Chicago Chinatown Trip
FHPS Chinese Immersion Juniors
Friday, March 17, 2023
FHPS Juniors had a blast visiting Chicago Chinatown as a class field trip. Highlights include Chinese American Veterans Memorial, Ping Tom Memorial Park and Phoenix Restaurant.
Chicago, the "Windy City"
Chicago lived up to it's name today - it was a super windy chilly day in the "Windy City," nonetheless, we had a great trip visiting Chicago Chinatown.
Because of the time difference, our group had time to spare before the Chinese American Museum, so we went to the Ping Tom Memorial Park along the Chicago River & took some fun group pictures. We used some of the lunch money to buy huge Chinese bao, steamed & bagged them for students to munched as a pre-lunch snack. BTW, If your kid love the huge bao – China City Bakery in Kentwood sells them for about $1.50 each!
At the Chinese American Museum, the docent and staff could not believe that our students were so fluent in Chinese! We stopped by the Chinese American Veterans Memorial and decided to head over to the restaurant for lunch.
At Phoenix Restaurant, our students sampled about 15 different dim sum delicacies and for our vegetarians there were 7 dim sum dishes. (see link to dim sum menu) So many of our students were willing to get outside their comfort zone and try food with tastes, textures, and scents that were new and different to them. Some of the more adventurous students tried tripe, jellyfish, lung, sea kelp, and chicken feet!
After lunch, we enjoyed a bit more sightseeing, and free time afterwards. Most of them bought snacks & drinks, a few bought “coolie hats” and paper lanterns for souvenirs as well as took advantage of more photo ops.
All together we spent six hours roundtrip in transit (i.e. napping, chatting, snacking) and six hours touring in Chinatown.Prof Xiang ask each student to choose one exhibit they found interesting and explain it to the class on Monday. Here is a map of some of the places we visited in Chicago’s Chinatown.
