China: Beijing Cultural Exchange & Community Service

After an overnight flight, we arrive in Beijing. Our Global Works leader meets us at the airport and we take a bus to our comfortable accommodations, a courtyard hotel in a traditional hutong neighborhood, to rest and settle in.

We begin our exploration by visiting two iconic Chinese monuments: Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City with its plethora of sites. The day is punctuated with a traditional Peking duck dinner- make sure you practice your chopstick skills! On Day 4, we visit the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall of China for an awesome full day tour and a dumpling making workshop. We even take a toboggan ride down from the wall!

Today, we spend the day outside of Beijing at the Bethel Foundation, China’s only school for orphaned children with visual impairments. We spend a full day learning about the foundation and working on meaningful projects to help the organization improve, such as planting trees or helping with maintenance tasks. In the evening, we enjoy a traditional hot pot dinner.

Over the next few days, we meet many locals, practice our Mandarin, and learn more about the city. We visit a local library for an exchange activity with an elderly group to help them practice their English. They are so excited to meet us! We prepare lessons and learn about their life experiences through activities. Another day involves a visit to our friends at Beijing Bamboo Bicycle. These young people live right in our hutong and take initiative to fight pollution. We learn more about their projects and then break into groups for a scavenger hunt in the neighborhood. Finally, we venture out to see the beautiful Lama Temple and try our hand at tai chi with a lesson in the park.

We spend the morning making our own delicious noodle lunch with a cooking class. We make many types of noodles, including spinach, carrot and wheat.
In the afternoon, there is time for some final shopping in the local market before it’s time to head back to the hotel to pack our bags. We celebrate our final evening with a lovely courtyard dinner.

It’s time to head to the airport for our flight back home. It is the end of a trip, but the beginning to a new awareness about ourselves and the language and culture China.