Students Pursue Programs in China

Standing 1555 feet above the ground, Whitney R.S. Fitts ’12 was shocked to see that only a glass panel kept her from free-falling into the congested streets of Shanghai.

The parents of her Chinese roommate at Harvard—a local couple that served as her unofficial tour guides last summer—looked down at the bustling traffic below and nonchalantly asked Fitts to take a picture with them on the glass panel.

“I couldn’t do it,” says Fitts, who admits that she was afraid of heights.

Fitts and her companions were on an observatory deck in the Shanghai World Financial Center—a wedge-shaped skyscraper that currently ranks as the world’s third tallest building—taking in a panoramic view of one of the most rapidly developing cities in the world.

“It is kind of as if you took all the biggest skyscrapers in the U.S. and like jam-packed [them] into one square block.” Fitts says. “Every building that is going up is taller than the next, and they are all being built within a year.”

But the imposing skyscrapers were just one of the many aspects of Shanghai that impressed Fitts when she visited China last summer for an internship.

Fitts is one of many in recent years to choose China as a summer destination.

Two Harvard sponsored programs—the Harvard China Student Internship Program (HCSIP) and Harvard Beijing Academy (HBA)—have garnered growing interest, attracting a combined enrollment of approximately 160 students this year.

Some participants in the programs say that while they initially visited China to improve their language skills or to gain practical experience working at an internship, they ultimately left with a diverse perspective on China’s rich history and culture.

THE TREND

According to China studies professor William C. Kirby, undergraduate interest in traveling to China has grown exponentially in recent years.

Student enrollment in Chinese languages has nearly tripled in the last decade, he added.

This year, more than 220 students applied to HBA, according to Ye Tian, a teaching assistant in East Asian Languages and Civilizations.

Similarly competitive, HCSIP has witnessed more than a three-fold increase in the number of applicants, from 45 in 2008 to 145 in 2010. Of the 145 students who applied this year, 60 will be granted the opportunity to intern at various Chinese companies, according to John Chen, who, as executive director of the Harvard China Fund, co-founded HCSIP in 2008.

Partially attributing HCSIP’s popularity to its accessibility to students who have not had previous exposure to Chinese language and culture, Chen says that the program provides students with the chance to forge a life-long engagement with China.

“I hope more American students without any background in China come to apply,” Chen says.

Undergraduates cite interest in China’s booming economy as one of the most important factors in their decision to choose China as their summer destination.

“It’s really unbelievable to see that and realize that it [was] farmland fifteen years ago,” Fitts says, “and I think that’s something you really can’t understand—the speed of development in China—until you’ve been there.”

Echoing this point, Kirby notes that in recent years, more than 10 new subways lines, two new airports, four new bridges, three new tunnels, and a magnetic levitation train were built in Shanghai alone.

In comparison, the next big infrastructure project in Boston is an extension of the green line, Kirby adds.

HOME TO A MIX OF VIBRANT CULTURES

From working at China’s central bank to an orphanage in southern China, Harvard students who choose the country as their summer destination are exposed to a wide spectrum of Chinese cultural practices and lifestyles.

Andrew J. Stein ’12, who participated in the HBA language program last summer, says that while he considers acquiring language skills important, exposure to Chinese culture made the summer experience more memorable.

For example, Stein says he was impressed with how Mongolians killed a goat by driving a hole in its chest before reaching in and grabbing the heart to stop it.

In this way, Stein says, they are able to keep the blood in the body and the lamb fresh.

While Stein experienced the nomadic way of life in inner Mongolia, Tsering J. van der Kuijp ’12 encountered the upper echelons of Chinese society in the metropolitan setting of Beijing.

In mid-August, van der Kuijp was taken to a location called “the academy,” a training facility for COFCO, one of China’s largest agricultural trading companies, where he worked as an intern.

At a banquet that night, the employees of the company would constantly toast the executives, an exchange that taught van der Kuijip a lesson on Chinese table manners.

You can tell who the “big cheese” of the table is, van der Kuijp says, by noting how lower level employees keep the brim of their glasses below that of their superior’s.

William F. Guzick ’11, who interned at a consulting company through HCSIP, echoes the experience of riding a constant learning curve in an unfamiliar country—even in the more mundane encounters.

“You never knew what to expect from a Shaobing,” Guzick says, referring to the traditional Chinese flatbread with a variety of choices for fillings, and “that was my experience in China in general: there is always something around the corner.”

“The biggest thing that I gained was outside [the] academic or professional,” he adds. “It was being able to understand what home means for one billion people in the world.”

–Staff writer Sirui Li can be reached at sli@college.harvard.edu.