Visiting Yale above every difficulty
Established in 1993, the New Asia College/Yale University Student Exchange Programme aims at enhancing cultural exchanges and building the bridge for friendships. Eight students from New Asia (NA) and Yale each conduct theme-related research and pay mutual visits. Due to the pandemic, it was impossible to continue the visits in the past year. However, three NA students included Year 4 energy and environment engineering student Terence Chan San-yu (left, photo above), Year 4 history student Daniel Ng cheuk-nam (centre, photo above) and Year 5 earth system science student Martin Lau Chung-shing (right, photo above) paid their visit to Yale in this January, at their own expense, upon the lift of travel restrictions.
Suspended in 2020-21, NA and Yale resumed the programme last year in hybrid format. With the theme of “Climate Change and Local Impact”, both organisers invited experts and scholars to spoke on understand how climate change affects their citizens from varying perspectives locally and online.
After the completion of the programme in early April 2022, both students lamented that they were unable to meet in person. As the COVID-19 epidemic situation has subsided, Daniel, Terence and Martin, finally flew to visit Yale in January 2023 with the assistance from Yale-China Association (Yale-China) Hong Kong Director, Dr Andrew Junker and NA, at their own expense.
Daniel said, “Due to the different semester schedules of the two parties, we were unable to meet with Yale participants in person. However, they have provided us with a great deal of advice, and some students have organised and written a document outlining where we should go and providing personal recommendations!”
They spent the entire afternoon conversing not only how the development of virtual currency affects climate change and energy consumption, but also about their journey from Hong Kong to the US such as the trip to Buffalo to experience the blizzard and their 10-hour drive from the Canadian border to Yale in Connecticut.
Terence also recalled spotting the Pavilion of Harmony ink painting and the calligraphy written by Dr Ch’ien Mu to the Yale-China Director. As students of NA and residents of Chih Hsing Hal, they felt very cordial and had a profound understanding of the long-standing relationship between Yale-China, NA and CUHK.
When parting, Ms Stone mentioned that they were the first group of Chinese students visiting the Yale-China following the pandemic, which is essential to prove their efforts have not been in vain.
