The first day of our trip felt much longer than 24 hours. Our flight left Houston around 11:00 PM Thursday night, and we flew with in the darkness all the way to Beijing, more than a 15 hour flight. We arrived in Beijing at around 4:00 AM in the morning (local time) on Saturday, after crossing the international dateline. I personally didn’t manage to get much sleep on the flight, so I figured I was only going to be half awake the whole day. I was wrong; after a short domestic flight, we finally arrived in Shanghai and excitement counteracted sleep deprivation. To get to the city from the airport we took the maglev train which transported us at a speed greater than 180 mph! We had a delicious lunch in the faculty club of the university we are staying at. After lunch we took a quick walk in the area immediately around the campus. The streets were chaotic and packed with cars. The area nearby the university was filled with tall residential buildings. We barely made it back to the university in time for our afternoon lecture.
The lecture was with a high school teacher from one of the most selective public high schools in Shanghai. The education system in Shanghai sounded much different from my experience in the United States. In Shanghai the high schools are evaluated based on how many students get into top universities. The high school is actually split into two divisions, the “foreign” division which is made up of students with at least one parent with a foreign passport, and the “domestic” division. Students from the foreign division typically study abroad, while students from the domestic division mostly go to domestic Chinese universities. Because the students typically go to different kinds of universities, the curriculum is necessarily different between the two divisions. Chinese universities base their admission decisions almost entirely on the results of a standardized national examination, and so most of the work is based on preparing the students for the examinations.
After the lecture we traveled to the Bund using the subway. The Bund is the historic waterfront of the city, and from it you can see the new Pudong area where most of the skyscrapers have been been built. We had a delicious meal of steamed dumplings in the shopping area nearby. Finally we returned to the university to get some sleep.
Tags: China, History, Shanghai, The Bund, The Maglev train, Transportation