Students from the Newton-Beijing Jingshan School Visit State House

The Newton-Beijing Jingshan School Exchange Program is the oldest exchange of public secondary school students between the United States and the People's Republic of China. The city of Newton, Massachusetts, hosts students and teachers from the Jingshan School in Beijing for four months each Fall and sends students and teachers from Newton North High School and Newton South to Beijing each Spring.

 

Beginning in 1985, though relations began in 1979, through 1989, groups of two to three teachers and four to five students spent a semester living, studying, and working in one another’s school community in alternate years. Intensive language and cultural study preceded each visit. The American students in Beijing at the beginning of the 1989 democratic student movements were sent home early, though it is unlikely they would have still been in Beijing by June 4, 1989. After a five year hiatus, the exchange program was resurrected, and began the schedule it is currently on: Chinese students going to the U.S. for four months in the Fall, and American students going to China for four months in the Spring.