MURRIETA: Chinese students visit Murrieta Mesa


Twenty-one high school students from China got their first taste of what it's like to attend an American high school last week when they paid a three-day visit to Murrieta Mesa High and hung out with local students.

From Tuesday to Thursday, the Chinese students shadowed Mesa students who are in the school's leadership program or who are taking Chinese at Mesa from teacher Li Yang. Yang has 130 students in her Mandarin Chinese classes this year.

The Chinese students, who all live and attend high school in Shanghai, are on a two-week exchange visit to California organized by the Temecula-based California School of English, a private school that provides English-language instruction to foreign students, and a Chinese group called the Shanghai Yuzhen International Cultural Advanced College.

The Chinese visitors spent their first morning at Murrieta Mesa participating in games with the local students to break the ice and viewing a video yearbook from last year. The Chinese students later visited various classes at the school. After their visit in Murrieta, they planned to travel to Los Angeles and San Francisco.

All the Chinese students spoke English to varying degrees and many said they wanted to visit America to practice their English skills. The Chinese teens said they began learning English early on in primary school.

When asked why she wanted to come to America, 16-year-old Grace Xiang said, "To improve my English and know some American culture." She also said she enjoyed Mesa's video yearbook. "The video was very good. It was very interesting."

Xu Jingyi, 17, said she liked the pop music from the video. "I always listened to Japanese music," added Xu, who said she began learning English in school when she was about 6.

Both girls said they have three to four hours of homework each day after attending classes, leaving little time for other activities. "We have to study all day. After finishing we have to sleep. We are so tired," Xu said.

The Murrieta Mesa students also enjoyed the chance to use some of their Chinese skills and learn about peers from China. Freshman Zury Garcia, who is taking Chinese at Murrieta Mesa, observed, "I've seen that they're really motivated to learn and they're really smart. They're kind of shy, but they're nice."

The Chinese students stayed with local families in Murrieta and also had a chaperone who accompanied them to the campus. The chaperone, Brian Qun, a high school teacher in Shanghai, said the local trip was well-organized and the students were excited. Each Chinese student was given a gift bag with a bottle of water, snacks and a T-shirt bearing the image of a ram, which is Murrieta Mesa's school mascot.

"They can learn a lot. They just looked at the video. The school life is totally different from our life in China," Qun said, noting that students in Shanghai have more homework and less time for extra-curricular activities than their American peers.

Yang, Murrieta Mesa's Chinese teacher and a native of China, said her students also benefited from the exchange, which is the first of its kind at the local high school involving the two sponsoring organizations.

"It's a good opportunity to learn the culture and get a picture of what Chinese students look like, their personality, what activities they like," said Yang, whose English instruction in school in China began when she was in middle school in the 1980s. "English is the most important foreign language in China," she noted.


