A Typical Day
| 7:30 | Alarm rings. Wake up my roommate |
| 7:55 | Breakfast in the dormitory dining room. Comparing notes on last night’s movie. |
| 8:30 | Our daily morning meeting. We hear about the plans for our trip to Hangzhou tomorrow. |
| 9:00 | Class begins. Fifteen students in a circle – our international relations professor talks about how China perceives its national interests and how historical memories have shaped China’s views on the rest of the world. Discussions about Taiwan and Tibet. Why are they considered part of China? What does China think of international opinions? We work in groups to come up with discussion questions for local citizens next week. Our new reading assignment is two articles from the Foreign Affairs journal. |
| 10:45 | The second class starts after a 30-minute break. Small group discussions are led by two TAs – Liz, a senior from Yale majoring in archeology and Zhuoqun, a math sophomore from Fudan University. They make us think a lot about the new opportunities and challenges faced by women in Shanghai today. |
| 12:00 | Back to the dining room for lunch. I am on the lunch committee this week so I hope everyone likes the menu we picked. Friends who attended the Chinese Folklore class this morning start telling us about the incredible love story of the “Snake Lady” in Hangzhou. We continue our debate about Tibet with the Chinese TAs. Lots of questions and interest regarding our kosher dinner with the Jewish Rabbi in Shanghai next week. |
| 1:00 | Mandarin tutorial. I’m in one of the intermediate-level classes with two other students, one from Amsterdam and the other London. I have prepared a dialogue that I can use with my host family in Hangzhou. |
| 2:45 | The Classical Painting Workshop begins. Our instructor is a former dean at ECNU’s School of Arts. Today he is showing us how to hold the brush and grind the ink-stone. I dreamed of taking home a painting of a classic Chinese orchid using black ink on silk. Actually, I’m having trouble just making a dot the right way! |
| 4:30 | Workshop finishes. Check my e-mail in the program office. Also do a quick check of the New York Times so I don’t lose contact with what’s happening at home. |
| 5:15 | Time for some table tennis with my friends, which we learned last week from our TAs. |
| 6:30 | After a quick shower, I climb on the bus for a trip to the former French Concession where the group will try ‘post-modern Shanghainese’ cuisine tonight. I wonder what it will be like. My TA advisor tells us how this area of Shanghai has been rapidly changing in the last few years, with many old houses retrofitted into lifestyle stores, art galleries, and European restaurants. I want to find old pictures to see what colonial Shanghai was like in the 1930s. |
| 7:30 | Our after-dinner speaker is the head of an NGO that runs educational programs for the children of some of poorest migrant workers. He tells us how he created the NGO seven years ago, the challenges it faces, and why migrant workers’ children are a group that is so important to China’s future. Fifteen of us are going to visit these children as part of a community service initiative next week. |
| 8:30 | Back on the bus we go down the Bund. The night is spectacularly clear and across the river in Pudong all of the super-modern architecture looks like the backdrop from a sci-fi movie! |
| 9:30 | Back to my room. I have to pack up for our three-day trip to Hangzhou. I’m curious to compare life in Shanghai to life in Hangzhou. I will be staying with a Hangzhou high school student. I’m wondering what my two-night stay with a Chinese family will be like. |
| 10:00 | Sign in with the Student Life Director. He makes sure that I’m ready to get on the bus for Hangzhou in the morning. |
| 10:15 | I join a discussion in the Common Room for a while. We’re all talking as though we’ve been in China and known each other for years, and it’s only been two weeks! |
| 10:45 | Back to my room to write. I wasn’t keen on journal writing at the start, but I’ve found it more meaningful. I now greatly treasure the time to reflect on everything I’ve learned and experienced. I even stop talking with friends so I can write and think! Already my first day in China seems long, long ago. |
