Young American participants learn traditional hand movements from Min Opera performers during a cultural exchange activity in Fuzhou, Fujian Province, on July 1, 2026. Photo: IC

　　At a China-US teacher exchange event in late August, Qian Jianfen, an English teacher from Suzhou No. 1 High School, watched a crowd of Chinese educators gather around an elderly American man: Ronald Sakolsky, a veteran educator known to his Chinese colleagues as Mr S.

　　Twenty-six years ago, Qian took part in a program organized by the China Education Association for International Exchange (CEAIE) and spent a year teaching in Colorado. She lived with an American family during her stay. The experience changed the way she understood the US, and the two families have remained in touch for more than two decades.

　　That same year, Sakolsky was teaching in China as part of CEAIE"s China-US teacher exchange program. During that year, he met Yin Yuzhen, a Chinese woman who had spent years planting trees and fighting desertification. This summer, Sakolsky returned to China. He revisited the trees he had planted 26 years earlier and reunited with former students and teachers.

　　The two journeys began in different classrooms, but they shared a starting point: a trip across the Pacific that grew into a lasting connection.

　　The August exchange event brought together some 150 Chinese and American teachers, students and educators online and in person. Attendees shared intimate, unassuming memories: the nervousness of their first cross-Pacific trip, reunions with long-lost students, American children learning to use chopsticks for the first time, and Chinese teachers and students adapting to life in American households.