“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.