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Student blogger Sam Olson describes a typical day at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center.    6:30-7:20am: Workout with my roommate   I start off the day with a workout with my roommate, Adam Zhang, to get myself going and mentally prepared for class. The Hopkins-Nanjing Center has its own gym with an excellent variety of weights and exercise machines. In addition, students that apply for Nanjing University student cards can use the gym at Nanjing University, and there are private gyms nearby.  The Hopkins-Nanjing Center gym 7:20-7:40am: Breakfast  After working out, I head upstairs to eat breakfast at the cafeteria. The cafeteria offers good food at fairly affordable prices. Beyond the on-campus options, there are multiple restaurants on the main Nanjing University Gulou campus, as well as coffee shops that sell coffee, pastries, and small breakfast sandwiches at low cost. 8:00am: Review readings for my international politics class and catch up on homework Next, I head ...

Meet our new student bloggers in Nanjing! Sam Olson, Master of Arts in International Studies ’20, Cady Deck, Certificate ’19, and Hope Parker, Master of Arts in International Studies ’20, will be sharing their experiences studying and living at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center throughout the year. Sam Olson, Master of Arts in International Studies ’20 (left)  Hi everyone! My name is Sam Olson, and I am a first-year master’s student at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center double-concentrating in international politics and Chinese studies.  I graduated from Brock University in Ontario, Canada, where I majored in tourism and environment. I started learning Chinese in middle school and knew from early on that I wanted to pursue a major and career that allowed me to work with China in some way. I first heard about the Hopkins-Nanjing Center when I attended the Middlebury College Summer Language School. There were several aspects that drew me to apply for the master’s program. First, the degree is ...

Name: Pawel Chrzanowski Program: Hopkins-Nanjing Center Certificate '18 Hometown: Newtown, Pennsylvania Undergraduate Institution and Major: Pennsylvania State University ’16, Economics, Chinese Fun Fact: I was born in the United States, but my parents are Polish. I moved to Poland when I was two years old, so my first language was actually Polish. I moved back to the U.S. when I was 10 years old; that’s when I first learned English. Tell us about your undergraduate experience. How did you become interested in China Studies? In undergrad, I first chose economics as a major because I was interested in the subject matter. The main reason I started learning Chinese was because first, everyone kept telling me that economics and Chinese go well together and second, I really wanted to learn a third language, and everyone talked about how impossible it was to learn Chinese. I like a challenge, so I thought, if it is impossible then I’m going to learn it. I began taking Chinese languag...

 Name: Maria Belen Wu Program: HNC Certificate '18/Johns Hopkins SAIS MA Hometown: Buenos Aires, Argentina Undergraduate Institution and Major: Johns Hopkins University ’18, International Studies, Economics Fun Fact: I was born in Argentina, but my parents are actually immigrants from Shanghai. They moved to Argentina several years ago. My mom is a Chinese language teacher in Argentina.  Tell us about your undergraduate experience. How did you become interested in China Studies? When I first started college, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to focus on China studies or even do anything related to economics or international studies. I originally applied as a political science major. When I got there, I realized political science was too theoretical for me. I also learned that International Studies is one of the largest majors at Johns Hopkins University, and I thought this could be more relevant to me. I took my first international studies class and I loved it. I also added econo...

The Hopkins-Nanjing Center offers the U.S.-China Exchange Scholarship to alumni of U.S. government-supported programs for Chinese language study. These programs include, but are not limited to, the Critical Language Scholarship, Boren Award for International Study, Chinese Language Flagship Program, and the National Security Language Initiative for Youth. Meet the second group of U.S.-China Exchange Scholars below. Eric Lacour Chinese Language Flagship Program, Indiana University Bloomington Foreign Language Area Studies Scholarship (FLAS) Master of Arts in International Studies ’20 Eric Lacour began his Chinese studies during his sophomore year at Indiana University Bloomington (IUB). As a double bass student of Professor Lawrence Hurst in the prestigious Jacobs School of Music, Eric initially enrolled in Chinese courses out of pure interest in the language and culture of China. What was at first a fascination quickly became a passion when he was asked to join IUB’s Chinese Flagship...

Student blogger Emily Rivera shares the HNC experience of her Chinese roommate:肖玲. 肖玲 describes her reasons for choosing the HNC, her thoughts on how HNC student groups and courses compare to Chinese universities, and her memories of her very first day at the HNC. A very unique aspect of the Hopkins-Nanjing Center is the majority of international students and Chinese students get paired to live together as roommates. When I was completing a Chinese language intensive program in Beijing, I lived with an international student in an international student dorm, which is the norm for many study abroad programs in China. The focus of the HNC, however, is not only the improvement of your language skills while taking graduate level courses – the HNC places a large focus on cultural exchange as well. The HNC’s intercultural community, which stood apart to me from other graduate programs, is one of the reasons I chose to apply. At the HNC the goal is to pair students with roommates who share ...

This Wednesday, student blogger, Alexandra Hansen, features life at the HNC through pictures. We hope that through this series you will be able to better understand the HNC’s campus, community, and culture.  Photos by Alexandra Hansen, Certificate '18

As if the HNC wasn’t already special enough, another of the unique characteristics of your time in Nanjing is that almost every student rooms with another of the different culture. In this blog post, I wanted to write about my personal experience of living with my roommate Ning Xinyuan 宁心源. While our experience can’t count for everyone’s (people are different, and we all have varying dynamics) I thought it would be helpful to provide an example of what this was really like in practice. A photo of our room from the very first week The first step in my roommate journey was the online form I filled out in May of 2016, a couple of months after finding out I had been accepted to the HNC. There are questions about your habits and personality and sections to describe your sleeping schedule and to mention if you mind having a roommate who snores (!) (I don’t remember what I picked, but luckily for me Xinyuan did not snore, haha). The thing that amazed us both on the very first day we met was h...

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 ...

大家好！My name is Anna Woods and I am a second year HNC Certificate/SAIS MA student, so I just spent a year at the Hopkins Nanjing Center and have now started classes in Washington DC.  A sunny blue sky day on the 5th floor 阳台 (deck) My year at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center was a profoundly special period of my life: within a couple of weeks we were all the best of friends, with relationships on fast forward due to the combination of living, eating and studying in the same place, bonding over the delights and frustrations that living in China provided and of course the shared worry of being in over our heads with graduate level classes in Chinese. My background, with an undergraduate degree in Economics and Chinese, is pretty ordinary for a typical HNC student, with one exception: I’m from New Zealand and am one of the very few Kiwi students who have attended the HNC.  I actually have this very blog to thank for that- since I didn’t have any friends or classmates to describe the HNC...

 In honor of the HNC’s 30th anniversary, the HNC has created the U.S.-China Exchange Scholars Fellowship for alumni of U.S. government-supported programs for Chinese language study. These programs include, but are not limited, to the Critical Language Scholarship, Boren Award for International Study, Chinese Language Flagship Program, and the National Security Language Initiative for Youth. We are pleased to introduce our first five U.S.-China Exchange Scholars for the 2017-2018 academic year who have studied Chinese through a number of U.S. government-supported programs.  Emily Rivera Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad Program (GPA) HNC Certificate ‘18 Emily Rivera graduated from Hamilton College in 2016 with dual concentrations in Government and Chinese. The daughter of two first-generation Colombian immigrants, Emily grew up speaking both English and Spanish. Largely because of this, Emily developed a keen interest in intercultural dialogue at an early age and later bega...

Meet Brennan Leong, a 2nd year student in the Master of Arts in International Studies Program. Brennan is an International Economics concentrator who is currently writing a graduate thesis in Chinese on the empirical factors that influence the craft beer market in China. Partnering with the Kentucky company, Alltech, alongside a number of Chinese breweries, Brennan is assessing market entry for craft beers, both domestic and foreign. A double-major in Chinese and Neurobiology from the University of Wisconsin, Brennan has previously worked in the health care industry as a children's behavior therapist and was enrolled in medical school. Ethnically half-Chinese, a longing to improve his language abilities and a compulsion to grow closer to a culture he was disconnected with in his childhood inspired Brennan to move to Chongqing to teach English. On a whim, a friend brought up the possibility of attending the Hopkins-Nanjing Center to further his academic study while simul...

中美中心的中国学生采访: 我情爱的室友，吴叶 为了让大家认识中外学生在中美中心生活相处的情况，我很早就想找机会访问我的室友，吴叶。虽然在大学时我也有室友，但是我觉得在中心的情况是非常不同。因为在中心，大多数的外国学生会跟一位中国学生同住在一个寝室里。我们每天都有机会讨论课业和生活琐事，也会一起面临外语作业的挑战。因此我们需要互相扶持。我的室友吴叶帮我更了解中国文化并帮助我处理一些生活上的小细节。因此，我和吴叶的关系比我和以前的室友更密切。有一位这样的室友让我每天在中心更愉快! Since coming to the HNC, I’ve been wanting to give people an idea of what it’s like to live here with a roommate who I happen to get along with remarkably well. Though I also lived with roommates during my undergrad years, the living situation here at the HNC has some notable differences.  Most international students at the HNC are paired with a Chinese roommate, so two students from different cultural backgrounds share the same dorm room and everyday living space. This also gives us the opportunity to practice speaking on a regular basis in our target language, and to help each other with class assignments and editing final papers.  My roommate, Wu Ye, has given me a better understanding of the Chinese language, Chinese culture, and regul...

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...