A Quick Summary of the 2008 Freeman China Tour

Image: Taken 6/16/07 on our boat from Guilin to Yangshuo. From left to right, Evan Lum, Chris Wong, Jonathan Fung, Katie Cannell, and Kristie Yeung. I suspect my good mood is from winning a big hand of poker before taking this picture, and probably taking most of Chris’ chips in the process.

The following nine points are probably the most succinct way that I could summarize the 2007 Freeman China trip. It covers general facts, provides a sweeping overview of our itinerary, and highlights some of our everyday activities. And of course, when you’re done reading this, you can check out any of the items in the sidebar navigation for details (and lots of them.)

14 students, 2 teachers from Iolani School.
I am proud to report that sixteen people left Honolulu to visit China, and all sixteen of us returned safely. The ratio of males to females was 9:7. The full list of people who went can be found in the right-side navigation under “Trip Members.”

8 cities in 21 days.
We spent three weeks away from home to visit the Middle Kingdom. Aside from Tokyo and Osaka, which we didn’t really get to see in our 6 hour layovers in the airports there, we saw eight major cities. In order, they were: Beijing, Luoyang, Xian, Guilin, Yangshuo, Hangzhou, Suzhou, and Shanghai. We spent a number of days in each city, getting a whirlwind tour of each, before moving on to the next.

Trains, planes, busses, and boats.
To get around, we used a wide variety of transportation. We were exposed to un-air-conditioned trains, overnight trains, high-speed trains, domestic flights, and even a short boat cruise. To get around in the cities, our sixteen-person group had our own chartered full-sized tour busses (with the exception of Beijing, where such a large bus would have been utterly impractical.) These large busses not only gave us a great view of the city streets, but were extremely roomy and comfortable.

It was intense.
The trip was not exactly a restful one. We were always on the move during the day, seeing the cities on a very tight timeframe. We left the hotel after breakfast, and usually did not return until after dinner. Every night, we were generally budgeted about eight hours for sleep, but activities such as washing clothes, watching television, and extensive partying could cut into that precious sleeping time. And sleep was especially important since we would be doing a lot of walking during the day. The tour bus often became a nice place to catch up on sleep at the expense of seeing the city.

We saw the major sights.
We tried to see all of the major landmarks in the cities we visited, while mixing some smaller cultural attractions into our itinerary. Until this trip, I had never even heard of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. But we sure did visit a lot of them!

We also visited schools.
One of the features of our trip was that we scheduled visits with many local Chinese schools. The schools in China sort of operate on a different system than American schools, and I assume that we were supposed to learn and appreciate these differences. In my opinion, the major difference was extensive high-pressure year-end testing which determined your fate far more than the SAT does in America.

Nightly recap meetings.
To make sure we were actually digesting what we were seeing, we had nightly meetings to recap the days’ events. These often involved some weighing of moral values, critical thinking about Chinese culture, or just general discussion.

Nice accommodations and good food.

We were put up in nice hotels with all the modern amenities we needed. Even when we were sent to live in a “farmer’s house,” it turned out that we were sent to more of a rural resort for tourists. While the food tended to be repetitive, since we only ate at tourist restaurants, the meals were filling, and in some cases, outstanding.

All totally free.
Since the trip was paid for in full by a grant from the Freeman Foundation, all sixteen of us spent our three weeks in China for free. All we had to bring was spending money to shop and buy snacks and drinks (read “dranks.”)