Holistically Crimson
This is part of a series about Harvard’s deep connections with Asia. SHANGHAI, China — “This experience wasn’t about going to class,” said Shaw Chen of the year he spent at Peking University. Chen, who graduated from Harvard in 2000, said his stint in Beijing as a Harvard-Yenching Fellow was formative for him, but not necessarily because of his classroom learning. Arriving at the campus in the fall of 1998 after a summer stint at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, he took undergraduate classes with Chinese students and immersed himself in student life. Both on and off the campus, on train and bus trips through the country, he saw a nation that, though ancient, was stretching new economic muscles. “You could … see a real energy in China. You had a sense China was heading somewhere,” Chen said. China still is going places, only perhaps with even more energy than in 1998. And Chen, who is...