June 7-14 2026
At a Glance
Our program is a combination of hands-on work each morning (20 hours of community service credit for the week), afternoon China-themed cultural activities focusing on this year’s theme of “Craft: Making Culture” and camp fun in the afternoons and evenings.
Service Activities
The morning service activities in rotation are designed to have students experientially learn different skills as they help China Folk House build our People-to-People Cultural Exchange Center and pilot our Cultural Workshop Series. The activities are structured around this year’s theme of “Craft: Making Culture” and our ongoing programs on “Architecture and Traditional Building Arts”, and “Fengshui: Cultivating Landscape.” This year students will rotate between five hands-on service activities:
- building a pottery kiln for our growing craft programs offered to the public
- doing carpentry and joinery on a house model and an outdoor kitchen structure to pilot our public workshops on traditional Chinese joinery.
- building Chinese lattice fence and rammed earth walls to enclose (deer-proof) our site
- working in our vegetable and ethnobotany gardens to develop gardening workshops
- trail construction and masonry landscaping in collaboration with Friends Wilderness Center to improve public access to the 1,600-acre Rolling Ridge nature preserve.
Students will be working under the guidance of our teaching staff, including a master gardener, carpenter, timber frame joiner, and stone mason, as well as craft teachers and experts on Chinese history and culture.
Cultural And Fun Activities
The afternoon and evening cultural and fun activities feature Chinese craft classes on landscape and mural painting, ceramic arts, paper making, woodblock printing, embroidery, and traditional indigo tie dye. as well as short talks on history and culture topics given by anthropologist Dr. Pamela Leonard, historian Dr. John Flower, visiting experts on China, friends from the Chinese American community, and college interns doing research projects at China Folk House. Other afternoon activities include a kung fu class, Chinese cooking lessons, a square dance, and a nature activity such as kayaking or canoeing in the Shenandoah River or hiking up to the Appalachian Trail or doing a naturalist-guided nature walk. In the evenings we have courtyard movies, bonfires with ‘smores, and game nights. We try to vary the activities and to give the campers free time to relax and have fun.
Transportation, Meals, Lodging
Parents drop off the campers between 1 and 2pm on Sunday, June 7 and pick them up between 1 and 2pm on Sunday, June 14. All the activities take place in and around China Folk House. Meals are made onsite with our commercial kitchen and professional cooking staff, and students harvest vegetables from our garden and help in the kitchen. Lodging is up to six students in each of our three Chinese-design and student-built bunkhouses, or in our large canvas “glamping” tents. Our bathhouse has five toilets and five showers, and we have a washer and dryer in our laundry room.
Program Cost
There is a dedicated financial aid fund specifically to support experiential learning at China Folk House, and we want any child who wants to participate in our programs to have that opportunity, so we encourage families who need assistance to contact us. Our Culinary Arts and Chinese Architecture and Joinery Workshops are supported by start-up grants from the United Chinese American Community Foundation. We are a nonprofit with a mission to serve the community. To discuss financial aid, please email us at chinafolkhouse@gmail.com
All inclusive