On April 19^th, 1998 the first four groups of this year’s grade 7 Hong Kong International School (HKIS) students begin the ninth annual, weeklong travel study tour of China. Another four groups of 25 students and 7 adults will depart Hong Kong for China the following week, on April 26^th. Also, this is the fourth consecutive year HKIS will share its travel adventures and studies with students and teachers around the world through an email and web-based project called "Virtual China". Students outside of Honk Kong can easily and comfortably participate in Virtual China ’98 if they are subscribed to KIDLINK and KIDPROJ.

During this year’s two weeks of trips HKIS students will once again be studying the people, transportation, housing, work places, education, culture, religion and environment of two different areas of China. One area studied will be Xi’an, China. The other will be the rural China countryside 100-200 miles WNW of Hong Kong.

This year an exceptionally large number of HKIS 7^th graders chose to go biking. Therefore we’ll have three bike groups traveling in and around the cities of Longshan and Sunhing to the north and down through Kaiping (Hoi Ping), Taishan, Duhu, and possibly as far south as Kwang Hai (Kong Hoi) on the southern coast of Guandong Province. Each of the three bike group leaders has chosen his or her sequencing and particular roads to travel between these cities.

At the same time a fourth group of 25 students will be flying about 1,200 miles north of Hong Kong for their studies in and around Xi’an, ancient capital of China for thousands of years and home of the famous Terra Cotta Warriors. It is our sincere hope that you can join us in our goal, "To grow in our understanding, appreciation and respect for the Chinese people and culture."

For the third consecutive year AT&T is providing assistance with transmissions from our China travelers to Virtual China ’98. Also, this year DELL Computer Corporation has donated ten Latitude CP laptop computers which when combined with two others will allow each traveling group to take three laptops for composing messages, downloading digital images and attaching these files to daily messages from China. Our goal is to "serve you the information while it is still warm." Problems in the field may mean some messages may be delayed a day or two. However, when the information arrives it promises to be interesting!

There are two ways for students outside Hong Kong to participate in Virtual China ’98. One is to simply be a passive participant by logging onto the web and pointing your web browser to: www.kidlink.org/KIDPROJ/VChina98 ……. Then simply reading the "Reports" and viewing the images HKIS students are sending. The second way to participate (and this is the one we hope you choose) again assumes you are using a web browser such as Netscape or Internet Explorer. Simply go to the same VChina website within the KIDPROJ address listed above and look for a link to the "WWWBoard". This link will take you to a public message board with various categories where your questions and HKIS’s answers can both be posted for everyone to see. Finally, if you want to actively participate but have no access to the world wide web you may send your questions to the following email address which we will be monitoring from April 1^st to May 15^th for this project: ms1@ms.hkis.edu.hk Whichever method you use to communicate we’ll try our best to have grade 7 students answer your questions within a reasonable period of time.