Each year, the Shanghai French School offers a series of lectures aimed at high school students to enable them to meet personalities with an expertise related to China.

This series, entitled ‘Actors and witnesses of contemporary China’, has both objectives of offering our students a better knowledge of their host country through the insight of privileged witnesses, as well as giving opportunity to encourage professional guidance.

As part of this series of conferences, Nicolas Grévot, former journalist in Taiwan, guide in Shanghai and host of Culture Shock, spoke on Thursday November 19 on the Qingpu campus around the theme of Chinese students in France at early twentieth century.

Between 1919 and 1920, more than 2000 young Chinese went to France to study and among them several became historical figures. The conference aims to retrace this history which marks the first student mobility between China and France.

Nicolas Grévot had spoken the previous year on the topic: “Around the former French Concession of Shanghai“. Find the summary of this conference then written by Julie Gnassounou, student of Seconde 9 (Grade 10).