Suichang County

About one month after arriving in China, students have the opportunity to travel to the small town of Suichang in Zhejiang Province. Here students will live in this rural mountain community with local Chinese families for one week during the National Day holiday, also called Golden Week in East Asia. During this time the local high school students studying in Hangzhou return home to be with family, so every student will be matched with a home-stay brother or sister able to speak rudimentary English. Students will explore this town together with their home-stay families, visiting the local high school, a Buddhist Monastery in the mountain, the former residence of the Ming dynasty playwright, Tang Xianzu, the author of the 17th century classic, The Peony Pavilion, or the stone bridges in the surrounding hill that date back to the Qing dynasty. Our host families in Suichang are some of the warmest and most welcoming people one could hope to meet, and many enduring friendships are made between students and their host families.

The group may also travel to a national wilderness reserve and hike through remote and unspoiled mountains, which local lore claims to be inhabited by a type of elusive wildman, and we may spend one night in a remote mountain village with architecture and cobbled lanes dating back to the Ming dynasty.


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