A handful of students stood up and moved their seats to the back of the classroom when 26-year-old Egyptian Kareem Sabbour walked into their class on December 23.

Sabbour had shaven his head for a lecture on his country's history and culture that he was about to give to the 30 or so seventh graders. Dressed in a white martial arts uniform and a long Egyptian scarf, he wanted to make himself look like a man from ancient Eygpt. "I scared everybody at first," he laughed. "That was a way of being memorable."

Sabbour's lecture was a part of the program "I Shanghai," organized by AIESEC SJTU, a branch of the international student nonprofit organization AIESEC. The program's purpose is to bring young foreigners interested in Shanghai's culture to the city, said program director Yang Xian, 19, a student at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Of the 30 applicants from some 10 countries, Sabbour was one of four accepted into the program, which ran from December 1 to Friday. Over those 26 days, Sabbour and the others attended several cultural workshops for activities such as calligraphy, embroidery and incense burning.

They also spoke to locals in several discussion sessions. One of the sessions was called Global Village, where Sabbour and the three other program participants were asked to each give a 15-minute presentation about their own countries to seventh graders at a middle school in Pudong New Area.

Although some of the students were initially scared by Sabbour's strange outfit, the class listened attentively and occasionally asked him questions in English.

"They performed very well, and some of the questions they asked were quite interesting and impressive," Sabbour said. "Their questions were about the pyramids, the origin of the Nile, the dams on the Suez Canal… A girl even asked me how to make a mummy."

At the lecture, the students surprised Sabbour at how knowledgeable they were. While discussing how mummies were made, the Egyptian asked how the embalmers removed the brains from the corpse. "From the nose," the students replied, correctly.

The four participants also spoke with local college students for a history seminar. At the seminar, they talked with three Fudan University students about historical topics, including the Opium Wars, which broke out in China in the 19th century, as well as current issues such as Internet censorship in China and policies of the Communist Party of China. The four expats learned that Chinese young people are well aware of the society they live in.

Wondong Kim, 19, an Australian of Korean descent, had learned Chinese for two years. During his stay in Shanghai, Kim often loitered on the streets, speaking with strangers or bargaining with vendors and shopkeepers in Chinese. "Cultural workshops like the ones for calligraphy and embroidery are boring to me," he told the Global Times. "I prefer walking through the city, observing how local people live."

In Kim's eyes, Shanghai is to some extent a fabricated city, as its tall buildings, elevated roads and metro stations are almost the same as those in other big cities. "Shanghai experienced rapid development over the past 30 or 40 years, and is eager to show that it has a lot of money, power and influence - though such power and influence seem to have little to do with people's daily lives," he said.

Kim and Sabbour were much more impressed with the people who live here. They praised the elderly people who exercise in the parks and squares every day. "They aren't embarrassed to do that in public, and that is pretty good," Sabbour said.

Kim said that he has seldom seen senior citizens exercise in the parks in his hometown. "After retired, Australian people usually go to pubs, drink beers and play gambling games," he said. "I think I prefer what is happening here."

Earlier this month, they encountered an old woman on a metro train who tried to communicate with them with hand gestures. The 63-year-old woman, a street vendor, warmly invited the four young people to visit a park near her home. When they met her again at the park that weekend, the woman brought them traditional Shanghai snacks and gave each person a cap. "We were very surprised and moved that day," said 21-year-old Yeh Jung-jung, one of the program's organizers. "She was like Santa Claus with Christmas gifts!"

In Shanghai, the four participants lived in a three-story apartment building in suburban Baoshan district. There, a young Chinese man taught Kim how to use a virtual private network (VPN) to access websites that are blocked in China. Before that, Kim had never heard of a VPN.

"Participating in the project has been an eye-opening experience for me," Kim said at their farewell party Friday evening.

He later added that he would visit other parts of China if he decided to return to the country. "I would go somewhere else, maybe the inland areas, where there are fewer buildings and crowds," he said.

Sabbour thinks the same. "I don't regret coming to Shanghai," he said. "But China probably lies outside of this big city. If I want to explore a real China, I think I have to get away from the shopping malls and tourist attractions here."

"I Shanghai" participants take part in a Global Village session.

 

An elderly Chinese lady gives hats to the participants.

 

One of the participants Vera Vackova with her dough sculpture

 

The calligraphy by Vera and Ann Astapheva

Photos: Courtesy of AIESEC SJTU