High school students spent part of an overnight retreat at Malaekahana Beach last week making journals for the Chinese students they will be visiting in Baojing, China.
Punahou kids go
to ‘real’ ChinaStudents will visit a poor rural
community to help teach English
and learn Mandarin
Michael Wu will get to visit the "real" China by doing community service for children in rural areas there.
"It's sounds pretty fun," said the 16-year-old. "I went to China two years ago on a cruise, so there was no contact with any of the natives there."
Wu, along with 21 other high school students, will visit Baojing, a small town in China, where they will teach 200 Chinese students English. In turn, they will be taught Mandarin.
"My students are going to hate me," 16-year-old David Loo joked, as the rest of the students laughed.
Seventeen of the students are from Punahou School, three are from California and two are from Kaiser High and Maryknoll schools. Most of the students are taking Punahou's Chinese language courses, or some were just interested in the trip. The students will be joining six college students, who are Punahou alumni, as they visit Beijing, Baojing and Shanghai. The group left yesterday and will return July 31.
The China trip is a part of the Starr Foundation's $100,000 grant to the Wo International Center and the Luke Center for Public Service at Punahou School.
Baojing, still a rustic village, is in the western part of Hunan, where most of the residents only earn up to $200 a year.
"I want them to see the real China," said Hope Staab, director of Punahou's Wo International Center.
"In the city, the students don't get a feel for the people and their friendship and warmth. In the rural, they'll get to experience that."
In past years, the China trip turned out to be more of a tourist trip for the students.
"I became disappointed in the trip setup," Staab said. "We felt their idea of China wasn't a true one. We want the kids to think of this trip as a joint adventure."
Staab decided to gear the trip toward a large community service activity, mixed with some vacation spots of China, including the Great Wall and the Ming Tombs in Beijing, and shopping in Shanghai.
Over the past year, Punahou first-graders started a clothing drive for Chinese orphans and collected 20 boxes of clothing, which the students will deliver in China.
Punahou's Chinese language classes also raised money to give $500 each to three children in Children's Village, another orphanage in China.
