Alumnus Links Foreign Service Success in Chengdu to HNC Experience
Christian Burstall, HNC Certificate '17 + SAIS MA '18, links his success serving as a Foreign Service Officer in Chengdu to his Hopkins-Nanjing Center experience. Tell us a bit more about your career and your current role. I'm a Foreign Service Officer, or diplomat. Exactly what that means is elusive, but a large part of my job is explaining the United States to the rest of the world and explaining the rest of the world to the United States. My most recent assignment was providing consular service in Chengdu. The majority of my time was spent interviewing visa customers. When the novel coronavirus pandemic broke out, I provided emergency services, including working with the Embassy to coordinate emergency flights for U.S. citizens stuck in Wuhan. What got you interested in studying Chinese and what drew you to the HNC? I studied French my first year of college and the professor made some offhand remark that competent French required about 600 hours of study, whil...