Summer in Berlin
About the author: Ana Chen ’23 is an FSI Global Policy Intern with the European Council on Foreign Relations. She is currently studying International Relations and East Asian Studies at Stanford University.
Everyone tells me summer is the ideal season to visit Berlin, and Berlin is the ideal city to visit in the summer. Indeed, ten weeks of swimming in freshwater lakes, hiking everything from Grunewald to the Alps, visiting a dizzying assortment of museums, and watching movies at outdoors cinemas have left me with the most fulfilling summer of my life. Berlin provided the perfect backdrop for my work at the European Council on Foreign Relations, which was highly international; I sat in on meetings with NATO representatives and the Japanese diplomatic delegation, and connected scholars in China with thinkers in Germany. The newness of being in such a city, a city that in theory encourages newness in (or at least refuses to judge) its residents, was simultaneously freeing and eye-opening.
Usually, when someone asks me where I come from, I react defensively to the racial connotations of the question. In Berlin, my outsidership is already demarcated by my English, and as such, I feel more comfortable saying “California” or “Shenzhen.” I have also felt more comfortable being an outsider — both a foreigner from the U.S. and China, and a newcomer to the European think tank scene. Oftentimes, I would ask my friends, what am I doing in Berlin? No, I know what I’m doing in Berlin — but existentially, what am I doing in Berlin? Coming to terms with the seeming directionlessness of my summer — the nagging doubt that my time in Berlin was a costly detour from my study of U.S.-China relations — was one of my biggest projects of June and July, and one which proved most fruitful in August. I realized that the process of understanding any subject, whether it be U.S.-China relations or European politics, is not a accumulation of objective knowledge achieved by working in the right places or talking to the right people, but a subjective and creative undertaking. Living in Berlin had exposed me to new ways of thinking about China, and new opportunities for me to enter into existing dialogues; I gained new frameworks of studying China that did not derive from the constant shuttling of myself between China and the U.S.
I emerge from this summer a much more confident thinker and researcher. My time at ECFR has thoroughly prepared me for my senior year and beyond, and I am deeply grateful for all the opportunities it afforded me!
