clair065

Please allow me the pleasure of introducing our Fall 2016 Banwei Student Committee! Each semester at HNC four students are elected to the 班委 Banwei (student committee), who act as a liaison between the administration and student body, and plan cultural and community events. This fall, Naomi Garcia 澳米, 马艳霞Ma Yanxia (Coco), John Wilhoite, and 金晓于 Jin Xiaoyu (Arthur) were all elected to represent the student body. HNC's Fall 2016 Banwei Student Committee  Despite being busy with classes, homework, interest groups and planning events for students, Naomi and Xiaoyu took the time to talk with me about their time at the HNC so far. -- What are three words you would choose to describe yourself?  Naomi: Easily-amused, child-like, sleep-deprived. Xiaoyu: Independent, persistent, confident. So why did you apply to HNC? Naomi: I graduated from St. Mary’s College in Maryland with three degrees in French, Spanish and Chinese. Chinese is a very challenging language to learn and use in profes...

HNC Certificate/Johns Hopkins SAIS MA student, Clarise Brown, shares her experiences now at SAIS in Washington, DC .  Last month, I began my studies at the SAIS D.C. campus, penning the last lines of my chapter in China, and starting anew in Dupont Circle. After living for 4 years in China and studying a year at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center, it was delightfully strange to be in D.C. again. It was foreign, familiar and frighteningly exciting all at once. I have to say, over the last month, that feeling has only intensified in the best possible way. Although I loved living in Nanjing, adjusting to the fast-paced life in D.C. has been an incredibly strange and wonderful feeling. A typical day starts with me working in the HNC admissions office in D.C., where I often have first dibs on the tasty Chinese catering for luncheons and events. Speaking of events, during any given week, there are at least a dozen talks on campus by the most renowned in their field. Yesterday, for example, I hap...

HNC students often use their holiday breaks to travel to other parts of China and Asia. One of the HNC student bloggers, Amanda Bogan, spent the National Day holiday exploring Shanxi Province. One of my favorite parts of life in China has always been traveling to different parts of the country, easily and affordably, by train. This past week we had our first major holiday, a total of seven days to celebrate National Day (国庆节). I took advantage of this opportunity to journey north, up to Shanxi Province. Although travel during the National Holiday can be notorious for large crowds and sold out tickets, I was lucky enough to book round trip tickets only a few days in advance, thanks to my wonderful and patient roommate, Wu-Ye (吴叶), who helped me purchase the tickets online. By standard train, Shanxi is roughly 16 hours from Nanjing. This may sound like a long trip at first, but we got on our train in the evening and had tickets for a sleeper car, so at least half the time was spent sleep...

One of key distinctions of the Hopkins-Nanjing Center is the HNC Library, which was founded in 1986 at the establishment of Hopkins-Nanjing Center. In addition to being a pillar of the HNC’s commitment to free and open academic exchange, the library is considered one of China’s top collections on international affairs. The bilingual holdings support Chinese and international student and faculty research at the HNC.  William Speidel, the first director of the Hopkins-Nanjing Center’s Washington Office, remembers that “We started with about 200 journals on each side…half Chinese and half English. And even through the great difficulties of 1989, the journals were permitted to keep coming in.” The library now houses more than 120,000 volumes in Chinese and English, 400 periodicals and the full electronic resources of Nanjing University and Johns Hopkins SAIS. Sheila Thalhimer, the librarian at Johns Hopkins SAIS who oversees the library’s procurement of English language materials, note...

Earlier this month, the new cohort of HNC students arrived in Nanjing. Student blogger, Tarela Osuobeni, HNC Certificate student, recounts her first few days at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center.  On September 10th, I arrived at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center triumphant and giddy over successfully navigating the Shanghai transportation system to Nanjing. After making my way through the HNC entrance, reality struck when the desk counter clerk greeted me in Chinese and began to explain the room check-in process. I felt my ears adjust to the familiar tones and word jumbles I had grown so accustomed to throughout years of Chinese studies. Travel exhaustion threatened to hit for a moment, but I soon felt my elation return. I had safely made it to China and was ready to embark on new adventures that would stretch language, personal and academic boundaries. Arriving at the HNC  The novelty of the HNC took on a formal sense the next day as my classmates and I started the week of a jammed-packed,...