Fudan University

复旦大学 Fùdàn dàxué, also known colloquially as 复旦 Fùdàn

Shanghai Fudan University was founded in 1905 and is considered one of China’s most prestigious and selective universities. Like Shanghai Jiaotong and Peking and Tsinghua universities in Beijing, Fudan is a member of China’s C9 league for China’s top nine universities. Fudan was ranked as China’s third best University in China in 2009, behind Peking and Tsinghua in Beijing.

Initially a private university, Fudan became the first university in China, after the foundation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, to have its status changed to public university under a Soviet-style model. As part of the remodelling, academic departments from ten other universities in Eastern China were annexed into Shanghai Fudan in an attempt to pool Eastern China’s top teaching talent under one roof. In 2000, Shanghai Fudan merged with the Shanghai Medical University.

As a result of its history and mergers, Shanghai Fudan offers a large range of undergraduate and graduate programs in both arts and sciences, and was one of the first universities in China to offer Mandarin language programs to foreigners, starting in the 1950s. 

Notable past attendees include Shenman Zhang (Managing Director of World Bank Group), Guowei Cao (CEO of Sina) and Li Lanqing (vice Prime Minister of China).

CSA Program Prices: Fudan

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Our two cents...

One of the first universities in China to begin offering Chinese language tuition to foreigners (way back in the 1950s!), Fudan, along with Peking University and Tsinghua in Beijing, are regarded as the finest learning institutions in the whole of China. Like with the aforementioned universities, this program is one of the more intense courses we offer. The university campus itself is located to the northeast of the city center, around 45 minutes away by subway. That’s not to say it is in the middle of nowhere. The Fudan campus is surrounded by shopping malls and restaurants and even has a Burger King (a luxury in China!) within walking distance. Find out more about what it's like to live and study in Shanghai...

Course Descriptions

Fudan has nine levels for short term students including one semester, one year, and summer study abroad programs.

Elementary Level: The purpose of this course is to lay groundwork for the study of modern Chinese. The course has an emphasis on oral skills with classes in listening and speaking with initial presentation of the written language, both reading and writing.

A large emphasis is placed on mastering the phonetic system so as set a good foundation for further Chinese studies with the correct pronunciation and intonation. While the learning of sentence patterns is a major component of the course, efforts will be made to help students handle simple everyday tasks such as greeting, introducing friends and relatives, identifying people or objects, asking for one's personal information (including name, occupation, nationality, address, phone number), expressing gratitude to someone, sending someone your regard, making a reply to a complimentary remark, talking about your family, your school and your studies, looking for someone, seeing a guest off, asking the time, making an appointment, making an invitation, making a suggestion, asking for someone’s opinion, buying something, and offering congratulations.


Intermediate Level: The purpose of this course is to continue to lay groundwork for the study of modern Chinese by expanding on the base of elementary Chinese. The course will provide instruction in all four language skills of aurally understanding, speaking, reading, and writing.

Many of the grammatical constructions introduced in first year Chinese will be repeated in this course with increasing sophistication in terms of style and usage. While many of the linguistic tasks students will learn to handle are similar to those of first year Chinese, the level of language required to carry out these tasks is more advanced. In this course students are required to comprehend and produce paragraph-level Chinese.

By the end of this course, students are expected to deal with daily-life related Chinese in a target language environment with no difficulty. Topics covered include: buying things, making an invitation, making an appointment, offering congratulations, asking for one's age, asking for opinions from others, presenting a gift, asking for directions, making a telephone call, shopping, entertaining a guest, asking for information, complimenting, asking for permission, welcoming a guest, proposing a toast, talking about ball games, seeing someone off, traveling, and buying tickets.


Advanced Level: The purpose of the course is to continue to develop their skills of aurally understanding, speaking, reading and writing Mandarin Chinese.

Students will continue to improve their linguistic skills with a manageable degree of challenge. At the functional level, this course aims at helping students solidify their ability to comprehend and produce paragraph-level Chinese. It seeks to enable students to understand face-to-face conversations on most familiar topics, give factual accounts, read materials written in formal expression, and write simple essays, reports and other types of correspondence. There is a heavy emphasis on reading from this level covering topics such as current events, social sciences, history, and literature. Discussions on the reading materials will be conducted regularly to develop students' skills of abstract reasoning, narration and description.

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