Wang Yulong, 34, a State-owned enterprise worker in Beijing, agrees.

"It feels terrific to explore different cultures and rub shoulders with people from other countries. The locals and my foreign classmates were very polite and modest and helped me a lot," says Wang, who joined a three-week program in Los Angeles in February.

He likes the course design and the Western way of teaching. While students in China listen to the teacher most of the time, all classmates in the program actively joined the discussion and debated with others in class.

"Everyone treated me like a local," he says.

Jonsson says study tours are not uncommon in the United States and European countries because of the popularity of gap years. In China, people have started to pay attention to the quality of such experiences, hoping to learn something, see local life and communicate better across cultures.

Dai Yu, marketing director of the tourism department at Ctrip, a major Chinese online travel agency, says languages such as French, Italian and Spanish are becoming popular in the agency's study tour programs as well as English.

Dai adds that an increasing number of adults are choosing skills-learning and volunteer projects, such as diving, coffee brewing and visiting orphanages in Thailand.

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