I wanted to go to China, but China came to me.

Last year, when I retired, people kept asking me what I wanted to do now, and I always answered, “Travel.” When they asked me where I wanted to go, I replied, “China.”

I had taken a short course in the Chinese language and found books about China today very fascinating. Who could imagine that instead of going to China, I would become a tutor to high school students from China?

I have learned so much about Chinese teenagers from this experience. The students vary as much as all high school students do. Some are excellent students, organized, thoughtful, studious, but others are the opposite – lazy, more interested in video games, addicted to the Internet.

They are computer-literate and Skype, or use the equivalent computer program, to talk to their parents at least once a week. When we are stuck on a word, they pull out their iPhones and instantly translate the word from Chinese into English and work with this translator program until I understand what they want to say.

Most of the Chinese students come from wealthy homes. Just the cost of traveling to the United States is a huge investment for the parents. On top of that there is the tuition and room and board for their child. The students sometimes go home for Christmas, and some even head back for the February and April vacations.

Why do the parents make this investment? Because they want the child to speak English, attend an American college and have more opportunities in the world for a successful career.

My students come from schools with 60 students in a classroom. Their schools, which include only grades 10 through 12, contain populations in the thousands.

Only after hearing these facts was I able to picture the huge population of China. Almost all the students come from one-child families. They call their cousins “sister” and “brother,” and most have several cousins.

They appreciate the good air of Maine, and all of them wanted me to know that the air pollution in Beijing this winter was at a dangerous level.

They regard the problem as directly connected to all the cars in China and have told me that cars with license numbers ending in even numbers can be driven on one day and those with uneven numbers can be driven on the alternate day. On the day a person is not allowed to drive, he or she takes the subway or rides a bicycle to work.

Most of my students live in high-rise apartments and have at least one set of grandparents who live in the country. When a student said, “My grandmother reads the newspaper every day,” I realized that they, like my own children, get their news from the Internet. Their experience of gardens, chickens and life outside a city comes from visiting their grandparents.

If you want to experience China, yet stay in Maine, take advantage of the chance we have to get to know Chinese students as they come to many schools and communities here in Maine.

Ruth Dater is a Kennebunk resident.