Chinese in Jersey – see the video and gallery

The students, from Bayi High School in Beijing, visited Hautlieu on Tuesday, when they joined Jersey students for their lessons and performed in a show to demonstrate traditional Chinese culture.

  • Hautlieu School has been twinned with Beijing Bayi Middle School, a high school in Beijing, since 2011.
  • The partnership was agreed in June that year after Jersey’s then foreign minister, Freddie Cohen, made an official visit to the country to develop ties between the two places.
  • Beijing Bayi was established in March 1947 in the Fuping Country of Hebei Province and moved to Beijing in 1949.
  • It is now one of the key high schools in the Haidian district of Beijing and has around 3,400 students, as well as more than 250 teachers and more than 100 teaching assistants and administration staff.
  • Announcing the twinning in 2011, Senator Cohen said: ‘This is a fabulous opportunity for Jersey students to develop an understanding of the largest developing economy in the world through interaction with Chinese students.’
  • Hautlieu School had requested the twinning after a group of 80 students and staff visited China the previous year.

Hautlieu head teacher, Nick Falle, said: ‘We are honoured to welcome the students. We have 120 students and staff this year and last year we had 80, so we are delighted that our friends from Bayi can spend three days to explore some of Jersey’s magnificent and beautiful heritage.

‘We are already planning the 2016 trip and we want to make this a long-term relationship with Bayi school.

‘This is a relationship that could and should last for decades.’

Each year, the students and teachers from the Chinese school, where Xi Jinping – the country’s head of state – was educated, go on a two-week tour of the UK.

They visited the Island for the first time last year, after becoming twinned with Hautlieu in 2011.

More than 50 students from Hautlieu will be visiting Beijing in two weeks’ time, as they have done for a number of years, and will be taking part in lessons that include Mandarin.

‘I think it is fundamental for us to develop our sense of being internationally minded,’ Mr Falle added.

‘Students come back from China energised and willing to meet people from different cultures.

‘We are in this for the long term.’

During their visit, half of the students spent the day at Hautlieu joining in with lessons, while the other half visited the Noirmont bunkers and Gorey Castle.

The visiting students joined together on Tuesday afternoon to perform in front of their peers in Hautlieu’s main hall and demonstrate their skills in traditional Chinese dance, song and martial arts.

In the evening, a number of parents and families then welcomed the Beijing students into their houses for a home-cooked meal and to share more of Jersey’s culture and lifestyle.

Head girl Katherine Gibaut (17)

Head girl Katherine Gibaut

‘It has been fantastic having them here. It is wonderful to meet so many new people from a completely different culture. Last night we had a reception and we got to mingle and make friends with them. Today we had them in lessons with us and it really helped to be able to get to know them all.’

Bryony O’Hare (17)

Bryony O'Hare (17)

‘We have been taking them round the school today and exchanging cultures and learning how their day is different from ours. They work a lot harder and longer hours than we do here and because it is such a different culture, it makes it really interesting to learn about the differences between us and them.’

Aine Loynd (17)

Aine Loynd (17)

‘It was really nice to sit with the people we are hosting and they are really excited to be here. They have no time for extra-curricular activities because they have so much school work to do. It has made me realise how much time I waste each day just doing nothing when I think that they do not have enough time for other things.’

Elizabeth Keenan (18)

Elizabeth Keenan (18)

‘We got to talk to them at lunch time and learn about their home life. They got to eat some of our food, which they enjoyed, and we have exchanged email addresses so that we can keep in contact with each other later on.’

Mikey Pih (14)

Mikey Pih (14)

‘It is so different to have the Chinese students here because I am not used to things like this. I am looking forward to hosting them and I will definitely keep in contact with them so that we can share our experiences.’

  • IN October, the JEP reported that Mandarin Chinese and Portuguese lessons could be offered to all Island youngsters to keep Jersey competitive and promote trade links with other countries, according to a new report.
  • The two languages, which are already offered to some children on a limited basis, have been identified as possible options for increasing the language curriculum locally in a report lodged with the States.
  • The then Education Minister Patrick Ryan’s report concluded that both languages would help Jersey to trade with other countries, particularly Brazil and China.
  • It also suggested that languages should be taught from as young an age as possible, ideally in nurseries and reception classes.
  • A survey of parents with nursery-age children found wide support for a bilingual school in Jersey. Of the 256 people who responded, 60 per cent said they would send their child to a school where lessons are taught in more than one language if one were available, and 66 per cent said that the second language at such a school should be French.
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