Our Story
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Our Story
We are three parents who kept having the same conversation.
Two of us grew up in Sydney, Australian-born Chinese, with parents who pushed us to keep the language. Like most of our generation, we let it slip. Weekend Chinese school did not stick, and by adulthood we could manage a restaurant order and not much else.
Then we moved to China and spent a decade there. Working, raising young children, sending them to local and bilingual schools. We watched what happens when a child is simply in it: the language stops being a subject and becomes how they get through the day. Nothing we had done at home came close.
Back in Sydney, we saw the same thing everywhere we looked. Friends flying their children to China each year to stay with family and pick up what they could. Parents paying for weekly lessons that were not landing. Families who wanted their kids to have a real relationship with the culture, and no good way to give them one.
The options were all wrong. Language camps put children in a room full of other foreign children. Tours show you China through a coach window. Long exchanges mean sending a young child away alone, which almost no parent of a seven year old wants to do.
So we built what was missing: two weeks inside a real Chinese school, alongside local students, with a parent there the whole time. Long enough to build a routine. Short enough to fit a school holiday. Small enough that we know every family by name.
We built it as the camp we wanted for our own children. They are coming on the first one.
Real learning happens when families explore together.
Meet the founders
Between us: over 20 years across early childhood education, bilingual learning and international school programmes, and more than a decade each living and working in China. We also run a licensed early education centre here in Sydney, which won the 2026 North Shore Local Business Awards.
Our own children are on this camp.
Cassie
Co-founder and Education Lead
Cassie spent a decade in China working in early childhood and bilingual education, including at EtonKids, one of Beijing’s established bilingual early learning groups.
She is certified in the Pikler, RIE and PITC approaches to early childhood, and a qualified lawyer.
Cassie leads the education side: how the school days are structured, how the curriculum fits together, and how children who arrive with no Mandarin are supported through the first week. The fortnight is built around how children actually settle into an unfamiliar room, rather than around an itinerary.
She and Garry are married, with two young children. Both are coming on the first camp.
Anthony
Co-founder and China Lead
Born in China, educated at New York University, and now based in Australia.
Anthony spent over a decade in international kindergartens in Beijing, including EtonKids. He has also run a student exchange programme between China and the United States, and a business helping students through the US university admissions process.
Anthony leads everything on the China side: the school relationship, the placements, and the day to day running of the fortnight on the ground. He knows how Chinese schools actually work from the inside, how they welcome a child who does not speak the language, and what to ask for on your behalf.
Garry
Co-founder and Operations
Australian-born Chinese, raised in Sydney, and based in China from 2012 to 2022.
Garry holds a Master of Finance from Tsinghua University and an MBA from Cornell, and spent his China years in strategy roles in tech before returning to Sydney. He now owns and runs The Lookout Early Education Centre in Mosman, a licensed 48-place centre and a 2026 North Shore Local Business Awards winner.
Garry runs the business side: the planning, the logistics, and everything families deal with before they get on the plane. He and Cassie have two young children, both coming on the first camp.