A local newspaper Hampstead and Highgate Express reports a delegation of secondary school pupils from North London has recently visited Shanghai and Yunnan to study Chinese culture and how Chinese do recycling, in a British Council-sponsored school trip to China.

Six pupils from William Ellis school of Camden, who are learning geography and Mandarin, visited schools and homes to see how Chinese live and the aspects of sustainablity. It is the second time students from William Ellis school, one of the few schools promoting Mandarin language learning in England, visited China.

Ben McPartland wrote on Hampstead and Highgate Express:

The language and geography students had a five-day stopover in Shanghai before visiting Yunman Nationalities Middle School in the Kunming province to look at the area’s attempts to be sustainable.

Year 10 pupil Kai Akinde-Hummel, who is studying Mandarin, said: “Visiting the Chinese home was the highlight of the trip. We had to eat some interesting food like chicken feet and dog tails. It was a bit different to what we have here but I ate it to be polite more than anything.”

His classmate and fellow mandarin student Jamie Strowjas said: “It was really different over there. Their lives are much more humble than ours. They don’t have as many electrical appliances and they don’t drive around in big cars all the time.”

Read the full report here.

William Ellis school web site.

Yun Nan Nationalities High School 云南民族中学.

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