Information Pack

General information about Jiangsu Province, City of Nanjing and Nanjing University

Jiangsu
 http://www.jiangsu.net/main/intro/intro.php

In 2009, Jiangsu Provincial Government (Nanjing is its capital) held an exhibition at UNHQ called "Splendid Jiangsu". They distributed a brochure about Jiangsu during the exhibition. You can download the pdf file of the brochure at http://unclp.org/nandaprog/Jiangsu.pdf.

Nanjing
http://english.nanjing.gov.cn/

http://nanjing.jiangsu.net/introduction.php

Nanjing University

http://www.nju.edu.cn/cps/site/njueweb/fg/index.php

http://www.flickr.com/photos/48937028@N00/sets/72157594488522639/ (photos)

http://nanjing.jhu.edu/

Photos of Secretary General Ban Ki-moon receiving an honorary doctorate from Nanjing University in October 2010

http://www.flickr.com/photos/48937028@N00/sets/72157625216991307/

Visa

Every one of us needs a visa to enter China. For you to receive a visa from the Chinese consulate, you need to have a passport valid for 6 months beyond the date of entry. For people in New York, you should apply for your visa at the Chinese Consulate, which is located at the other end of the 42nd Street. The exact address is 520 12th Avenue (Westside Highway). The entrance to the visa office is at 42nd Street & 12th Avenue. You need to apply in person or go through a travel agency  by paying a handling fee. When applying for a visa, you need to submit the following: your passport, two photos, a fee (amount varies depending on your nationality, but you only pay when you pick up your passport) and an application form. You can apply for your visa 90 days prior to departure. For additional info about visa matters, please visit the consulate’s website:www.nyconsulate.prchina.org. If you are in a different country, please check the website of the Chinese Consulate in your country for instructions. As to what type of visa you should apply, please check with the Programme Coordinator.

Arrival

Our official check-in date is Sunday, 8 July. The closest gateway to Nanjing is Shanghai. As is the practice in previous years, we would usually meet there before heading for Nanjing as a group on Sunday. The programme coordinator  will book a hotel where everybody can check in You can certainly choose your own hotel. Since Shanghai is such an exciting place, the programme coordinator would usually organize a day tour of the city on Saturday for people who have never been there before. Our tour bus will pick us up from our hotel. If you are interested in joining the tour, you will need to arrive in Shanghai by the evening of Friday, 6 July. For you to arrive in Shanghai by Friday evening, many of you will need to depart from New York or Europe on Thursday, 5 July. There will be a post-programme tour to Harbin in northeast China. The tour dates are Friday-Monday, 27-30 July. If you are interested in joining that tour, you can plan your flight home on Tuesday, 31 July.

Since each of us has some luggage to carry, we would usually charter a tour bus and a luggage truck to take us from our hotel in Shanghai directly to our building at Nanjing University. The cost per person is about $30

For people who wish to go from Shanghai to Nanjjing on their own, they can take the high-speed train. The train fare is about $23 and the taxi fare from our hotel to the train station is about $8-$10. When you arrive at the Nanjing training station, you can take a taxi directly to Nanda for about $5.

If you fly into Nanjing by air, you can either take a taxi (about $25) or take an airport bus (about $5) to the last stop in downtown Nanjing and then switch to a taxi (about $2) to Nanda.

When you give instructions to the taxi driver, please be specific as to the exact drop-off location. If you just say Nanda, you could be dropped off at a point that takes 30 minutes or more to walk to our building, as Nanda occupies a large area with many gates. Please ask the driver to take you to Xiyuan Hotel (西苑宾馆), located at the corner of Jinyin Street (金银街) and Shanghai Road (上海路). Every driver in Nanjing should know Xiyuan Hotel. Its phone number is 8359-3589. Xiyuan Hotel belongs to Nanda and our check-in is at the reception on the first floor of Xiyuan Hotel. We won't stay in Xiyuan, though. We'll be staying in the building next to Xiyuan. Our building is called Zeng Xianzi Building. Zeng Xianzi is a Hong Kong businessman and he donated this building to Nanda. The Zeng Building is quite new. 

If you have housing needs with your room, please inquire with the reception at Xiyuan, as the housing management is located there. That's also where you should pay your single supplement, which is expected in the first week. 

Attached is a map of Nanda that shows where our building is. We are located outside of the university's west gate by about 2-3 minutes’ walk. Our building is next to the Business School of Nanda and in front of Johns-Hopkins and Nanjing University Center. The map is a little out of date, as there are more buildings now and our building is much taller than the one shown on this map. The business school is not shown on the map. The Johns-Center at Nanda is an ultra-modern facility. Visit its website http://nanjing.jhu.edu/ to get more info about Nanjing and Nanda.

Room condition

Your room at Nanda is fully furnished with a bed (two in the double room), a desk, a TV, one or two chairs, an electric hot pot for you to boil water and a small fridge. Bath towels and sheets are provided in the room and are changed daily. If you prefer to use your own bath towels, you are welcome to bring them. There is a housekeeper that comes in everyday to clean your room.  

Places to eat 

There are at least two places where you can have breakfast. One is the cafe in the lobby of our building, where they serve western breakfast and the other is the cafeteria in Xiyuan, which is next to our building (the two buildings are joined by a corridor). If you eat in the cafe, you just pay cash, but if you choose to eat in the Xiyuan cafeteria, you need to purchase a meal card. The same card can also be used when you have lunch in the Xiyuan cafeteria. The lobby café is expensive, so we recommend the Xiyuan cafeteria for breakfast. For those of us who wish to have some of our meals there, Nanda suggests that each buy a meal card at 200rmb. The un-used money on the card can be refunded at the end of the programme. Lunch at the Xiyuan cafeteria is quite inexpensive. It probably costs anyway between 10rmb and 20rmb.  

The Xiyuan cafeteria does not serve dinner, but people probably wouldn't eat there anyway, as they would be more interested in sampling various restaurants in Nanjing. See a list of restaurants in the vicinity of Nanda attached. This info was collected last year, so it may be out of date, but I think most restaurants are still there. There is a student cafeteria in the south campus of Nanda where there are many food stalls with a great deal of selections, but it will take you 15-20 minutes to walk there. 

There is also a restaurant on the second floor of Xiyuan, which is managed by a 5-star hotel in the city. It has an open dining area as well as private dining rooms. It's a little expensive, but if you don't want to go out, you can eat there once a while. 

Chinese menu in English

One of the headaches for foreigners in China is that they don't know how to order in a restaurant. The names of many Chinese dishes are so fancy or flowery that I don't even know how to translate. However, you can go to this page: http://bbs.chinanews.com.cn/thread-372202-1-1.html and print out the list of Chinese dishes in English and arm yourself with it when you go to a restaurant. The dishes are grouped into categories.

 Another website with English translations of Chinese dishes is:

 http://www.liaoning-gateway.com/images/english/menu.pdf


 Money Matters

In discussing money matters, please keep in mind that the ratio of exchange between USD and RMB (yuan) is roughly 1:6.3.

Money change. Foreign currencies are not accepted in China, although private vendors may make exceptions. You can change money at airports, hotels, banks and major department stores.

ATM machines are widely available. There is even one in our building.

Suggested packing list

Many participants in the past regretted having brought too much stuff, so you are strongly advised to pack light and travel light. Most of the daily necessities can be bought locally and they are usually inexpensive.

Miscellaneous

Passport
Please make a copy or two of your passport and store it away from where you keep your passport. This will make things much easier in case of a loss. Hope that this won't happen. It will be a nightmare that will absolutely ruin your trip.

Electric appliances
China uses 220V instead of 110V. If you bring American appliances, you should also bring a converter. 

Pin for the electrical plug

There does not seem to be a standard. Some places use the flat pin, while others may use a round pin. At commercial hotels, you can always rent (for free) a multi-purpose adaptor to plug in your device, but you may need to bring both types to Nanda because it does not provide multi-purpose adaptors.

Internet access and phone use
There is internet access in your room at Nanda, but it is not wireless. You need to plug your laptop in the internet connector in your room through a cable (provided).  

As in previous years, we'll have an arrangement through Nanda with China Unicom, one of the two largest mobile service providers in China (the other being China Mobile) that offers foreign students at the university a special service. It gives a free sym card with 20 yuan pre-installed to each student who uses the service (the sym card itself is worth 50-80rmb). With this sym card, the calls and text messages between students in the programme are free (similar to our family plan in the U.S.). It comes with a variety of applications. One of the features enables one of us to send a message to reach all the others. Since there is only 20rmb on the card, Nanda suggested that those of you who are interested may want to put 100rmb on the card, which should last you for the entire programme. This sym card allows iPone and Smart Phone users to go online. We would encourage all of you to go for the service. In most cases, you can use your current cell phone with the sym card in China, but make sure that you ask your cell phone carrier at home to unlock your phone before you leave. In the event that your cell phone doesn't work with the sym card in China, you have the option of renting a cell phone from China Unicom for 100rmb.  

To dial the cell phone number from outside of China, tell your family and friends to dial the international code (011 in the U.S.) and the country code for China (86). To dial from within China from a cell phone, you don't need to dial any additional code, but if you dial from a landline, you may sometimes dial a 0. 

There is a landline phone in your room at Nanda with a specific number that begins with 8359 followed by another 4 digits. All the phone numbers at Nanda begin with 8359. It's free to make room to room calls, but you still need to dial all the 8 digits. You can receive calls made to your room phone number from any source, international calls included, but you cannot make outgoing calls. To make outgoing calls, you need to purchase a phone card from one of the local stores. To call the room number from outside of China, you need to dial the international code (011) + country code (86) + city code for Nanjing (25).

Water to drink
Water from the tap is not drinkable in China. You should drink bottled water, which is easily available.

Immunization
According to the U.S. State Department, immunizations are recommended for hepatitis B and Japanese B encephalitis. (Immunization for Japanese B encephalitis is only recommended during the epidemic summer months for visitors planning to stay longer than two or three weeks in rural areas.) An immune globulin shot may offer protection against hepatitis A. Malaria occurs in China, particularly in rural areas and in southern China. Depending on the season and your destination, you may need to take anti-malarial drugs, use insect repellant, and take other measures to reduce contact with mosquitoes.

The New York Hospital recommends the following 4 shots for China:

hepatitis A
typhoid
tetanus-diphtheria
polio booster

The phone number for the hospital is 212-746-5454. Ask for the international health department. The clinic is at 440 East 69th Street, ground floor.

You may also wish to contact the Medical Service at the UN for advice and service.

Dressing code

Summer can be hot in Nanjing (our living quarters and classrooms are air-conditioned), so it’s okay to wear T-shirts and shorts to class and go on tours, but there may be some formal occasions. You don’t need to bring a suit. A shirt and tie for men would be fine for a formal occasion. Ladies always seem to be well prepared.

Gifts
There will be 10 instructors teaching all the classes, at least two administrators (the Dean and his secretary) and two student assistants working for our programme. It would be nice for us to give them a token of thanks at the closing ceremony. What we did in the previous years was that each of us made a small monetary contribution ($15) to purchase gift cards from a local bookstore popular among the professors and students to give to our hosts. We’ll also purchase a few group gifts from the gift shop at the UN for use at certain functions. If you still wish to bring some gifts on your own in addition to the contribution, feel free to do so.

Swimming pool

There is a swimming pool on campus that you can use, but you will need to have a doctor's note certifying that you are free from skin and other contagious diseases in order to use the swimming pool at Nanda. There is no particular requirement as to what tests you need to do and what form the certificate should take. It would be in your doctor's judgment. The certificate should have your doctor's signature and seal (if applicable). If you can't do a physical where you are, you can do one at the university clinic at Nanda for a very small fee, but you will wait for a couple of days for the results to come out, as there may be blood tests.

Useful info: most expensive and least expensive cities in China

Go to http://aoprals.state.gov (website for the US State Department) and click on Foreign Per Diem Rates, you will get a list of the going rates for meals, lodging and incidentals in thousands of locations worldwide (these are the amounts the US government will reimburse employees who travel there). The data are amazingly accurate--they're updated continually--and they're all in U.S. dollars.

The direct link to the China page is http://aoprals.state.gov/web920/per_diem_action.asp?MenuHide=1&CountryCode=1123, where you will see Nanjing is in the mid-range with the most expensive cities being Beijing and Shanghai.