Chinese students take a rest outside a building of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology during their summer camp tour. (Photo/Global Times)
As Chinese tourists flood every corner of the globe, in summer time it's the Chinese children that conquer the world during the break between semesters.
For a few months starting from June, it is almost impossible to avoid encountering these kids.
The Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC, the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Golden Gate Bridge at San Francisco Bay, and the small town of Lexington are all packed with young Chinese faces; even the less touristy Californian capital Sacramento is visited by many of them, and you can be sure there are plenty in Times Square in the must-see capitalist capital of New York.
As the numbers of better-off Chinese families increase, they are no longer satisfied with just sending their kids to domestic attractions.
While some of the kids travel with their parents to the US, many others stay with organized summer camps, flying all the way across the Pacific Ocean to see through their own eyes how life in the world's only superpower looks.
Many of the elementary schools and middle schools in Chinese cities, especially in big cities like Beijing, have started organizing summer trips to the US and European countries every year. There are also increasing numbers of various educational institutes and tourism agencies organizing such trips.
As the US is such a big country with its tourist attractions spread out on both coasts, the student summer camps usually last for at least 10 days to more than two weeks. Each student pays 30,000 to 50,000 yuan ($4,872 to 8,120) for the trip, depending on the length of their stay in the foreign country and how many cities they visit.
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