A student exchange concluded in 2000 between Alice Fong Yu in the Inner Sunset, a Mandarin immersion school, and The Experimental Middle School of Beijing Normal University in China finally materialized last week.
Seventeen students and two teachers from Beijing spent their mornings participating in English, art and modern dance classes at Alice Fong Yu and their afternoons touring UC Berkeley, City College, the Chinese Consulate and popular tourist destinations around the city.
They stayed in the homes of Alice Fong Yu families, practicing English, helping their American counterparts improve their Mandarin and forming friendships. More than 40 eighth-graders from Alice Fong Yu, in turn, will travel to Beijing for two weeks beginning March 18.
The Alice Fong Yu Cultural Exchange Program was founded in 2000, with eighth-graders traveling to China to be truly immersed in the language and culture of the country. A return trip on the part of Chinese students to San Francisco was always planned, but international incidents interceded. (Source: Heather Knight, San Francisco Chronicle, Feb. 4, 2005)