Engaging Cornell Students in Beijing, 2020-21
Over the course of multiple events, the center space has become a Cornell “home” for students away from Ithaca. In Fall 2020, while approximately 1,000 Cornell students were distance learning from China, the Cornell China Center created vital student-facing programming to connect students at our center in Beijing. In September, we held our first large in-person event after re-opening by welcoming an enthusiastic group of Cornell students in China, including students from the Study Away program at three universities in Beijing (Tsinghua University, Peking University, and China Agricultural University) as well as students distance learning from home.
At the request of Cornell students in China, the Cornell China Center organized multiple student career exploration events and company information sessions in October-December, 2020. These hybrid events gave students the opportunity for face-to-face interactions while also enabling broader access through Zoom. Director Ying Hua and Manager of Cornell in China Peter Wen worked with companies like Tencent, Xiaomi, Tesla, E Fund, and ByteDance to organize these opportunities. Such events will continue to be organized for students in the spring of 2021 with an expanded list of sectors and companies. The Cornell China Center is also connecting current students with alumni for career exploration.
In November 2020, we held an online dialogue between Cornell students highly passionate about animation and game design and WANG Xin, Co-Director and Executive Producer of the big hit cartoon movie JIANG Zi Ya, who shared with students his experience of study abroad, working as the Cinematic Character Supervisor at Blizzard Entertainment, and movie creation. And in December, as part of the Cornell-China Forum—the Cornell China Center’s signature annual event that was livestreamed this year using the center’s Beijing space as a studio, a student panel brought together current Cornell students to discuss “Our Year 2020."
In April 2021, we hosted an opportunity for students to discuss career plans with Cornell alum Jonathan Jia Zhu, Managing Director, Bain Capital Private Equity, Hong Kong.
