Before coming to Person County, the educators toured Raleigh, where they saw symbols of state government, museums and other big city sights.

When asked on Wednesday about the highlight of their trip, however, the two emphatically stated that a pig pickin’ and race car demonstration at Orange County Speedway made the trip across the planet well worthwhile.

“Wonderful,” “special,” and “very good time” were words used to describe the evening, in which Jay Foushee cooked a pig, his wife Kim, operations manager at OCS, and speedway owner Vance Agee provided a sample of down home North Carolina hospitality, complete with a test and tune demonstration by drivers Maurice and Ronald Hill and Adam Cole.

The two also enjoyed seeing small town America, saying that the open, green spaces around Person County were “lovely,” and that the town of Roxboro was “nothing like China” where there are lots of tall buildings and most people live in high rise apartments.

Nanjing is a developing area of China, the visitors said, therefore, the buildings “are getting higher and higher.”

In China, trees and grass are reserved for parks, unlike here, where “they are everywhere,” the visitors observed.

The schools in China and the United States are quite different as well, with Chinese students more accustomed to rote learning and not as much hands-on and problem solving as here.

The Chinese government mandates that all children be taught English, Chinese and math. Individual schools offer various other courses according to the needs of the students or the area in which the school is located.

Class sizes are often much larger in China, according to the educators from Nanjing. Most teachers have between 30 and 50 students in one class.

It is also common for teachers in China to work 12-hour days, as they do several jobs in addition to classroom teaching. It is not uncommon for teachers to help clean the school, meet with parents, and offer tutoring to students before and after regular classroom hours.

The structure of school in China is much more strict and demanding because students are under a great deal of pressure to succeed.

Students in Nanjing wear uniforms to school and “MP3 players and cell phones are not allowed” in school.

It is very much a part of Chinese culture for parents to expect their children to excel in school. Therefore, parents are involved in their children’s education, pushing them on to succeed.

The parents also put a lot of pressure on teachers, according to the educators who visited this week, so that their children can live well and obtain well-paying jobs.

Teachers make slightly more in China than here in the U.S., comparatively, and their jobs command respect.

The school year is longer — 200 days compared to 180 in the U.S. — and parents are involved and have “a lot of control” over education.

While here, the Chinese educators taught a class at Person High. They also visited several classes and went to Stories Creek Elementary School and Piedmont Community College.

Person High Principal Margaret Bradsher said Wednesday, “It is wonderful” to have the visitors here. “We are excited to have the chance to expand our global knowledge. There is a lot we can learn from each other and hopefully we can open the doors to more global processes.”

The visit this week was the second part of an initiative PHS embarked upon last year as part of the Center for International Understanding’s North Carolina-China School Partnership Program.

Person High teacher Jerry Stewart visited Nanjing last fall. He said this week that he was honored by the experience and happy to have had the opportunity to see how teachers and schools in China work.

Stewart said learning about the Chinese culture and getting to know educators and students there helped him to see ways in which he could improve methods for his students here.