WOODLAND HILLS : Chinese Visitors Get Taste of U.S. Shopping

Ice cream. Snapple. Toothpaste. Salsa.

This slice of American culture was served up to a 75-member envoy of Chinese exchange students during a field trip Tuesday from Hale Middle School in Woodland Hills to a shopping center down the street.

The Chinese students, who range in age from 11 to 14, make up the youngest and largest exchange group from mainland China ever to come to the United States. Next year, there are plans to send students from the Los Angeles Unified School District to China.

The shopping excursion’s purpose was to allow the students a chance to do a little personal shopping and practice their English vocabulary.

But with a $2 spending limit, there was not much they could buy. Chagrined that she could not buy some lipstick, “Ellen” Fan, 12, sniffed, “No money.”

The students’ ability to get to their money has been restricted because Hale administrators have discovered the Chinese students often take large amounts of money to campus.

One girl tried to buy lunch at the cafeteria with a $100 bill, according to school officials.

Escorted by their English as a Second Language teacher, Mandarin-speaking teacher’s aides and some American students from the school, the entourage walked en masse to Platt Village shopping center to browse through the goods at a Pavilions supermarket, Thrifty drugstore and House of Fabrics.

At the supermarket, they sounded out the names of products ranging from American-made chow mein mix to cranberry-apple juice cocktail.

“They get to walk around and identify items,” said Jenny Kuo, a junior at Cal State Northridge who has been working this semester as a translator at Hale.

To improve communication between the Chinese and Hale students, William Chang, the ESL teacher, assigned American names to all 75 children to improve communication between them and the Hale students.

“It’s easier to pronounce these names. People were having trouble because they weren’t responding,” Chang said.

Along with their new names, the Chinese students have adopted a slightly more casual, and more American, wardrobe of denim and flannel and attitude.

“They’re coming along well with their shyness and speaking in class,” Kuo said of the Chinese children in the month they have spent in the United States.

Standing in front of the rack of egg cartons, Kuo asked a group of the Chinese students in English, “Where are the eggs?”

They emphatically point to the rows of milk in the dairy section.

Now, about their English . . .