Peters Township students get taste of life in China
Five Peters Township High School students had the opportunity to travel to China this summer. From left are Anthony Castellone, Wen Quan Zheng, Zach Strennen, Jeremy Reonason and Kevin Mitchell.
Jeremy Reonason does tai chi on the Great Wall of China.
Judy Alexander discusses the trip, while Wen Quan Zheng participates from China by smartphone.
McMURRAY – When Judy Alexander took five Peters Township High School students for a two-week visit to China last month, she expected they would be teaching English.
She was wrong.
Instead, Alexander, the high school’s gifted coordinator, and the students, who range in age from 14 to 17, found themselves in the rural village of Gufubao, north of Beijing, the capital of the People’s Republic of China.
There, the students helped farmers take care of their crops. They arrived at the village in the morning, stopped to eat lunch with the villagers and worked until 5 p.m.
“They weeded fields,” said Alexander, who arranged the trip through EF Education First, an international organization that specializes in educational travel.
“The farmers don’t have farming equipment, and it is kind of like the 1800s. Everything is done by hand,” Alexander said. “It was a ton of work.”
It also was an eye-opening experience for the Peters students to view firsthand how the villagers live and persevere with limited means and in primitive conditions.
The trip, from July 14 through 25, included three days of sightseeing in Beijing, where Zach Strennen, Kevin Mitchell, Wen Quan Zheng, Anthony Castellone and Jeremy Reonason had the opportunity to climb the Great Wall, visit Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, participate in a tea ceremony, shop and barter in a market and practice tai chi.
Strennen, a son of Jerry and Lorie Strennen of McMurray, who has been studying Chinese for five years, and Wen Quan Zheng served as unofficial interpreters for the group.
Alexander said while in Beijing, the boys were stopped on the street to have their picture taken.
“It was kind of flattering and creepy,” Strennen said.
But it was the week they spent with the people of Gufubao that really made a lasting impression.
Reonason said he was surprised how people could get by on so little.
“I wanted to experience China,” said Reonason, 17, adding many of the residents earn around $1,000 a year. “They make the best out of their situation.”
“It gives you a new perspective, to see how they live,” said Mitchell, 14.
Wen Quan Zheng, whose father grew up in a small Chinese village, said the trip gave him the opportunity to see how his father lived as a child.
“A rural family values education and sees it as an opportunity to lift themselves out of poverty,” said Zheng by smartphone through We Chat. He did not return with the group but stayed behind to visit relatives.
Alexander said the boys were amazed at seeing the water walk, where twice a week, Gufubao villagers would go to a nearby well and draw two buckets full of water. They would then tie the buckets to both ends of a long stick, balance it on their backs and haul the water back to the village. “Not everyone has water, said Strennen, 15.
In their free time, Alexander and the students visited the local school and mingled with the children. While there, the Peters students teamed with other American and Canadian students, who were on similar trips, for activities such as making dumplings, hiking in the nearby mountains and painting a mural depicting maps of the United States and China with a rainbow between the two countries to symbolize friendship.
“Not everybody can say they interacted and were immersed in the culture,” Reonason said.
Because they wanted to give something to the villagers and children, the Peters students put together a 20-page booklet, in English and Mandarin, about their lives. They are planning to assemble a book about their trip and plan to give it to Peters Township Public Library.
Lorie Strennen said she was glad her son went on the trip, although she admitted to being nervous about the 18-hour flight to Beijing. When the group arrived at Pittsburgh International Airport, she was there with a hamper full of food from Taco Bell and Five Guys to give the travelers their fast-food fix.