom. Visiting China widens our horizon of knowledge. It has taught our students lessons in the diversity of life, tolerance, and genuine friendship. Best of all, it has enabled us to know each other better, to know our own country better, and to set the bar of learning Chinese much higher. For all these, we remain infinitely thankful to Hanban officials, students and teachers from Jilin #1 High School in general, and the warm-hearted staff at the Confucius Institute in particular. It was your collective efforts and hard work that had everything possible.

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