Chinese kids flock to U.S. Christian schools

Sporting hipster glasses and a Nikon D5300 slung over his gray Pokémon T-shirt, Chinese student Toby Wei speaks softly about how he traveled more than 6,500 miles to study at a Christian high school in the Pacific Northwest.

“First of all, I separate America into two halves, East and West Coast. Then I roll a dice,” the 17-year-old junior said with a smile.

He got the West Coast, and rolled again to pick a state. Oregon won, and then Santiam Christian High School. He left his hometown of Zhongshan, with a population of more than 3 million, to live in Adair Village, a rural neighborhood of 840.

Despite Oregon’s seemingly ever-present drizzle, Wei walks across the street to school every day.

“The weather’s perfect here. I like rain,” he said.

One of an expanding number of Chinese high school students traveling to the United States for school, Wei began begging his parents to let him come to America when he was 8 years old. He wants to study media and hopes to become a journalist. He carries his camera with him every day as if to prove it.

“It’s what makes Toby, Toby,” chirped fellow student Cathy Sun, 15, who also left China to study at Santiam. Wei and Sun are two of 18 Chinese students in Santiam’s 38-student international program, which makes up 16 percent of the school’s 232-student high school.

In 2005, fewer than 1,000 high school students from China applied for an F-1 student visa, according to a study by the Institute for International Education. By 2013, more than 23,000 applied for and received visas. In 2014 and the first three months of 2015, the number ballooned to 52,347.

With 4.3 million students from around the world studying higher education outside their home countries, the surge in Chinese students studying in the United States is not isolated. But most foreign students come from China, and most Chinese students choose the U.S.—with 58 percent selecting Christian schools to complete their education.

Religion is less of a factor for Chinese parents than school location, ranking, reputation with international students, and cost. But for the schools, imparting the love of Christ is just as important as giving their growing numbers of international students a good education.

“Families tell us they prefer Catholic or Christian schools because they’ve heard that the religious schools are nicer to their students,” said Brenda Vishanoff, director of international students at Wheaton Academy in Illinois. “They are less worried about abuse.”

The reputation for kind host families and strict codes of conduct has driven growth. At Wheaton, the international program has expanded steadily from two students in 2006 to 62 students this school year. Wheaton receives more than 100 applications for every one spot opened for a Chinese student.

“One student’s good experience turns into 10 more applications,” Vishanoff said.

Erin Wilcox with the Association of Christian Schools International agreed Chinese parents are looking for a safe, “high moral values” kind of place for their students but noted they also are middle-class families looking for a good financial deal. Preparatory school can cost upwards of $40,000, and religious schools often charge less than the national private school average of $9,388 per year, according to Time magazine.

Parents who send their students to the United States often are giving them a way around the daunting battery of tests ending in the gaokao, the Chinese college entrance exam. American high school could lead to American college, which could lead to a good job back in China. It’s an alternative route to success.

“Students that come to America are not always the top students in China. The top students in China are getting into universities in China,” Wilcox said. “Christian schools are often a better value for your money.”

Christian schools see the phenomenon as a win-win situation. Chinese students get a dream education and can enroll in extra-curricular activities like basketball and drama, while the schools gain funds, multi-cultural exposure for their students, and a captive mission field.

Not all students become Christians while in the U.S., but some do.

Aimme Zhang, now studying psychology at the University of Washington, accepted Christ her junior year at Santiam. It took three years for the conviction of God’s love to outweigh fears of her parents’ disapproval.

Zhang’s first encounter with God occurred her freshman year. On top of the language barrier, she was facing pressure from another Chinese student to cheat.

“I was at a desperate place internally. It was just too much to handle,” she said. Before bed one night, she remembered the advice of a beloved teacher, Quentin Haase: “You should pray.” She followed his advice for the first time. Then she went to sleep. The next morning, she felt more than happy. “It was very satisfying and peaceful. It was joy,” she recalled.

Zhang said the inexplicable feeling lasted two days, and she knew it came from God. But when she told her parents about the experience, they grew furious. Similar things happened throughout the year, but her parents opposed her saying they came from God. They even suggested she transfer to another school.

“If your relationship with God is like a tree, I will cut back every branch that grows when you come back this summer,” her dad warned.

Freshman year was like a game of tug-of-war, she said. She’d have a moment with God, “and then my family would pull me back.” Sophomore year, she told God maybe she could one day become His follower, just not yet. Her family was still too much a priority. Right before her junior year, she began to feel ready. At an annual school retreat called Pursuit, she accepted Christ when the speaker gave the students a quiet moment for reflection.

Before telling her parents, she asked for a lot of prayer. But their reaction was the opposite of what she expected. They were calm and accepting, eventually growing excited over their daughter’s new attitude. When Steve Bittner, Santiam’s junior high principal and the international program coordinator, visited them later in China, they asked him, “What have you done to our daughter? We love it, but what have you done to her?”

While the Christian environment changes some hearts, it can aggravate students whose parents forced them to come to America, said Amy Long, international student program coordinator at Asheville Christian Academy in North Carolina.

“This year I had to send a girl back at Christmas break,” she said. “She just refused to integrate.”

The girl made sure Long knew how much she hated Bible class, hated everything. She made excellent grades on English proficiency tests but pretended she couldn’t understand anything school counselors said.

Other integration troubles are sometimes humorous. Staff at Asheville try hard to teach international students common “slang” they might hear at school, but not everything gets covered. One student, Long said, finally asked an international coordinator, “What’s up? Kids are asking me in the hallway, ‘What's up?’ and whenever I look up, there is nothing there.”

Most of the time, the Chinese students love being in America and mesh well with the other students, even if they're not planning to become Christians.

“I feel brainwashed a lot,” Sun said with a smile. “I'm not a Christian yet. I mean, they don’t force you to become a Christian.”

But the pressure is real. Concerned Christian friends frequently ask the international students if they have accepted Christ yet. Wei wants to understand beliefs of all kinds but has reservations about becoming a Christian in haste.

“I think the idea of Christianity about redemption and salvation is really good,” he said. “The main problem I have with Christianity is not God or Jesus, but how Christians act with Christian beliefs. It’s not to say they are acting bad. Just because, I think sometimes they will hold their own truth to attack others.”

Regardless of pressure, Wei said he enjoys the camaraderie of the group of international students that came last school year. The students became a tight-knit group, scrolling over each other’s phones at lunchtime and sharing “one big bucket of ice cream” at sports games.

“This is like the best year of my life,” he said.