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.