During my short stay in Harvard, I joined this amazing student association called Harvard College Association of U.S.-China Relations (HAUSCR). HAUSCR hold many activities representing Harvard in China including China Thinks Big conference and competitions, Harvard Young Leader Summit in China, and H-week. I’m therefore able to attend the Harvard Young Leader Summit in China (HSYLC) this summer as a US staff member in Shanghai.

HSYLC is a conference held in China by Harvard for talented Chinese high school students every summer. There are two sites that have exactly the same activities at the exact same time. One of them is in Beijing Rendafuzhong, and the other one is in Shanghai High School. The summit lasted for about 10 days during which students attended seminars taught by Harvard college students, listened to lectures addressed by famous entrepreneurs and professors, made their own projects concerning environment protection or other hot issues in China and attended all sorts of extracurricular activities such as cocktail party and fashion show.

The summit I attended was in Shanghai. All the staff members were from Harvard and we all had different tasks to do during the summit. Taking care of 300 high school students and 30 Harvard students at one time was not an easy task, not to mention half of the staff was Americans who barely knew anything about Chinese culture and conventions.The first few days were extremely stressful because we needed to prepare for the opening ceremony and check-in procedure of 300 students. Shanghai high school was kind enough to lend all the facilities to us for the conference and extracurricular activities. But they also had strict rules about lending auditoriums and classrooms, which made our work even harder. But even though, with the help of all the staff and assistants who worked ceaselessly during the summit, the conference this year turned out to be a great success.

During the opening ceremony, students were divided into 12 different houses, which is also a tradition in Harvard. The names of the 12 houses are Aequitas, Amicitia, Animus, Dignitas, Fidus, Inspiratio, Libertas, Lux, Pax, Spes, Virtus and Vis. Each house had their own house flags, slogans and house leaders, all Harry Potter style. Students can earn marks for their houses if they win in the house games. I must say that I was shocked by the persistence and talents of those high school students. They were given a lot of tasks to do throughout the summit but
they managed to accomplish all the works. Young as they are, they did amazing jobs in group projects, art designs and academic researches.

In the summit, I was in charge of mission 300 (in which all the 300 student in one site gather around to finish one major task), welcoming activities and grading. Mission 300 has always been the most important and time-consuming activity in HSYLC. Every year we think of different ways to get all the students involved in this grand final task. In the past few years we’ve made the HSYLC logo with 300 balloons which were painted each by 300 students and have created a beautiful fan with 12 different sections painted by students from each house. This year, we put forward a plan to construct a 3D HSYLC logo with boxes that can be painted on. In order to be creative and challenging, we designed the boxes to be joined on edge with cross joints so that most of the boxes would be suspended airborne. To make this mission possible, we searched throughout Shanghai to find the right materials for the boxes and joints, tested the plausibility of the project on computer model and on site every single day, and ran though the logistic of the task several times to make sure that everything would be under control on the day of mission 300.

Part of US staff members and China-side associates

On the last day of HSYLC, the students built the final work of mission 300 under our instructions. They gathered around crying and hugging to say goodbye. They took pictures of the “HSYLC” logo they constructed and of each other to memorize this amazing summer that they spent together. As I stood among them, I felt exhausted but satisfied. All the midnight staff meetings, all the sweat shirts and all the scratches and cuts on my legs were worth it when I saw the students’faces lightened with excitement and joy.

The final work of mission 300, a 3D “HSYLC” logo made of 60 cubic boxes.

Those 10 days I spent with my co-workers and students were more than just some summer experiences for me. I met my old friends from Harvard and made new friends with all those brilliant students and staff members who came from different continents but shared the same dream and interests. I learned how to plan out large events and activities within short notice, how to communicate with people of different backgrounds and nationalities, and how to deal with crises. I appreciate this opportunity to meet these amazing people. They taught me everything that I couldn’t possibly learn at school. This is the memory I’ll never forget.

(Edited by editing group & Sijia Hu)

Zihan Song