When Darin Kilfoyl found out about the possibility of traveling to China to learn more about its language and culture, he seized the chance.
The 15-year-old, who attends Academy at the Lakes, is deeply interested in expanding his knowledge about the country and its language.
(Courtesy of Darin Kilfoyl)
His teacher, Wei Wang, told him about the two-week program sponsored by the University of South Florida and the Confucius Institute. Wang said she knew Kilfoyl’s desire to learn more about China and believed he would benefit from the experience.
Kilfoyl said the two weeks he spent in China gave him new insights about the country, and made him want to make a return trip when he has a better command of the language.
The program provided an expenses-paid experience, aside from airfare, which was slightly more than $1,000, said Kilfoyl, who lives in Lake Padgett. The daily routine included morning language, culture and history classes, and day trips to learn more about the Chinese way of life.
The group spent the first couple of days in Beijing, then went to Hangzhou, which is a little bit west of Shanghai.
“If you want to see the true identity of China, don’t stay in Beijing, but go to a province where there’s a lake similar to Hangzhou,” Kilfoyl said. “Or go to the mountain regions where it’s all nature.”
Beijing is very polluted, he added.
“It’s very modernized, but there are so many people that it’s polluted,” Kilfoyl said. “It’s a little hard to breathe, and it’s really difficult to see.”
The traffic is insane.
“People there are masters of driving. They come within an inch of another car. It was surprising how fast and how close they drove,” Kilfoyl said, but added, “I didn’t see a single accident.”
Because it has such a large population, Beijing prohibits 20 percent of the people who own cars to drive them within the city limits on workdays, Kilfoyl said. The government controls that by monitoring a numbering system on license plates.
The students studied at the Hangzhou Foreign Language School.
“It was a private school, where kids in China or from out of the country would study different languages from around the world,” Kilfoyl said.
The students in his group stayed in a guesthouse, which he said was similar to a dorm, with upgrades.
“In the morning, we’d eat breakfast at the cafeteria, then we’d normally have a class, where we’d practice learning Chinese or about the culture or something about China’s history,” Kilfoyl said. “Then we would go on a trip, somewhere within the province. Normally, we went to two places during the day.”
They visited the Xi Xi Wetlands, a museum that described the role water has played in the development of Chinese life. They also visited pagodas around the lake and heard Chinese folk tales.
As they made their way about the country, Kilfoyl noticed that most of the people he encountered were wearing modern clothing, which was similar to American styles of dress. When he arrived in China, he wasn’t sure what the food was going to be like and he also wasn’t sure about proper etiquette, he said.
The Chinese food he ate was substantially different than the fare served at Chinese restaurants in America. For one thing, he said, “not much of it is fried.”
“They eat a lot of white rice and vegetables,” Kilfoyl said. “If they had meat, it was just a little bit, just for taste.”
There were far fewer choices on television, he said. There was the government television channel, a channel that showed a Chinese version of “The Voice” reality competition show, and a channel that aired dramatic programming.
Before making the trip, Kilfoyl wasn’t sure whether the people would be cordial.
It turns out he had nothing to worry about.
“When we were there, everybody was very friendly,” Kilfoyl said.
Published September 10, 2014
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