The city of Shanghai

Nǐ hǎo!

I would like to welcome you to China and the city of Shanghai! I’m glad to participate in this blog and to share experiences of studying abroad. I hope my input would give you a good view of living and studying in Shanghai! In this first blog I would like to give you an introduction of this metropolis.

First of all, I’m honored for going on exchange to China and to live in Shanghai in particular. Before the application procedure to study abroad began, I had made a shortlist of my preferences where to go. On the top of that list was Shanghai. I was really glad when I found out that students from Tilburg University (TiU) are able to go there. There are several universities in Shanghai such as Fudan University, Tongji University, and Jiaotong University. The first and the third actually have an exchange program with TiU and my preference was to go to Fudan University. One of the main reasons was that it is one of the best universities of China. In fact, I’ve learned from fellow Chinese students that it is really a big thing to study at Fudan.

The university itself covers numerous different schools and these are mainly located in the north of Shanghai. The main campus is huge and it takes at least a half hour to walk from one side to another. Students usually rent a dormitory room at the campus and various facilities are located nearby. One of them is the School of Management, which is an independent school within the university. I’m following courses of the so called International MBA program. I’m living in a compound outside the campus, between the university and the city center.

To give a brief description of my classmates, the students have already obtained their master’s degree, worked for couple of years, and they went back to the university to better themselves even more. They are therefore a couple years older than the normal Dutch master student. It is really interesting to hear stories about their working experience and they have usually worked for big companies, e.g. Citi group, Tsingtao Beer, and Siemens. Moreover, their study backgrounds vary from all types of fields. They are all very interested to meet Western students and it is for me the same the other way around.

This was a short introduction for studying at Fudan University. There is a lot to tell more and I’ll do this in the next blog posts. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact me!

See you soon!

Richard

E: r.n.d.s.jacobs@uvt.nl