His mother didn't want him to go. His friends thought China was just scary.
Six months on though, 16-year-old Spencer Langerman is getting the full dose of China 101.
Definitely, my friends and family like, when I came they were like,
don't let the Chinese brainwash you like into communism and like, they kind of...the censorship.
People are still saying that to you?
Yeah.
The boy from Manhattan now sits in the shadow of Chairman Mao.
Spencer learns the Communist Party's version of Chinese history.
He speaks only Chinese in class -- he's fluent -- sometimes now, even better than English.
It's all part of this unique program.
Take a kid out of American school,
put them in a regular Chinese classroom and place them with a Chinese family for one year.
Spencer is one of nearly 50 American teenagers
here building a bridge between the world's superpower and its fast-emerging rival.
I think the opinion of China in the United States is really kind of off. And a lot of the idea[s] of China is [are] kind of flawed.
There're a lot of thoughts about, like, China's kind of backwards [backward] and really rural and like, not modern -- and obviously, that's wrong.
I mean, we're here in this, like, super-modern city.
Spencer tells me he always thought China was cool. Living here hasn't changed that.
The Chinese kids, he says, are just like Americans.
They love sports. He says they kick his butt on the basketball court.
They like western movies and music. But in the classroom, that's where the differences begin.
Their approach to education is really a lot...they just memorize, memorize, memorize; study, study, study.
And I feel like they're not really...they don't like have discussions.
It hasn't all been easy. Like any kid, he gets homesick, and then there was moving in with a new family.
He's right at home now, though, happily chatting at the dinner table like any family.
His surrogate Chinese parents never graduated from high school and work in a local market.
They live in a modest apartment, small in size, but big on hospitality.
And Spencer has a 13-year-old host brother who teases like all little brothers.
And he's teaching his big brother a lesson in Chinese chess.
Spencer hasn't yet won a game, but each move,
he hopes, brings his homeland of the United States and his adopted home, China, that much closer.