Fu Bo, standing council member of the CEAIE, who accompanied Sakolsky throughout his visit, told the Global Times that in earlier China-US exchanges, the core question was: How do we get young people from the two countries to meet?

　　Now, as more students have entered one another"s classrooms, other questions have emerged. Can they stay in touch after they meet? Can a short visit become long-term study, and curiosity about another culture develop into deeper understanding? Can young people from the two countries find practical ways to talk and work together on issues such as climate change and technological development?

　　Wu stressed that exchanges are progressing from "initial encounters" to "genuine mutual understanding." She said that youth engagement helps young people move beyond biased secondhand information and form independent judgments, and she hopes future exchange programs will broaden their agenda from language and culture to global challenges, opening more space for meaningful, pragmatic cooperation.

　　For many of these programs, reaching a target is a milestone, not an endpoint. Larger-scale and deeper cross-cultural exchanges still lie ahead, Fu said.

　　"The bridge between the US and China is built brick by brick, by ordinary people from both countries," Sakolsky told the Global Times in an earlier interview.

　　At the Beijing event in August, Qian lingered after the closing ceremony.

　　For her, the gathering was also a moment of looking back.

　　She had once been the Chinese teacher boarding a plane across the Pacific and walking into an American classroom for the first time. Years later, she stood at her school welcoming American teenagers making their first journeys to China.