Participants (in order of appearance)
CONNIE SWEERIS, American Table Tennis Champion
“What a thrill. We played it before 18,000 people in that auditorium. And here in the United States, we'd be lucky at our national competition to get like two or three hundred people that'd be watching the match, let alone 18,000 people.”
DELL SWEERIS, American Table Tennis Champion
“ …when the Chinese team arrived there, we greeted them as they came off the plane. And of course there was a lot of newspaper people there. And this was the beginning of the two weeks where we were treated almost like rock stars, where you had the police escort, you had protection as you went from one venue to the other.”
JUDY HOARFROST, American Table Tennis Champion
“…when we had our matches in Beijing, and in Shanghai, and in Guangzhou, we played in three cities, I won three out of four matches. And I knew that I didn't really deserve to win those matches. But what we heard over and over again in China was ‘friendship first, competition second.’ And that's pretty much what was happening at the table when we played our matches.”
ZHAO WU, China Daily feature writer
“I know that in the United States for a very long time, table tennis has been viewed as a basement sport. But in China it's obviously a highly popular public park activity, where a skilled player is expected to put on a show to dazzle his spectators that surrounded around him.”
LIANG GELIANG, Chinese Table Tennis Champion
“ I was curious about the U.S. team, and practiced with them for a bit. We had a good practice session together, everyone was happy. We all realized it wasn’t just about table tennis. It was about friendship and establishing a bond…”
SAVANNAH BILLMAN, NYU Shanghai Class of 2019
“I was really just impressed and awed by my Chinese classmates’ knowledge of their own past, all the past dynasties, just all of these trends and literature, and art and politics and philosophical thought. They were able to just rattle them off and see continuity through them.”
ZUOYUE WANG, PhD, California Polytechnic University
“…that program lasted from 1909 to about 1945. Overall, about 1,400 Chinese students were sent over to the U.S. to study, and many of them became leaders in Chinese science, engineering, educational institutions, and other fields.”
JEFFREY LEHMAN, PhD, Vice Chancellor, NYU Shanghai
“So, we have a total of 2,000 undergraduates. But always half are from China and half from the rest of the world. And the reason we are so insistent on that ratio is it enables to assign every one of our students a roommate who has a passport different from their own. Every Chinese student has a roommate from a country outside of China. Every non-Chinese student has a roommate from China.”
JAMIE FLORCRUZ, Philippine Ambassador to China
“…so Peking University, I think got the best of the best, the cream of the crop of that year (1977). And many of my schoolmates were very brilliant brains, but also very passionate students. Why? Because they saw China go through the Cultural Revolution. They knew what was wrong, and they knew that China needed to change”
AMY STURSBERG, CEO, Stephen A. Schwarzman Education Foundation
“…this program was created for the moment we're in right now. And I think the core mission of this program is the belief in constructive engagement between China and the U.S. and China and the world.”
AMINA SHAFEEK-HORTON, Schwarzman Scholar, Class of 2025
“I wanted to come to China just to really be able to better understand the political institutions, all of the institutions that work in governance that relate to public sector, private sector. And I felt like being here would be the best way to really get a true understanding of the nature of the environment.”
JACKO WALZ, NYU Shanghai, Class of 2017
“I was applying to college at NYU, as this part of their application that said, ‘We'd love to send your application to Shanghai. We're starting this new campus at NYU Shanghai.’ And I said, ‘What the heck?’”
ERIC STINEHART, Schwarzman Scholar, Class of 2025
“Just last week someone told me, after about three seconds of talking with me, that they could tell I was an A, B, C or American born Chinese. Not because of my accent or anything like that, but because I smiled too much. Or not too much, but I smiled a lot. Which in general, maybe when talking with strangers in China, doesn't always happen at first. So, I'm definitely a smiley American."
ROXANNE ROMAN, NYU Shanghai, Class of 2017
“It's one of those places where I think ‘living is learning.’ And I think these sorts of visits to the Great Wall, or to Shanghai or to the terracotta soldiers are brilliant. But they're no substitute for life experience, for the experience of having your neighbors invite you over for one of the holidays or being on one of the trains.”
DIANA ZIYING ZHAN, New York Film Academy student
“When I first got here, I'm not that confident with my English, for some reason. And then it's hard to read, to write an essay, like academic essay, especially in a different language. But once I started writing it and getting used to it, I'm fine right now.”
KEXIN XIE (LUCY), New York Film Academy Student
“…you know, even though we can see, we can read about different countries or different cultures online or in the newspaper, it's always different when you're there in-person. Because you really get to feel how it's like living here. How it feels like to be, I guess, local.”
AMY WANG, Olympic Athlete
“…I think when I tell other people that I play table tennis, they're usually like, ‘Oh, is that just ping pong?’ Or even sometimes ‘like beer pong?’ But I think over time they, once they play the sport against me, I think they realize the complexity of the sport, and how hard it can be.”