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I arrived in Shanghai last Sunday, that makes me being here for almost a week now. So far I can say that I like it here, though the weather is hitting on me hard.
UPDATE: News article on Tongji website, Article on Chongqing U website，coverage in Chinese on Xi’an’s NPU website
As exactly around the last year (I remember my flight to Korea was actually the same day I flew to China!) the weather in Asia is very humid and hot. I don’t like the feeling of sticky skin but still it’s better than the cold weather in Germany, where we had around 15-17 degrees in late July. Shanghai is great. It’s a big city - far bigger than in my imagination and whatever the Shanghai municipal administration does here, you can be sure they don’t just do their homework but assure that it is outstanding. In one of the lessons I heard so far, there are more than 20,000 high rise buildings (>7 floors) and Shanghai Tower is, when finished the tallest tower in China, but that will probably be superseded by some other in the world. Chinese people are diverse in their culture. While younger people are very nice, polite and considerate, the older generation still behaves a little bit land-side-mannered, but most of them are kind and very interested in foreign guests, especially the tall and European-looking ones. I do fortunately not fall into this category and I prefer not to be treated or regarded any different. The Summer School itself was not that interesting for me until now, except the visits and the food, because I am not engineering. Hopefully there will be more things to come that lie in the field of my interests, it’s also a pity that the Chinese class does not fit my level, but other higher level students have the same problem; I have still to get some books for my self-studies. Eating is quite cheap, way cheaper than I imagined, so living on a low expense is not a problem if you are disciplined. But since I like to have some standard, I also go out for eating and spend money here and there for beverages, still I hope I can minimize my expenses - my last study abroad experience was way too expensive ;) Tongji is a nice university, they use the summer break to renovate a lot on campus and thus they have put us in a 3 star hotel, which I can not complain about. Just the fact that there is no appropriate conference or office room to use makes me uncomfortable since I still have to finish my thesis until the next week. Today we went to Jiading (嘉定), inofficially the German Town due to lots of German inhabitants, companies. Tongji has a second campus there with another 30,000 students which was opened in 2002. Many buildings were designed by own architects and looked very modern and inviting for learning. the library is great - way better than the one in Hannover, but looks like technologisation is not as advanced or at least included as in the Yonsei Library I knew. Still, if we had such a campus… Asian countries do something right while it seems that German education spendings fall more and more back. Educationwise I cannot say that facilities are in favor of the students back home and I’m more than happy that I almost finished my major. The Auto Museum was kind of influenced by Germans as Volkswagen has a plant here and many exhibits came from them. After that the visit at the Konfucius Garden was not too bad, liked the style of it but it started raining. Finally the food in the 金龙 restaurant was very delicious, Tongji does not miss the chance to impress us foreign students with over average restaurants! Hope I can write more next time.