After the 24-hour journey to Beijing, we, 14 students from Schule Schloss Salem, spent the first evening with our host families. On Saturday morning, we accompanied our host brothers and sisters to lessons at their school. Afterwards, we went on a trip to the old city centre of Beijing and were able to make small, scented sachets ourselves in a practical course on Chinese medicinal herbs (concentration mixture for the next maths exam!) and learn Chinese drawing.
We spent Sunday with our host families and went on excursions in and around Beijing. At the beginning of the week, a small welcome dinner and a visit to the Forbidden City were on the agenda. The palaces and gardens, the ornate architecture and craftsmanship as well as the rich history were very impressive. The next day we went back to class with our exchange students and then visited the Technology Museum at Tsinghua International University. We also had the opportunity to talk to international scholarship holders from the university. In the afternoon, we attended a lesson on clothing from different eras in China, followed by a design workshop.
Of course, the programme also included a visit to the Great Wall of China and the Heavenly Palace. After a joint closing ceremony and a happy cake lunch with our exchange partners, we spent Saturday individually with our families on a beautiful, clear and sunny last day in Beijing before heading back to Germany on Sunday.
The long journey there and back was worth it: we gained a wide range of impressions of a rich culture and special culinary experiences. We got to know an education system that is very different to ours. And we saw an ultra-modern Beijing: a metropolis with over 20 million inhabitants and a daily commuter volume of 7-9 million people, offering everything from ultra-modern luxury shopping malls to alternative artists' districts and historic temples.
Photos: Nina Peters