This program will run from July 8 to August 11.  Students arriving in Shanghai on July 8 will be received at the airport and chaperoned to our program site at East China Normal University.  They will attend orientation and stay on campus in a three-star hotel for four days before staying with host families.  At the end of two and a half weeks of study, exploration, and research in Shanghai, the group will take an overnight train to Beijing, where students will, again, start with four days of orientation in a program hotel before commencing their homestay.  They will return to the program hotel for the last evening, and be accompanied to the airport the next day for international departure from Beijing.

Over five weeks, except for orientation and overnight excursions, the program runs as a day school from 9am to 4:30pm.  Students will make their own transit to arrive at program venues on time and to return to local homes.  A typical day starts with a morning meeting, where students share observations, read from their Chinese journals, and discuss ideas and questions with the Program Director and Teaching Assistants.  Mandarin classes, organized in four 30-45 minutes sections, each with different emphasis, will fill the rest of the morning.  Lunch will be served in a variety of restaurants serving authentic Chinese and Asian cuisines.  Research projects will take up the afternoons.  Students could be taking a class on research methods, hearing from a journalist in a café near the Forbidden City, interviewing senior citizens in an old hutong, or writing reports.  After 4:30pm each day and during weekends, students are free to explore Shanghai or Beijing on their own or in groups, play sports, or spend time with host families.  Saturday sessions, reserved for progress reviews on both Mandarin and research, will start at 9am and finish by 12:30pm.

To make sure that students gain an appreciation of rural life and have the opportunity to interview people outside urban centers, we will have an overnight excursion in Huairou county on the outskirts of Beijing, near the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall.  Students will climb the Great Wall, with the option of flying kites from watchtowers, and spend a night in a rustic farmhouse to learn about the life, needs, and ideas of a very different group of people in China.  This excursion will take place around the halfway point of our stay in Beijing.