Sister Cities What do New
York and Shanghai have in common?

Urban Dreams Why do
people move to the city?

My City What is life like in
New York and Shanghai?

Urban Legends What do
people say about your city?

Cities of the Future How can youth change the city?

What is life like for youth in the world’s greatest cities like New York and Shanghai?

Disposable Planet and Urban Planet
BBC News

Cities Without Slums
The City Alliance

Explore Your City and Others Google Earth

The first NYC - Shanghai Student Forum was held on May 25, 2006 between high school students in New York City and Shanghai. The goal of this program is to help American and Chinese students gain an understanding of what life is like for their peers, to learn about each other’s cities, histories, and lives, and to share new ideas on their futures.

Students from schools from across New York City participated with schools from Shanghai’s Xuhui district. The New York City student participants are either studying Chinese or preparing to participate in

Get the Facts

Map of China

Map of the United States

Map of Shanghai

Map of New York City

Shanghai timeline

New York City timeline

We would like to thank the New York City Department of Education's Office of Youth Development and School-Community Services for their support of this program. We also would like to thank City-As-School for their assistance in planning and coordination, as well as the Xuhui Education International Exchange Centre in Shanghai.

Schools that participated from New York were:

• Baccalaureate School for Global Education
• Beacon School
• Bronx Lab School
• City-As-School
• College of Staten Island High School for International Studies
• Henry Street School for International Studies
• High School for Telecommunications, Arts and Technology
• Manhattan Comprehensive Night and Day High School

Schools that participated from Shanghai, Xuhui District, were:

• Nanyang Model High School
• Shanghai Weiyu High School
• Shanghai World Foreign Language Middle School

Here is what student participants had to say about the NYC-Shanghai Student Forum video-conference:

"One of the important reasons why we held this meeting is because the computer tech is popularizing fast in our city. Internet is the first choice of free way of learning new skills and spread it." - Fanchen, Shanghai Weiyu High School

“It was a lot more casual than I expected. It was really fun seeing them laugh and us having jokes between each other.… It seems like it could have been in the lunchroom or something and we were just having a big talk.” - Courtney

“I thought that it was important to find out what it’s really like there and how they really feel about things…. Otherwise how are we going to learn? ... Although we are a lot alike, which I’m glad we found out today, we do have differences. I thought it was really good to actually get a youth perspective of what those differences are.” - Zach

“…at the beginning I kind of felt like we were kind of competing. Like they would say we have all this [in Shanghai] and we would say well we have all this [in New York] and it felt kind of weird. But then I thought you got more comfortable with each other and you were more accepting….” - Student audience member

“…we didn’t know what they expected from us. Maybe they’re thinking stereotypes already, so we’re trying to bring in the good stuff about diversity and cultures because we don’t know what they think about New York.… I think they kind of think it’s big, popular, everyone comes here to get famous and stuff. I think we’re just trying to break that and show that it’s about community and different cultures....” - Jealene

“I think it’s made me all the more excited to go and I hope that while I’m there I can speak with more kids, hopefully with these kids that we’re talking to today, and make friends and have more interactions….” - Heather

“...I would not be able to speak as eloquently [in another language] as they speak English. It really made me think about our language education in this country. We have such a diverse range of people; we have opportunities to talk to other people. It doesn’t seem as if they would have that as much there, not being as culturally diverse. Now I feel like I need to go home and just study for hours until I get it perfect.” - Courtney

"I wish the Asia Society could do more of these teleconferences with other Asian countries in the future." - Ady