Last Tuesday, July 4, we held our annual Independence Day celebration in the Project Pengyou Courtyard. The all-you-can-eat barbecue event brought out over 100 Pengyous who are currently living in Beijing. We were super excited you all could be there, and we were thrilled to see many familiar faces including our Leadership Fellows!

For our Chinese Pengyous, the Independence Day celebrations were an opportunity to take part in a little piece of American culture. For many others, including myself, it was a way to experience a little bit of home despite being thousands of kilometers away. Guests enjoyed the quintessential hot dogs and hamburgers, along with other classic American foods such as salads, chicken wings, veggie kabobs, cupcakes and s’mores, all prepared fresh by the Pengyou team only hours before. Project Pengyou intern Shani even managed to make some delicious sangria that kept the drinks table active all evening.

We’d like to thank the members of Jing Sing A Capella (including our program director Devin!) for performing a stunning rendition of “Star Spangled Banner”.We’d also like to give a special shoutout to our volunteers at the grill – Pengyous Jeff Bauer (Founder of AQblue masks ), Tyler Bleuel (Project Pengyou Leadership Fellow and Coach), and Sunny Guo (Project Pengyou Operations Manager) – for flipping patties and cooking hot dogs for over three hours.

Check out our recap video for the event below!

We hope everyone had as much fun attending the BBQ as we had in preparing for it! Thank you to everyone who came and we hope to see you next year as well!

Check out more photos of the event here! For a recap of 2016 July 4th BBQ, click here.