June 19, 2017

2017 SECU Blog from Abroad – Day 1

The group tours the Great Wall of China.

By: Torie Johnson
SECU (Twitter: @TheSECU)

Monday, June 19, 2017 — Up the Wall and Down the Tombs

The daunting walk up a section of the Great Wall of China at Badaling was one of our first encounters with Beijing. That day also included a walk down into the Imperial Tombs of the Ming Dynasty (Dingling), which was excavated decades ago and still holds several original pottery pieces. However, not original to the sacred burial site is the cash travelers, wishing for good fortunes from the emperor and empresses buried there, have dropped throughout the below-ground dwelling.

In touring these Chinese landmarks, a group of graduate students from the University of Georgia’s Institute of Higher Education, with SECU in tow, kicked off a week-long seminar in this most populous Asian nation.

During the course of five days the group is scheduled to visit five different Chinese universities and the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China. The first stop was Peking University, which likes to think of itself as the Harvard of the East, and the second was Shanghai Jiao Tong University, which fancies itself an Eastern MIT.

As is common with education abroad experiences, the seminar will include academic lectures on a variety of subjects by Chinese faculty and administrators, such as today’s presentation on finance, and guided campus tours led by local students.