US students celebrate 'graduation' from Chinese culture winter camp

More than 300 students from overseas Chinese families here on Wednesday celebrated the end of their training at a Chinese culture winter camp with new skills and knowledge about China.

The mostly English-speaking students from the San Francisco-based Central Chinese High School in America went on stage here to showcase their newly-acquired skills in traditional Chinese culture, such as paper-cutting, clay modeling, Chinese knot-making, ethnic Chinese group dancing, and recitation of ancient Chinese poems in standard Mandarin.

The two-week winter camp provided them with convenient access to education about Chinese culture under the direct instruction of 12 Chinese teachers selected from 10 schools in East China's Jiangsu province.

"In about 11 days, the Chinese teachers taught more than 300 kids from overseas Chinese families to learn how to make handcrafts unique to traditional China, including paper cutting, the playing of traditional Chinese music instruments and Chinese kung fu," said Ju Hua, chief of the Chinese teachers' delegation.

Ju said the training provided the students with a good opportunity to experience in person the profoundness and charm of traditional Chinese culture, which will help them eventually become "ambassadors" of the friendly exchanges between Chinese and Americans.

Cai Bingle, headmaster of the Central Chinese High School in America, said the winter camp was a valuable platform for the students of Chinese descent, who were mostly born in the US, to learn traditional Chinese culture "at a very close distance" by engaging directly with their teachers from China.