Released August 1, 2008
DAVIS, Calif. — A delegation of six high school students from the City of Ji’an, People’s Republic of China, learned all about 4-H during their two-week visit in Northern California.
They stayed with 4-H host families and attended the California 4-H State Leadership Conference on the UC Davis campus.
The youths, four girls and two boys, landed July 26 at the San Francisco Airport for a two-week visit, arranged by Solano County Cooperative Extension Director Carole Paterson as part of the ongoing sister city relationship between the City of Ji’An, Jiangxi Province, and Solano County.
But 4-H proved to be a big part of their stay here. The teens, all ages 16 or 17, wanted to know more about agriculture and education, two of the several topics on their wish list.
Paterson arranged for them to stay with six 4-H host families, all affiliated with Solano County clubs: the Vaca Valley 4-H Club, Vacaville; Westwind 4-H Club and Suisun Valley 4-H Club, both of Fairfield-Suisun; and the Sherwood Forest 4-H Club, Vallejo.
“There are no 4-H clubs in the People’s Republic of China,” Paterson said.
At the 4-H State Leadership Conference, they met high school youth throughout California.
Meanwhile, the teens have been busy experiencing Solano County and Northern California “to gather a sense of the life, history and the culture that we call home,” said Stephen Pierce, Solano County public communications officer.
Among their destinations: San Francisco, the state capitol, Muir Woods, Dillon Beach, Six Flags Discovery Kingdom; a tour of the Jelly Belly factory in Fairfield; a luncheon with the Chinese consulate in San Francisco; and a luncheon with the Solano County Board of Supervisors. One family took their exchange student to see “The Dark Knight.”
The nonprofit Friends of the Dixon May Fair, headed by former 4-H leader Donnie Huffman of Vacaville, contributed $5,000 to ease the costs of their stay here. Huffman served as a 4-H project leader for 12 years, with wife Claudia assisting. Both of their children, now grown, were active in 4-H.
The Ji’An teens attend a high school that existed in the 12th century, Paterson said. “They go to school eight hours a day, six days a week. " Many of the students live on campus due to the distance required to travel from their homes.
The American host families and the exchange students’ families began connecting via the Internet also immediately.
“The Internet is a phenomenal tool,” Paterson said. “It’s closing the gap between countries and their cultures. On Saturday one host family was online with their Chinese family. They all met each other via Webcam -- the father, mother, children and extended family.”
“The Internet is the most powerful thing we have to build international relations,” said Paterson, who is marking her 35th year with Cooperative Extension.
One of the 4-H host families is maintaining a blog, http://anaserena.blogspot.com/. Wrote Ana Serano about her family's exchange student: “Yuchen (Jiang) told us that the Chinese name for ‘pistachio’ (as in the pistachio nut) means "smiling fruit" --because if you look closely -- the shell appears to be an open mouth--and looks like it is smiling! Beautiful!”
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http://news.ucanr.org/newsstorymain.cfm?story=1129
Contact: Kathy Keatley Garvey, (530) 754-6894, kegarvey@ucdavis.edu