A cloth tiger toy. A miniature framed calligraphy. A transparent phone case holding a Polaroid photograph of two smiling teenage girls — one American, one Chinese.

To 16-year-old Beatrix Leonards, a high school student in Berkeley, California, these souvenirs from a summer trip to China are reminders of a friendship forged across the Pacific and kept alive through weekly video calls, where the two girls practice each other's languages and laugh at pronunciation mistakes.

More than 100 kilometers away in Sacramento, California, 14-year-old Sam Fine recalled a shared meal with a stranger that helped him understand what communication could accomplish.

It was Thanksgiving break last year in China's Guilin, a city in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, known for its beautiful landscapes. He and his family had hired a ride-share driver who pulled over because he was hungry. The driver invited them to join him for Guilin rice noodles at a small roadside stand.

"Rather than just a driver, I felt he was more like a tour guide," Sam said in an interview conducted in Chinese.

Sam first visited China with his parents at age 6. He started learning Chinese in first grade at an elementary school with a Chinese immersion program in Sacramento.

"My father felt that we had gone to China so many times but still could not talk to people there, and he felt like we were letting them down," Sam said in fluent Chinese. "So I started learning Chinese. That way, we could chat with our friends and also gain a deeper understanding of China."

By the time he graduated from elementary school, Sam had committed fully to his studies. Now he takes Chinese lessons entirely online, including composition classes, mathematics instruction in Chinese and even debate courses. His younger brother, Thomas, has followed the same path, taking lessons several times daily.

The shift in how Sam experienced China struck him most powerfully during the 2024 Chinese Bridge competition in Beijing.

"After I learned Chinese, the overall experience changed. Compared with before, I could talk to the people around me, and it was as if the experience had gained a little more color," he said.

During the competition, held at the Forbidden City, Sam looked at the classical characters inscribed on the ancient structures.

"If I had just been a foreign tourist like before, I definitely would not have known how to read them," he said. "But as someone who knows Chinese, I could read them."

For that competition, Sam won the Americas championship in the fourth Chinese Bridge Chinese Show for Foreign Primary School Students in October 2024.

That ability to read the language opened doors to understanding the country itself. After visiting multiple Chinese cities, Sam absorbed the weight of Chinese history, such as the Sanxingdui ruins and the legends of Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

He also began to feel frustrated with stereotypes he heard back home.

"Some people around me still do not understand China very well and have some stereotypes, so I tell them that the real China is completely different from what they imagined," he said. "That is why I definitely hope they can visit China. To me, China is a very interesting country."

His motivation deepened during that Thanksgiving trip to Guilin. The driver who invited them over for rice noodles told Sam something that stayed with him.

"He said he had picked up many foreign tourists before but could only translate simple phrases on his phone," Sam recalled. By contrast, the driver spoke freely with Sam and his family about Guilin's beauty, local life and his own experiences.

"Thank you for talking with me. I hope I can be your driver again next time," the man said when they arrived at their destination, Sam recounted. "He said no foreign tourists had chatted with him before, so he really treasured the experience of driving and talking with me and my family."

That encounter helped Sam understand why communication matters. "I feel like learning Chinese has helped me understand how Chinese people feel, and how different people feel," Sam said.

Beatrix took a different path into Chinese studies. Now a junior at a high school in Berkeley, she became drawn to the language at a cultural event in Chinatown in Oakland, California.

"I really love learning languages, and I think the really interesting thing about Chinese is that it is so different from English. That was one of the reasons I wanted to learn it," Beatrix said.

The tonal system, the character-based writing and the grammar being fundamentally distinct from English all appealed to her sense of intellectual adventure. She committed to her studies, and several years of dedication paid off when she was accepted into a summer exchange program in China.

Last summer, Beatrix traveled to Beijing, Shanghai and several other Chinese cities. She visited historical sites and, more importantly, spent time with Chinese students her own age. Among them was a girl whose face appeared in the Polaroid photograph she carries in her phone case.

What began as a summer friendship has endured across the Pacific. The two young women video call regularly, switching between English and Chinese as they practice pronunciation and trade stories about their lives.

The friendship surprised her with its ease. During the exchange, she and her Chinese friends encountered moments when one struggled to express a thought in the other's language. Rather than abandon the conversation, they simply used English when Chinese fell short, or Chinese when English did not quite capture the meaning.

Both Sam and Beatrix have thought deeply about what their cross-cultural friendships mean at a time of geopolitical tension.

"When you have two groups of people who are on opposite sides of the world, like the United States and China, it can be very hard to learn about each other and see what life is actually like for a person in the other country," said Beatrix.

Geopolitical tension, she suggested, can seep into personal relationships if people allow it to. But direct contact, genuine friendship and real conversations can disrupt that dynamic.

"Cultural exchange is so important, because it reminds you that the relationship between two countries' governments should not affect people's ability to bond with each other, get to know each other, really learn about each other and have a good relationship," she said.

Sam observed that American and Chinese young people have much in common.

"To young Chinese people, I would tell them America is similar to China in a lot of ways," Sam said. "Both places are big, they have a lot of cities and you can explore a lot once you understand the languages."