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David J. Davies is the American Co-Director of the Hopkins-Nanjing Center. His experience at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center includes his time as a student (1997-1998), a visiting scholar (2006), and the interim American Co-Director (2011). Co-Director Davies holds a PhD in Socio-Cultural Anthropology from the University of Washington, and has extensive research and work experience in China, and the greater East Asia region. This year, Co-Director Davies led a group from the Hopkins-Nanjing Center on a 26.2-mile walk around Nanjing – here is what he had to say about the event! What is the Nanjing wall, and what is the Wall-Walk? When you come to a place like the HNC, you have Chinese students and international students. The student body is made up of people who don’t come from the same geographic location in the world and don’t necessarily speak the same languages. They really only have one thing in common: they’ve all chosen this place to study. It isn’t a natural community; we shouldn’t n...

Maura Elizabeth Cunningham is a historian and writer who graduated from the Hopkins Nanjing Center with a HNC Certificate in 2008. She has her PhD in Modern Chinese History from the University of California, Irvine, M.A. in East Asian Studies from Yale University and B.A. in History from Saint Joseph’s University. She is co-author with Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom of China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know (3rd edition), coming out in 2018. What was it that drew you to apply for the Hopkins Nanjing Center originally? I was planning to apply for PhD programs in Chinese history, because I had a pretty good sense that was where I wanted to go…But I wanted to go back to China. There was so much more that I needed to learn about China, so much more that I needed to do there, that the six months I had spent in Beijing studying Chinese just wasn’t enough, before I committed to a PhD program and settled back down for that in the United States. I came across the HNC and it was the kind...

Alexandra Hansen, Certificate '18, shares a typical day as a student at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center. She keeps busy with her classes, extracurricular activities, and late-night Chinese BBQ.    7:30am – I wake up early to grab breakfast with my roommate at the 餐厅. I love the HNC’s breakfast, they often have pancakes, soya milk, steamed dumplings, 馅饼, eggs, and fruit. 8:00am – My roommate and I walk to the East Building to attend Critical Developments in American History. We take this class together, and often have late night talks on the class’s content. Today, Professor Joe Renouard introduces us to the Bill of Rights. HNC East Building 9:30am – I walk to my Chinese Foreign Policy class. This is one of the most popular classes at the HNC. Today, Professor Cai Jiahe’s lecture is on Chinese foreign policy during the Cold War era. 11:30pm – After class, I head to the cafeteria for lunch. I eat with a few friends and talk about what we did over Fall Break. Lunch at the cafeteri...

Benjamin Miles, MAIS '19, shares his experience of participating in the Hopkins-Nanjing Center's annual Wall Walk.  Every year the Hopkins-Nanjing Center has a special tradition. The students, led by American Co-Director David Davies, trek the length of Nanjing’s old city wall, a 41 Kilometer or 23 mile journey. Several classes of students before us made the long journey, and it is considered somewhat of a rite of passage for HNC students. This year the trek began early on September 23, Saturday morning when all the students gathered in the East Lobby at 6 am. We began by heading east towards the Xuanwumen Gate adjacent to Xuanwuhu lake. It was about an hours-long journey from the center to the gate, during which time sleepy students engaged in lively conversation to keep themselves going. Along the way we stopped briefly at 麦当劳 to get energized for the coming 10-hour walk around the length of the wall. The starting point of the trek: Xuanwumen Gate Making it to Xuanwumen, stil...

WELCOME everyone back to the Hopkins-Nanjing Center for the 2017-2018 academic year! My name is Emily Rivera, a first year HNC Certificate student. A little over two weeks ago, 180 HNC students from around the world – including China, the U.S., the U.K., South Korea, Ghana, Canada, Mexico, India, Myanmar, Turkey, Argentina, Spain, and Venezuela, to name a few – arrived in Nanjing, China to begin the new school year at the HNC. Of these students, many second year students returned for their second year at the HNC, to complete their final year of the very unique  MAIS program. This two-year program is the only master’s degree fully accredited in both China and the United States.  Classes are already underway, but before we get ahead of ourselves, let me start with our very first week here at the HNC – orientation week. As students began to arrive at the HNC, carrying their luggage, purses and 包子’s in hand, orientation week kicked off to a start with on-campus tours to allow stud...

Meet our new student bloggers in Nanjing! Emily Rivera, HNC Certificate ’18, Alexandra Hansen, HNC Certificate’18, and Ben Miles, MAIS ’19, will be sharing their experiences studying and living at the HNC throughout the fall. Emily Rivera, HNC Certificate ’18 (left) Hi everyone! My name is Emily Rivera and I am currently pursuing the HNC Graduate Certificate in Chinese and American studies. I am originally from Miami Beach, FL and this is my second time in China. After deepening my interest in international relations during my first year at Hamilton College, I decided to begin learning Chinese my sophomore year and well, here I am! I graduated from Hamilton College in 2016 with dual concentrations in Government and Chinese. Last year, I lived in Honolulu, Hawai`i where I worked as an AmeriCorps Advocate/Paralegal at the Legal Aid Society of Hawai`i. I was so excited to be able to use my Mandarin speaking skills to directly communicate with clients and to help translate during meetings ...

In the weeks leading up to my arrival at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center, the thing that weighed on my mind the most was the worry of taking graduate level classes in Chinese. Never mind that this was what had attracted me to the program in the first place – that was back in 2015, when September 2016 felt very far away indeed. The problem of course being that not only did we have to listen to all the information in class, but we were expected to retain it and use it to write papers! In my heart of hearts, I had no idea how I was going to rise to the challenge. Presenting on the use of Renewable Portfolio Standards in the U.S. One of my first classes was Policy Instruments for Environmental and Resource Management, taught by Professor Liu Beibei of the Nanjing University School of the Environment. As soon as the seven of us sat down in the classroom, our energetic professor immediately started firing questions at us: what were the most important environmental issues facing the world today? W...