Organized by BPAFFC, a delegation of Avenues: the World School in New York visited Beijing No.2 Middle School-Chaoyang on May 29. Chinese and American students engaged in exchanges and jointly planted a friendship forest.
Jiao Yutong, Vice President of BPAFFC, attended the welcome ceremony and delivered remarks. The two schools introduced their institutions and agreed to take this event as an opportunity to strengthen exchanges between their students, helping them become practitioners and pioneers of China-U.S. friendship.
Student representatives from China and the U.S. shared their academic studies, daily life, and future career aspirations. Students from both schools were full of curiosity about each other, asking questions such as “Are Chinese students under a lot of academic pressure?” “Why do American students love basketball so much?” and “What kind of music do you like?” Through this lively back-and-forth Q&A session, Chinese and American students broadened their horizons and deepened their mutual understanding.
At the ceremony, the two schools signed a sister-school memorandum of understanding (MoU), agreeing to conduct regular inter-school exchanges. In the Four Seasons Garden on campus, students and faculty from both schools jointly planted the China-U.S. Youth Friendship Forest. During the exchange activities, Chinese and American students engaged in a basketball friendship match. Afterward, American students broke into small groups to experience signature courses alongside their Chinese peers.
This mid-May witnessed a historic meeting between Chinese and U.S. heads of state. More people-to-people exchanges are both the consensus of the two presidents and the shared desire of the two societies. This youth tree-planting event is designed to translate the consensus into concrete action, build stronger bonds of friendship between the younger generations of China and the U.S., and inject youthful vitality into China-U.S. people-to-people exchanges and sister-city ties between Beijing and New York.
