China’s President Hu Jintao met with Yale students and faculty involved in the Peking University-Yale University Joint Undergraduate Program on May 3.
The Chinese leader’s visit was in honor of the 110th anniversary of Peking University (PKU). It was his first visit there since becoming the nation’s president. He was accompanied by PKU President Xu Zhihong and other national, municipal and university leaders.
Hu visited the PKU-Yale Joint Undergraduate Program in honor both of his visit to Yale in 2006 and of China’s long-standing connections with Yale.
His first stop was dorm room number 106, which Yale student Austin Miller ’10 shares with Zhang Yin ’10, a philosophy student in Yuanpei, PKU’s honor college. (As part of the joint PKU-Yale initiative, students from the two insitutions live and study together during the course of the year).
Hu then spoke to an assembly that included other student participants in the PKU-Yale program, as well as Yale professors Deborah David and Michael Friedmann, who are teaching there this semester, and Ningping Yu, the program’s resident director. Also on hand for Hu’s address were 10 other international students at PKU, a number of whom are volunteering for the Olympics.
