Visiting Chinese students take pictures during a Marana dance team practice. Chinese students take part in far fewer extracurricular activities than American students.

Jim Davis / Arizona Daily Star

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A group of students from Nanjing, China, visiting Tucson last week were astonished by the size of Marana High School.

"They have a lot of parts that we don't have at our school. The place like a factory and the swimming pool," said Zhang Shuhan, who is 16 and speaks English. "Our school is not as big as this one, but it is very tall."

The "place like a factory" she referred to is the school's automotive technology classroom.

In addition to that and the swimming pool, the campus features two gymnasiums, a small playground, live animals, baseball fields and other amenities that are common at other local high schools, but nothing like the school the Chinese students attend in Nanjing.

Shuhan and about 90 of her classmates at Nanjing Foreign Language School, which has a high school and junior high school, stopped by Marana High School, 12000 W. Emigh Road, on July 17 during a nearly three-week visit to the United States.

Other stops on the 16- to 18-year-olds' itineraries included Los Angeles, Disneyland, Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon.

After leaving Tucson last week, the students traveled to the East Coast to visit Washington, D.C., and Niagara Falls in New York.

The students and the 10 teachers accompanying them were expected to return to Nanjing on Tuesday.

This is the third year a group of Chinese students from the foreign language school have visited Marana. They were accompanied by about 16 Marana students, all of whom are members of the cheerleading team or Student Council.

Marana Principal Jim Doty said the visits equally benefit his students and the Chinese students.

"These are also the students they are going to compete against in a global market," Doty said.

"If I could go to China and get the same experience, it would be amazing," said Marana senior NJani Payne, who is 17.

To visit would be nice, but it might be difficult for the Marana students to adjust to the schedule at the Nanjing school.

Nanjing Foreign Language School students spend most of their time pursuing academic interests rather than participating in extracurricular activities.

The students spend about 10 hours a day attending nine or more classes in a school eight stories high. They also attend school on Saturday.

In comparison, the students at Marana usually spend about seven hours a day attending six classes Monday through Friday.

"In China, they are more focused on their studies, not social activities," said Sun Yile, who teaches English at the Nanjing school. "I think the students from China are more serious."

All of the students are learning English and also can take Japanese, German and French.

"We are hard-working," Shuhan said.

The Marana students were impressed with the Chinese students, but prefer high school in America.

"We get so many privileges, and they are happy taking nine classes a day," said Payne. "We look at them with amazement."

In some ways, that feeling is mutual.

"You can do any kind of activity here," said Ge Yixne, who is 16.

Hands-on classrooms, such as the biology class where students can dissect pigs, also caught the attention of the Chinese students, who asked where the pigs were. Since school is out, there were no pigs in the classroom.

"It's more active and interesting, Yixne said. "We can only see the pictures."