Hopkins-Nanjing Center Blog

Student blogger Cady Deck, Certificate ’19, shares her experience participating in a student-led research trip to the China- Myanmar border for the China on the Border: Provincial Relations on the Periphery course. Other student groups planned trips to China’s borders with Russia and North Korea.    During the spring semester, I took China on the Border: Provincial Relations on the Periphery, which is a class about China’s relations with its neighboring countries. After taking Chinese and American Thought: Bilingual Perspectives in the fall, I was looking forward to another course that involved both field research and opportunities to collaborate with my Chinese classmates. Similar to the Bilingual Perspectives class, the China on the Border class also has a fairly even mix of Chinese and international students. We started the semester with a historical background of the region and international relations theories specifically related to border management before moving o...

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, Peace Corps, Benjamin A. Gilman Scholarship, and the National Security Language Initiative for Youth. Meet the third group of U.S.-China Exchange Scholars below: Freya Quist Master of Arts in International Studies ’21 National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y) Program Freya has been fascinated by language her whole life. She was born in Hong Kong and grew up in Costa Rica learning Spanish and English simultaneously. After moving to the U.S., she was struck by how many doors opened to her just by virtue of speaking a language other than English. With that in mind, she started studying Mandarin. As a junior in high school, she studied for a year at the Wenzao Ursulin...

Brian Linden, Certificate ’88, is the co-founder of the Linden Centre in Dali, Yunnan province, China. He and his wife Jeanee restored and repurposed a national heritage site into the Linden Centre, which they operate as both a hotel and a venue for community development. He is also currently developing other projects based on the same values of sustainability and cultural heritage preservation that he draws on at the Linden Centre. Can you talk a little bit about what you’re doing now? What exactly is the Linden Centre and what inspired you to establish it?  [My wife and I] came to China with the hopes of creating a social enterprise--more specifically, a values-driven business that could serve as a model for more socially responsible development in rural China. The goal was to preserve China’s national heritage, demonstrating its economic value and ambient meaning to the community, while incorporating the region into our projects via sustainable tourism, intangible heritage pre...

Cady Deck, Certificate ’19, reflects back on some of the activities she has been involved in at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center this past semester. These past few weeks at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center have been super busy, both in terms of academic events and extracurricular activities. Below is an overview of what’s been going on recently. Last semester, the banwei (student committee) organized a ping pong tournament. This semester they hosted a giant badminton tournament. The top four teams advanced to the next round. An intense battle determined first, second, and third place. I managed to win second place with my partner! The field of competitors The final four teams A group of students arranged a Super Smash Bros. tournament in the student lounge, which was intense. In addition to the players, there were play-by-play announcers and a captive audience. I didn’t participate, but I was part of the captive audience. Left: Play-by-play commentators; Right: Smash Tournament p...