“HNC is small, but the world is vast.” Since its establishment in 1986, HNC has nurtured nearly 3,300 Chinese and international students from over 40 countries. Today, they are active on the world stage, but they never forget the small world of HNC that witnessed their hard work, achievements, youth, and dreams. Many students not only began their careers here but also found love and wrote their stories of how they met at the center. There are even second-generation students who choose to study at HNC and become alumni alongside their parents and relatives. We interviewed five families composed of center alumni to share their “center stories.”
Father: Mi Zhida (Scott Mills)
Certificate program, 1990-1991
Elder sister: Mi Sihua (Laura Mills)
Certificate program, 2013-2014
Younger brother: Mi Sixia (Benjamin Mills)
Certificate program, 2018-2019
Mother: Xue Kai
Their Story:
The China-America Center for Cultural Studies has a special connection with our family. Thirty years ago, my wife and I found love at the center. Over a hundred Chinese and international students and teachers from the center attended our wedding. It remains a cherished memory in our hearts. As our children grew up, it was only natural for us to encourage them to study at the center.
Our daughter, Mi Sihua (Laura Mills), is hailed as the first “second-generation” of HNC. After graduating from the certificate program in 2014, she pursued studies in law and environmental protection in the United States. Our son, Mi Sixia (Benjamin Mills), was a certificate program student in 2018 and will soon be attending medical school for further studies. Both my children and I have been deeply influenced by Chinese culture. We love China, especially Nanjing, which has become our second home.
During my wedding, I invited my friend, Mr. Gao Yuqi, a renowned Finnish sinologist, to be my best man. He is also an alumnus of the center. In 2014, he joined us in attending Laura's graduation ceremony, reliving the unforgettable experiences at the center and the charm of Nanjing. Teacher Zhang Jipei from HNC has been a witness to the lives of two generations of our family at the center.
Elder Sister: Jiang Yu
Certificate program, 2007-2008
Younger brother: Jiang Qichen
Master’s program, 2012-2014
Since the early summer of 2007, from the moment I walked into the center’s building to submit my application materials, I felt the mini yet diverse world of HNC. I still vividly remember the modern red building and the warm atmosphere, and the smile on Teacher Yuan Enhong’s face as she received my documents. HNC entered my life just like that.
The Center’s teaching combines the essence of both Chinese and Western cultures, with a balance of intensity and flexibility. There is a wide range of entertaining, socializing, professional, or cultural activities. Participating in just a few of them is enough to keep one busy. My classmates from the Nanjing University Business School joked that since I joined HNC, I have been like a dragon that appears and disappears without a trace. The busy yet fulfilling days always pass by quickly.
In December, it snowed a few times in Nanjing. My younger brother, Jiang Qichen, told me that he wanted to take the entrance examination for independent enrollment at Nanjing University. He was 17 years old that year and about to graduate from high school. As his older sister and a potential future alumna of the university, I naturally took on the role of “host” and made early reservations for a guest room at the center. On the night of our arrival, I showed him around the center, allowing him to get a glimpse of the renowned study abroad experience without leaving the country.
Since childhood, we have always addressed each other by our first names and paid little attention to birth order. We led relatively independent lives and didn't communicate as frequently as other siblings might. However, when faced with significant choices, I, as his older sister, still had a subtle influence on him.
Later on, the moment my younger brother graduated from high school and entered Nanjing University was the same moment I graduated from HNC and prepared to study abroad. We had always attended the same school from childhood to adolescence, but we rarely had many interactions on campus. Four years later, he joined the Master’s program of HNC with a longing for the center. Coincidentally, his dormitory was right next to mine at that time. If it wasn't for this coincidence, I could only marvel at how considerate and warm the arrangements made by the center's teachers were.
Since starting my career, I have moved to several cities and even countries. However, no matter where I go, I still receive the Hopkins alumni magazine and HNC’s electronic journals. In the past few years, I have returned to the center a few times, and every time, I truly wished there was a suitable program for me to apply and study there again because the life and learning at HNC were encapsulated in my memories as pure happiness. The next time I return to China, I will invite my younger brother and say, “Alumnus, let’s go back to HNC together and have a look!”
Sindy Ding-Voorhees (Ding Wenjin): Certificate program, 2010-2011
Bennet Voorhees (Fu Ning): Master’s program, 2009-2011
Their story:
Our story began at HNC in 2010. Bennet met me at a party. We spoke French, chatted about our lives, and drank beer; I started to pay attention to him because he contacted the bus service so that the driver would come to the center to pick everyone up for the Oktoberfest—yes, you could say that we got to know each other because we both loved craft beer.
We started to really connect with each other through Professor Hua Tao’s “Social Issues in Contemporary China” course. We happened to sit next to each other, and he never actually listened to what the professor was talking about, but instead spent time on GChat in class. As a result, I became the one who was worried that he might fail to understand everything or miss the key points. At the end of the course, we discussed the topic of the final paper in the library, and I spent a lot of time revising his paper. Bennet later told me that he deliberately wrote it in a messy way and asked me to edit it, just to be with me for an extra afternoon in the library.
The Halloween masquerade that year was a boost to our relationship. He showed up at the door of my dorm with a box of paintbrushes and said his bald head was perfect for him to dress up as the protagonist in the TV series Prison Break (Michael Scofield), except that he had no such tattoos on his body, so he asked me to paint on him the same patterns. I, in the costume of the queen of the Han dynasty, had to draw striking green “tattoos” on his body according to the pictures on Baidu, which gave me an illusion of time-travel. To be honest, drawing on his body and being so close to him, I was kind of nervous and my heart flipped. That could be the rudiment of trust and tacit understanding between him and me, although even to this day I still have no idea how he knew that I could draw.
After graduation, we kept in touch with each other and encouraged each other via emails and video chats when we were both in the United States but in different places. I studied at a law school in New York City, and Bennet started his first job at the IMF. We travelled frequently between New York and Washington, D.C., trying to maintain this relationship and cheering on each other in our study and career. Finally in 2015, we ended our long-distance situation and together we started to live and work in New York. Now we have a lovely, 13-month-old daughter, Aurore Chuyu Voorhees, and an adopted puppy Copper; at home we still cook Chinese food and speak Chinese very often!
We are grateful to have found each other through the programs at HNC and have become each other’s lifelong partners and best friends.
Jiao Jinbao
Certificate program, 2012-2013
Ding Li
Certificate program, 2012-2013
Their story:
Our story began in September 2012 when we met at the beginning of the 27th certificate program at HNC. He had come from Beijing, and I had been in Nanjing—thousands of miles away. I often heard the alumni of the center gratefully said that the living and studying experiences at the center changed their careers. In our case, it did change the trajectory of our lives.
HNC is located on the northwest side of the Gulou campus of Nanjing University. However, it is this small place that offers everyone a platform to reach higher and go further. He was an economics major, and I was an English major. After graduation, we started to have a stronger feeling that the international education at the center would affect us throughout our lives. He obtained the Certified Public Accountant license in the United States and landed a job. I began my career as a teacher standing on the podium with great passion, and what I have learned and seen at the center is an important inspiration for my teaching. Our ordinary careers bear the deep imprint of the center.
After six years of marriage, we welcomed our daughter in our lives, the greatest gift the center has ever given us. From time to time, we joke that Professor Huang Chengfeng, the then Chinese Co-Director, was our real matchmaker. At HNC, we called her Mama Huang, and this title has not changed until now. In March 2021, we welcomed the second gift from the center. I cannot think of a word to describe this kind of fate.
162 Shanghai Road is still one of my Taobao delivery addresses, for it is our lifetime memory. After leaving HNC for many years, there have been very few times when we passed by the gate of HNC on Shanghai Road, we would always recall those good memories—the intense discussions in the classroom, the quiet and lovely library, the sunshine by the small pond, the billiard room, the youthful displays of the students in the gym, and the music from the piano room.
The faculty at the center are wonderful teachers and friends of the students. I still remember that it was around the summer vacation that we expressed the wish to take our wedding photos in the center, and the teachers readily agreed, in such a warm way that as if they were welcoming their children home. That was a special sentiment.
In a blink of an eye, it has been nearly ten years since we have graduated from the center. In the past decade, the center has created countless brilliance, and the center will surely enjoy more highlight moments in the next decade. Finally, I wish HNC an even better and brighter future. We also hope that our children will become our alumni and tell their stories of the center.
The once-young HNC students already have embarked on their own career paths, started their own families, and even cultivated “second-generation HNCers.” They are the most beautiful embodiments of the center, the best footnotes of its unique training mode, and the living testimony to the maxim— “The peach and the plum do not speak, yet a path is born beneath them.”
On the occasion of the Lantern Festival, I would like to wish the alumni of HNC at home and abroad all the best and may all our wishes come true.
HNC alumni will pass down the traditions of HNC from generation to generation and shine like stars in every piece of land around the world.
