Participants of the U.S. Youth Ambassadors in Xiamen program take a group photo at the Mountains-to-Sea Trail in Xiamen, Fujian Province, on July 18 (LI WENHAN)
‘I always knew China is great, but after this trip, it really feels like home. I want to tell my family they have to come and experience this culture and diversity for themselves,” Nyiobhe Anxe Reyes, a student from Bard High School Early College (Baltimore), shared during a trip to Xiamen, a coastal city in the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian, on July 19.
On July 17-22, the U.S. Youth Ambassadors in Xiamen program brought 27 students and teachers from Baltimore, Maryland and Orange County, California, to Xiamen for an immersive cultural and friendship exchange.
“This exchange gave us a real opportunity to understand each other. I believe this friendship will continue. I hope that everyone who visits China or the U.S. in the future can feel the strong bonds we’ve built,” Reyes told Beijing Review.
Xiamen is home to one of the first four special economic zones in China, established in the early 1980s. Dubbed a window of the country’s opening-up, it has been at the