The Fudan Team

Welcome to Shanghai!! I arrived with Christine and Kate on Tuesday morning. My transition into Shanghai has luckily been made easier by the fact that Kate was here over the summer and managed to find us an apartment on Guoding Road (the view from my bedroom is the lovely Fudan itself!). So we’ve been super fortunate in that regard.

But I am prepared for a lot of difficulties re. Mandarin. Having not been speaking much of it over the summer, it definitely is a shock to be walking around a country surrounded by signs you can’t decipher and having to rely on others to get you around. But hopefully Chinese class will change that on Monday, and I’m following Esther’s advice by being patient! As for the 2009/11 cohort, I would say definitely plan ahead regarding Mandarin: if you can, get private tuition over the summer in between dissertation writing, there should be plenty of sources for this in London.

Esther’s post had most of the info we and the 2009/11 team will need. Definitely take heed of those tips. After travelling alone myself before and learning the hard way, I can also tell you all coming to LSE in the next few weeks not to worry about Fudan - you will never be lost and there’ll always be a source of information for you. The same goes for arriving in Shanghai: just be open and patient. And I say this in full anticipation of my neuroses-filled posts to come

Okay…off to raid Ikea now!

Marta

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