Scavenger Hunt at Nanjing University (南京大学)

On the Chinese Language & Culture program in Nanjing, students study at Nanjing University, a university that is very well known and respected around all of China. The Nanjing University campus is huge and has so much to offer domestic and international students. To get our students familiar with all of the cool places that they can visit on and near campus, we decided to switch out the typical walking tour for a fun, adventurous scavenger hunt! 

We divided the students into 3 groups. Each group was given a sheet of instructions. Students had to go to 10 places of interest on and around campus and complete a mission at each place. They had to take pictures, send videos, and answers questions about the places using WeChat (a Chinese messaging app). To get some of the answers, students had to use their Chinese skills to ask questions to locals and become familiar with Baidu Maps (the equivalent of Google Maps in China).

After getting to all the places and completing all the missions, students had to find their program leaders at a super secret hiding spot. While students were completing their tasks at the assigned locations, they were sporadically given clues about the location of the secret hiding spot.  

The rules were simple: the first team to complete all the missions at each location and make it to the secret hiding spot would be the winners. However, two factors were taken into account: time and accuracy. Of course, there were prizes to be won by the first, second, and third place teams. The first-place prize was an allowance of 40 yuan to watch a movie in a movie theater. The second-place prize was 2 tickets that would cover the price of a coffee at a cafe. The third-place prize was postcards of Nanjing to keep and send to family. 

Some of the missions in the scavenger hunt included: 

Going to the famous North Building of Nanjing University (南京大学北大楼) and asking at least 3 locals to take a picture with the group jumping in front of the building

Finding the Lanzhou Pulled Noodles (兰州拉面) restaurant on Hankou Road (汉口路) and asking an employee to help take a picture outside the restaurant

Going to the bakery Paris Baguette (巴黎贝甜) to find a delicious-looking piece of cake and take a picture of it as well as find out how much it costs and its name in Chinese

Finding the Nanjing local restaurant Ren Quan Dao (人全到饭店) to find out the price of a famous Chinese eggplant dish (干烧肉沫茄子)

And finding the Deyou Stationary Store in case they need to buy more study supplies for their Chinese classes

After some pretty fierce competition, the first group to arrive at the secret location and get all the correct answers was Group 1, which was made up of Calypso, Maribel, Khalil, Xavier, Jenna, and Jasmine. They attributed their victory to dividing up the tasks and tackling them in small groups. They were all very excited to win their 40 yuan movie allowance so they can watch a movie in a Chinese movie theater! Group 2 with Kennedy, Emily, Han, Owen, Reid, and Arianna came in second place. Group 3 with Melody, Hailey, Katy, Dustin, Ry, and Tori came in third place.  

In the end, students really enjoyed the scavenger hunt activity! They got to practice their Chinese by talking with tons of local people to find the locations and complete the tasks, find places around campus that they would like to come back to, learn how to use their Chinese navigation apps and get around the school, and, most importantly, bond with their group mates and get to know each other much better. All in all, the scavenger hunt was a success, and we're so glad that our students got a chance to see everything that the CIEE Nanjing study center can offer them while they're studying on the program! 

All photos taken by students during the scavenger hunt