Published: April 30, 2008 11:55 pm      

LEW-PORT: Exchange program brings students to China

While their peers were spending spring break on the beaches of Mexico and the Bahamas, one group of Lewiston-Porter students were somewhere just as exotic: Tianjin, China.

The group returned stateside last week from living with host families and attending No. 2 High School in China’s third-largest city, Tianjin. For three weeks, they studied the Chinese language and shadowed their host students in regular classes.

The school system was a big change of pace for the Lew-Port students.

“The girl that I stayed with was in eighth grade and I’m in eleventh,” said Erin Rougeux. “She was in a science above me and the same math as me.”

The advanced classes seemed to be a product of a stronger commitment to education, the students said. In Tianjin, students attend school six days a week and the school day runs from 7:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.

Lewiston-Porter doesn’t offer Chinese language studies yet, but a couple of the students had studied Chinese before taking the trip. It didn’t help much, they said.

“Everything we had prepared for, we soon learned, was absolutely useless,” said junior James Ging.

“You know how we have slang everywhere we go in the States? They have slang in every province,” junior Marcus Jackson said. “We were learning proper Chinese when they all spoke slang, broken Chinese.”

Instead, the biggest lesson for the students, as sophomore James Otis put it, was “respect for different cultures.”

“Before I was like ‘Oh, that’s gross,’ ” he said. “And now that I’ve gone there, it’s like ‘Oh, they’re just used to this.’ It’s just how they do it.”

Sophomore Kelsey Munro said she had a lot in common, like shopping, with the teenagers abroad.

“They’re not that different,” she said. “They’re just like us, only they live in another country.”

That expanded cultural understanding is exactly what Principal Paul Casseri said he had hoped for in having his students study overseas.

“The goal is to help the students develop a cultural understanding of this very important East Asian country,” Casseri said. “This is a very important country that is taking a giant leap forward in terms of its role in the world.”

There was still some culture shock, though.

So-called Chinese food in America is not what the people in China are eating, the students said.

“They didn’t have egg rolls and I don’t know why,” said sophomore John Beattie.

Ging added: “I did not see one item of food on any of the menus that I would see here at a Chinese restaurant.”

Familiar fast food imports from America weren’t what students expected either.

KFC seemed to offer more fish than it did chicken, McDonald’s apple pie was replaced by pineapple pie and Pizza Hut was a fancy, sit-down restaurant where people dressed up.

“Over there, it’s an event to go to Pizza Hut,” Jackson said.

But the students mostly immersed themselves in Chinese culture, eating authentic Chinese cuisine and checking out some of the country’s historic sites — including the Great Wall and the Shi Mansion, where one of the prominent families of the Qing Dynasty had lived.

This trip was the first time Lewiston-Porter had sent students to study in another country, Casseri said. But students from No. 2 High School in Tianjin had visited Lew-Port in February — some of whom served as host students when Lew-Port students went to China.

“When we got off the bus and they arrived,” said Casseri who stayed for part of the trip, “I stood there next to the principal (of No. 2 High School) to see hugs and tears and the friendships they developed. That’s the most rewarding thing. Despite the language barrier, kids are kids.”