Joining hands across the water

Flourishing exchanges

In addition to trade, educational exchanges have flourished between the sister cities, fostering long-lasting connections among young people in China and the US.

On Sept 23, 2015, during his first state visit to the US as China's president, Xi returned to Tacoma. Lincoln High School was selected as the venue, partly because of the sister-city ties and the sister-school relationship between the school and the Affiliated High School of Fuzhou Institute of Education.

At the school, Xi spoke to students, brought a ping-pong table and books on China, and later sent a personal invitation for 100 students to visit China the following year.

"I feel incredibly lucky and grateful for being selected for that trip," said Rigel Adams, now 23, who was a member of the Lincoln High School group that traveled to China in 2016.

"We did so much in those days, meeting other Chinese students, visiting different schools and getting to truly experience Chinese culture. It was the experience of a lifetime. After I visited in 2016, I just fell in love with the people and the culture in China. Everyone here is caring and polite, and it's much more community-focused. It's very different from the US, and I like it."

Since that trip, Adams, who recently graduated from university with a bachelor's degree in science and economics, has been back to China six times and visited many Chinese cities.

"During those trips, I was able to build some personal as well as professional relationships. My hope is to continue expanding those relationships and maybe to one day (turn that) into a business relationship."

Since 2016, Lincoln High School has frequently arranged visits to China, and the Affiliated High School of Fuzhou Institute of Education has also sent students to attend summer camp exchange activities at Lincoln High School every year before the pandemic.

During the pandemic, the offline exchange programs between the two cities had to be put on hold, but many initiatives demonstrated how close the cities had become to one another. Fuzhou and Tacoma began setting up relationships between schools, facilitating exchanges between Chinese students studying English and Tacoma students studying Chinese.

"From 2020 to 2024, our school exchanged letters with Lincoln High School over 50 times. In 2023, we relaunched our Pen Pal project with Lincoln High School, pairing 35 of our high school freshmen and sophomores with 38 students from Lincoln High School studying Chinese," said Wei Jian, head of the Affiliated High School of Fuzhou Institute of Education.

The school hosted a Tacoma student group led by Mayor Woodards in June and another US student group in July.

"Through diverse activities such as traditional Chinese cultural classes including calligraphy and paper-cutting and friendly sports matches like basketball and rugby, such visits help to strengthen understanding and friendship between Chinese and American youth, laying a solid foundation for future relations," said Wei.

"So often our young people live in their communities and they don't know about the entire world," Woodards said. "I think when they get out of their surroundings and have an opportunity to travel across the world and meet other young people who are just like them, it makes not only our cities a better place, but it makes our world a better place."

The sister-cities program is about promoting peace through people, and the idea is that the more people know about communities worldwide, the more they understand that we are more alike than we are different, she said.