Thirty Italian teachers and students began a two-week study exchange at a Sanya school on 2 July, the return leg, in effect, of a two-way exchange between Hainan and Italy that has moved in both directions within six weeks.
The 2026 Hainan International (Italy) Youth Exchange Delegation, 27 students aged 13 to 18 and three teachers, opened at the Shanghai International Studies University Sanya Affiliated Middle School. The programme is guided and supported by the Hainan Provincial Foreign Affairs Office and organised by the school together with the Hainan branch of China News Service (Beijing) International Communication Group.
In May, traffic ran the other way. The Wuzhishan Rainforest Children’s Choir travelled from Hainan to Rome, performing at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization headquarters, Rome’s Visconti High School and the Chinese Embassy.
The Italy channel runs on old plumbing. Sanya and Viareggio, the Tuscan yachting hub, signed their sister-city agreement in November 2015, a relationship that grew out of a 2013 Sino-Italian yacht refit joint venture in Sanya, commerce first, culture later.
The school link is now the active part of it: the same Sanya school hosted 60 Italian students and teachers from Arezzo in April 2024 for an identical two-week programme, making this the second Italian cohort in three years.
Italy is one node in a wider circuit. Hainan has run comparable youth delegations from the United States, South Korea and Malaysia over the past year, all under the same provincial foreign affairs structures.
An internal activity diary seen by TropicalHainan shows the first full day ran on classroom lines: a campus tour, a student handbook and safety briefing, introductory classes on China and Hainan, and an afternoon ink painting lesson in which the students painted cherries.
Italian and Chinese students first met informally in the cafeteria, where the dragon fruit at lunch proved popular.
Student Giulia Scardova, on her first visit to Sanya, told China News Service she hoped to make Chinese friends during the fortnight. The programme’s planned activities include martial arts, calligraphy, visits to Li and Miao villages, science park tours and a high-speed rail journey, with stops in Haikou, Sanya and Wuzhishan.
The delegation remains in Hainan until mid-July.
Related article: Chubaocun: A Cultural Village at the Heart of Hainan’s Li Minority in Wuzhishan
