In December 2020, five out of twelve courses from SJTU were selected for the Virtual Student Exchange Program initiated by the Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU), a network of leading universities linking the Americas, Asia and Australasia, and a platform for member universities to exchange ideas and promote development. Among the five selected courses, two courses were from the School of Humanities, namely “Two Thousand Years of Sino-foreign Cultural Exchanges” and “Elementary Chinese 1”.
Instructed by Prof. Zhang Zhaoyang, “Two Thousand Years of Sino-foreign Cultural Exchanges” investigates cultural exchanges between China and the world during the past two thousand years, covering such topics as the Silk Road trades, Maritime Silkroad, the spread of Chinese inventions to the Old World, Admiral Zheng He’s voyages from China to Africa during the 15th century, etc.
Instructed by Prof. Wang Jun, “Elementary Chinese 1” aims to build a preliminary foundation for students within limited time in spoken Chinese and to enable them to communicate in the target language for some basic functions. In this course, 250 most frequently used Chinese characters are also taught, which will be helpful for students who want to study Chinese language in depth in the future.
