Hopkins-Nanjing Center Blog

Frank Tsai is a 2003 graduate of the Hopkins-Nanjing Center and currently serves as the CEO and Founder of China Crossroads, the largest platform for public lectures in Shanghai. Over the past 14 years, he has organized over 600 talks on "China and the world" across several event brands, hosting academics, business leaders, and other experts.   What led you to the Hopkins-Nanjing Center? What made you choose the HNC?   I traveled to Taiwan a few years before applying to the HNC, and I was excited to speak Mandarin for the first time. That experience sparked my interest, and after that trip, my life became focused on studying Chinese. It made me shift gears in my PhD. At the time, I was doing my PhD in sociology when I first heard about the HNC. I wanted to transition to studying China, but I had no experience. For that reason, the Hopkins-Nanjing Center was a great way for me to experience China. Language programs were my other option , but the HNC was very attractive be...

 Susan Wang is a graduate of the Hopkins-Nanjing Center Certificate in Chinese and American Studies '16. She currently resides in both Oakland, California and Boulder, Colorado, working as a Solutions Architect for LanguageLine Solutions.  How did you become interested in China and what drew you to the Hopkins-Nanjing Center? My parents, especially my Dad, were always extremely supportive with my studies, and suggested I declare linguistics at the University of Colorado-Boulder. My undergraduate majors were Chinese & Linguistics, and I studied abroad in 2009 at Peking University for a year during a post-Olympics Beijing. A year later, I interned with 100+ American college students at the US Pavilion in the 2010 World Expo: Shanghai. A few months after undergrad, I ended up teaching Mandarin at Fairview High, which also happens to be where I attended high school. Over the next three years I worked to bring stability and structure back into the Chinese program there, but as ...