Events in Hong Kong and Shanghai

The MV Explorer spent time in Hong Kong and Shanghai but Semester at Sea voyagers went far beyond those two cities. The greatest number went to Beijing where the Great Wall seems to have been the main attraction as well as Tiananmen Square. SAS students also had the opportunity to meet and interact with students from a number of Chinese universities.

What many voyagers have told me were the best experiences though were not the big tourist attractions, but the more intimate moments where they were able to experience China on a deeper level. It’s possible that the most fun was had by a group of students who were guided through Hong Kong by our interport student, Edmond.

Andrew Davis, Tomas Ramos, and Eric Stephenson were walking through Edmond’s neighborhood when they stumbled onto familiar territory, a basketball court. Within a few minutes, they had started a pickup game and pretty soon, the whole neighborhood had gathered to watch them play. “They were amazed…and yelling like I was some sort of hero,” Andrew said. The students were hugged and signed autographs, making them feel like they were celebrities. “It was a blessing for me to be able to do that and enjoy their company,” Andrew told the community last night at post-port reflection when describing how he felt that day.

There are also a number of students on board who are of Asian descent, and for them, our time in Hong Kong and Shanghai took on a more personal meaning. Some were able to become reacquainted with family, others saw the places where their parents were born or spent a large part of their lives. For others that had lived in Asia themselves, “it felt like home.”

In addition to the events taking place on shore while the MV Explorer was docked in China though, there was something very special transpiring on board the ship. Semester at Sea announced the launch of a milestone program in its academic history, the C.Y. Tung Program in Sino-U.S. Relations.

In the words of Les McCabe, our Executive Dean and the president of the Institute for Shipboard Education, “This program marks a new era by offering a timely and integrated study of China – one of the world’s most influential global powers – and its relations with the United States. It will bring together students, scholars, and prominent figures to explore the history and cultures of China and the United States, and to consider how to ensure productive economic and diplomatic relationships between the two in the future.”

This program will be an incredible opportunity to further develop Semester at Sea as an heir to Thomas Jefferson’s vision of an “academical village,” a place where students and scholars would come together and interact in the pursuit of knowledge. There is no more fitting an example of this vision than the MV Explorer, where students and faculty live together for months at a time, traveling the globe together in a journey of academic pursuit and personal introspection.

University of Virginia President John T. Casteen III remarked of the new program that, “Our collaboration with Semester at Sea has provided thousands of students from colleges and universities around the world with unique opportunities to experience and understand world cultures, political systems and literature. This program builds on Semester at Sea’s successful educational mission and dovetails with the University’s ongoing initiatives to expand its global footprint.”

The design of the program builds on the vision of its namesake, C.Y. Tung. Mr. Tung, a Chinese shipping magnate was a longtime supporter of Semester at Sea and one of the greatest proponents of shipboard education. He always believed that ships could transport more than cargo and that is why he founded the predecessor program to Semester at Sea, World Campus Afloat, in 1963. Under Mr. Tung’s vision, his ships began to transport ideas and advance the education of thousands of college students. More than 45,000 alumni, hailing from approximately 1,500 different academic institutions have benefitted from C.Y. Tung’s creation of the floating campus.

The C.Y. Tung Program on Sino-U.S. Relations will bring together distinguished faculty from the University of Virginia and Fudan University in Shanghai, China to lead upper level courses that will “serve as a forum for constructive analysis of Chinese and American worldviews, economies, and diplomacy.” Additionally, five Chinese and five American university students will be selected as C.Y. Tung Program Scholars, receiving scholarships that will cover the costs of tuition and room and board. It will be an exceptional forum for the best and brightest students of both nations to come together and examine the relations between their two countries.