For Chinese Families, a Journey Cut Short, and With It Their Dreams By VIVIAN YEE Published: July 7, 2013 For three weeks, they would have seen America through the sunny lens of a Southern California summer camp: learning about American customs and English idioms in the mornings, visiting local theme parks in the afternoons and touring Stanford University and the Google campus on the weekends. To see it all, the Chinese teenagers from Zhejiang Province had to fly through Seoul, South Korea, and into San Francisco International Airport, where their plane clipped the edge of the runway, skidded and burst into flames. Two of the students were left dead on the tarmac — the only fatalities — as their classmates fled the burning aircraft. The two 16-year-old victims were identified on Sunday as Ye Mengyuan and Wang Linjia, both girls from the town of Jiangshan, who were among 34 10th-grade students and chaperones bound for the camp at West Valley Christian School outside Los Angeles. Online, Wang Linjia had posted that she hoped time could dilute “the thick coffee in her cup,” perhaps easing some sadness about separating from her classmates for the coming school term back home. Ye Mengyuan had written just days ago that she was “gloomy,” but other posts hinted at a brighter side: a love of dogs, of animation and of Japanese, Korean and American television. The girls and their classmates were part of a wave of thousands of affluent Chinese children who come to the United States each summer for language study and cultural immersion, many passing through California on their way to tour Ivy League campuses, go swimming, eat chili dogs and practice their English. “Those two could’ve easily been girls coming to my camp,” said Steve Haines, who runs Horizons USA, an immersion camp for international students near Philadelphia. “I have plenty of girls just like them.” He said he had already fielded several calls from worried parents in China, where about three-quarters of his international campers come from, some as young as 8. Chinese students have been enrolling in American universities and even private high schools in droves for years, with almost 200,000 coming to the United States on student visas in the 2011-12 academic year. But it has become more and more common for well-off families in China to send children to summer camps throughout America, which many Chinese parents see as preparation for studying at American universities or, increasingly, private high schools. Directors of these summer programs say it has become a competitive industry, buoyed by China’s economic ascent, a favorable exchange rate and parents willing to pay to give their children an edge in admission at American high schools and colleges. The programs can cost as much as $12,000 for a few weeks at a prestigious campus, though prices in the range of $2,000 to $7,000 are more common. Many parents also pay extra fees to agencies that place their children with the American programs. “Many of them are thinking about university,” said David Lin, the director of the Chinese Culture Association, whose camp is in San Bernardino, Calif. “But their parents also want them to experience American life.” Mr. Lin’s program hosts as many as 500 Chinese students a year, who come for two weeks at a time. Most are the children of real estate moguls, engineers and doctors. Between English classes and sports at the Y.M.C.A., they explore local landmarks and go on to visit Washington, Disneyland and the campuses of Harvard, Yale and M.I.T. Some camps include SAT preparation and consultations on applying to selective high schools and colleges. Others offer specialized classes in science, journalism or American etiquette. Still others promise full immersion, like Horizons USA, where students stay with host families and spend their days playing sports and games alongside American children. West Valley Christian School, where the Zhejiang group was scheduled to start on Monday, has hosted groups from Korea every year for the past 12 years. The group from Zhejiang was to be the school’s first Chinese group, and several church members who had signed up to host the schoolchildren were shocked and “devastated,” said Derek Swales, the school’s administrator. The students’ school, Jiangshan Middle School in eastern China, was locally renowned for sending students to China’s top universities — and some of America’s finest, including Harvard and Yale. It had arranged similar summer programs for its students in previous years, local Chinese news media reported, with each student paying about $5,000 to attend. “They’re trying to learn the English language and understand America,” Mr. Swales said. “They want to learn how quickly people speak here and listen to all the idioms, like what does it mean to say ‘off the wall.’ ” He said the students’ motivation was simple: to gain an advantage in American college admissions. “Their No. 1 reason is to be prepared for college,” he said. “Their parents are putting down a lot of money for them to see it and taste it.” Mr. Swales said he believed that the Zhejiang group would now return to China instead of coming to West Valley, adding that the church would hold a vigil on Thursday evening for the victims. He held up an envelope of donations collected during Sunday services for the girls’ families. The students are still in San Francisco, where the Chinese Consulate is coordinating their care, said Wang Chuan, a consulate spokesman. He said the consulate was arranging for the parents of the victims to fly to San Francisco. In China, it was reported that parents gathered at the school to await news of their children, and state-run news media showed a pair of parents slumped over desks and crying after speaking to officials in San Francisco. Neither family could be reached on Sunday. But because of China’s one-child policy, both girls were likely to have been their parents’ only children, just like a vast majority of those whose families send them to the United States every year. The Ye family had named their daughter Mengyuan, which in Chinese means “a dream becomes true.” Reporting was contributed by David Barboza, Jens Erik Gould, Richard Pérez-Peña, Kyle Spencer and Mei-Yu Liu.
Posted on: Mon, 08 Jul 2013 04:41:38 +0000
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