The Fudan Team

Ni men hao ma!

First of all, a warm welcome to the 2009/11 cohort! We hope you enjoy your year at LSE. It will seem like a daunting task at the start but you will soon miss it. Be prepared for an intense but (cue technical terminology) intellectually stimulating experience! Outside studying, I’d obviously advise you to take advantage of living in London (for those of you who are new to the city) as well as hitting the European continent that is on your doorstep; this will be the quickest year of your lives!

We have been in Shanghai for what feels like a lifetime but is actually barely two months. The past eight weeks or so have been tumultuous, exciting, frustrating, interesting and surprising. Trying to balance exploration and discovery, culture shock, bureaucracy, amazing food (see Christine’s post) and plunging ourselves into a new world that most of us may never fit into (since most of us are not Chinese) has been both difficult and liberating. My personal advice to the next cohort is to land in the East with no expectations: every preconceived idea you have will be squashed, and any time you feel you have grasped one aspect of the culture, the rug will quickly be pulled from beneath you. As a result, your first month or two here may be frustrating, but once they’ve passed, you’ll never look back. Arrive only with yourself and as much Mandarin as you can squeeze into this year at LSE. 

But do come prepared for a very different academic experience from the rigorous one you will be absorbed in this year. Our classes here are generally longer, more narrative and with much more crossover between topics. Rather than the British system of dividing classes into lectures and tutorials, here our classes usually consist of lectures with occasional presentations. Additionally, few of them are assessed by exam (yay!), with most consisting of 3-4,000 word essays. Further, we’d all advise beginners to get Mandarin tutors when you’re in Shanghai (most of us have four hours a week in addition to the 2-hour language class at Fudan). You’ll have no trouble finding tutors or Chinese students who simply want to do a language exchange. 

We’re in the process of compiling a handbook for you all so please don’t worry, all the information will be given to you ASAP (and we will get to work on tidying up the FAQ section of the blog). Just focus on making the most of London, it is a unique and amazing place. 

If any of you have any questions, please email us - team2@fudanteam.org - and we can reply to you individually.

Sending bests from the East,

Marta

Tags:   China · Cultural Differences · Fudan University · LSE · ShanghaiNo Comments