Hopkins-Nanjing Center Blog

Tell us a bit about your Ph. D. program and why you chose to pursue a doctorate after graduating from the Hopkins-Nanjing Center. I am interested in Chinese History and teaching, so I pursued a doctorate in Chinese History. I chose to attend Columbia University in the City of New York to pursue a degree in Middle Period (900-1400 AD) Chinese history and the history of Science. This time period is interesting for a number of reasons including its highly developed system of international relations. While premodern history is a different field from what we study at the HNC, what I learned during my time there, both in terms of content, as well as how to present work in Chinese and to communicate with Chinese classmates and professors have translated well to my Ph. D. work. How often do you use Chinese in your program and/or other skills you gained while studying at the HNC? The experiences I had taking coursework and then researching and writing a thesis at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center have...

Since the resumption of regular domestic travel in China last December, Hopkins-Nanjing Center faculty have resumed a long-standing HNC tradition: study trips. Study trips, typically led by faculty members, explore particular aspects of HNC courses in practice. Three study trips have been arranged in the past six months related to China studies, law, and green development. China Studies Trip to Anhui Province Professor Hua Tao with students in Zaojia Village Students with Nanjing University faculty  I was on one of the first study trips after China’s Covid policies eased in mid-December last year. In this trip, Professor Hua Tao led students on a trip to Zaojia Village (造甲乡) on the outskirts of Hefei, the capital city of Anhui province. On this trip, we spoke with local officials about rural governance, development, and business. We visited the local party headquarters to speak with Zaojia’s Party Secretary, a service center to speak with local community organizers, as well as an i...