10-Day Public Speaking & Debate Leadership Camp

Afternoon — Arrival in Beijing
Welcome to Beijing, the capital of China! To make your arrival as smooth as possible, your private guide greets you in the arrivals hall and escorts you to your hotel by private vehicle. Your guide also handles your luggage and assists with the hotel check-in process.

Evening — At Your Leisure
Lunch or dinner will be arranged according to the voucher provided for you; otherwise, you can find some local restaurants nearby or dine at the hotel. The rest of the day is yours to rest and recover from your journey.

Morning — voice, breath and structure
Today is spent on the mechanics of speaking in public, which is a craft before it is a talent. The workshop room is a converted courtyard house in Dongcheng, north of the Forbidden City, where the walls are thick and the acoustics are unhelpful in exactly the way a lecture hall is unhelpful. You start with breath and projection: how far a sentence has to carry without a microphone, how to end a line, and why most speakers lose an audience in the first forty seconds. Then comes structure. Each participant builds a three-minute argument with a claim, two pieces of evidence, one acknowledged counter-argument and a close, and delivers it twice - once to the room, once to a camera, which is the version nobody enjoys.

Late morning — rebuttal and cross-examination
The second block is about listening under pressure. Pairs are given opposing positions on a question with no comfortable answer, and each has to summarise the other side accurately before attacking it - the discipline that separates debate from shouting. Your coach runs timed cross-examination rounds, and the group scores how well each speaker handled an interruption, a hostile premise and a question they could not answer.

Lunch
A restaurant near the Confucius Temple, with northern wheat dishes and a hot soup; the group eats together and the coaches use the hour for informal feedback.

Afternoon — exchange and a friendly debate
In the afternoon you travel to a university campus, arranged through our local education partner, where English-speaking Chinese undergraduates join the group. After a short campus walk the two sides are mixed deliberately, so that every debate team is half local and half visitor. The motion is set on the day - typically something about cities, technology or the environment, so that both sides can argue from their own experience rather than from a briefing sheet. Two rounds are held, with a student panel scoring content, delivery and rebuttal. The specific campus is confirmed before the group departs; we do not publish it in advance because the arrangement is made term by term.

Evening — debrief and dinner
Dinner in the old quarter, then a debrief: each participant names one thing they did well and one habit to drop. The evening closes early; tomorrow is a full sightseeing day and the group is expected to keep speaking English throughout it.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Accommodation
In Beijing.

Morning — Temple of Heaven
Begin your day at the Temple of Heaven, an esteemed complex of religious structures where emperors once prayed for good harvests, epitomizing the connection between Earth and Heaven. Built in the Ming Dynasty and now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, it is also a beloved public park where you can watch local residents practicing their distinctive morning exercises.

Lunch — A Well-Known Local Eatery
For lunch, enjoy a meal at a well-known local eatery featuring authentic regional cuisine. Your guide assists you in selecting dishes that suit your taste.

Afternoon — Tian'anmen Square & the Forbidden City
Stroll through Tian'anmen Square, one of the world's largest public squares, then delve into the enigmatic Forbidden City, the world's largest imperial palace. Home to 24 emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties, it contains hundreds of halls and courtyards; venturing off the main axis uncovers fascinating tales of notable figures often overlooked by conventional tours.

Evening — At Your Leisure
The evening is yours to enjoy at your leisure in Beijing.

Morning — Lama Temple
Dedicate the morning to the Lama Temple (Yonghegong), the most renowned Tibetan Buddhist temple outside Tibet. Built as a prince's residence and converted into a lamasery in 1744, it is famed for its 18-meter sandalwood Buddha in the Pavilion of Ten Thousand Happinesses and its blend of Han, Manchu, and Tibetan styles.

Afternoon — Confucius Temple & Guozijian
Visit the Confucius Temple, dedicated to the great philosopher, and the adjacent Guozijian, the highest educational institution of the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties. Ancient ginkgo trees and stone tablets inscribed with imperial examination names line the calm grounds.

Evening — At your leisure
The evening is free to relax or explore the surrounding hutong area on your own.

Morning — Summer Palace
Explore the Summer Palace (Yiheyuan), the Qing Dynasty imperial garden built around Kunming Lake. Walk the Long Corridor with its painted ceilings and view the Marble Boat for a taste of royal leisure before leaving Beijing.

Afternoon — High-speed train to Shanghai
After lunch, board a high-speed train to Shanghai. The Beijing–Shanghai High-Speed Railway covers about 1,318 km (819 miles) in roughly 4.5 to 6 hours, one of the fastest and busiest rail lines in the world, offering a front-row view of China's changing landscapes.

Evening — Arrive in Shanghai
Arrive in Shanghai and transfer to your hotel in the city center, convenient for exploring the bustling waterfront and neighborhoods in the days ahead.

Meals
Lunch is on your own (available on the train or before boarding); dinner on your own in Shanghai.

Accommodation
Your hotel in Shanghai.

Morning — Yuyuan Garden
Visit Yuyuan Garden, a classical Chinese garden built in the Ming Dynasty (completed in 1577) in Shanghai's old town. Its pavilions, rockeries, ponds, and carved halls show the art of southern garden design, beside the lively Yuyuan Bazaar.

Midday — Shanghai Museum
Explore the Shanghai Museum, home to over one million artifacts including bronzes, ceramics, calligraphy, and paintings that trace China's 5,000-year history. Its rounded building on People's Square is itself a city landmark.

Evening — The Bund
Stroll The Bund, Shanghai's iconic waterfront along the Huangpu River, where colonial-era buildings from the early 1900s face the futuristic skyline of Pudong. An optional acrobatics show can be arranged.

Meals
Lunch and dinner are included, featuring local Shanghainese cuisine.

Accommodation
Your hotel in Shanghai.

Morning — Team Challenges Begin
Begin a full day of team challenges designed to build collaboration, communication, and creative problem-solving. Activities might include navigating Shanghai's metro system to complete cultural missions in different neighborhoods, negotiating with vendors in local markets to acquire specific items, or working together to decode clues scattered across the city's historic and modern districts.

Afternoon — Challenges Continue
Continue team challenges with activities that leverage Shanghai's unique character — perhaps a design-thinking workshop in a creative district, a scavenger hunt in the French Concession that requires teamwork and cultural knowledge, or a collaborative project in a maker space that reflects Shanghai's innovation ecosystem.

Evening — Dinner on the Bund
Celebrate the day's accomplishments with dinner at a restaurant on the Bund, where views of the Pudong skyline provide a spectacular backdrop for reflecting on team dynamics and the lessons learned through collaborative challenges.

Accommodation
• 4-Star Hotels: Courtyard by Marriott Shanghai Pudong, DoubleTree by Hilton Shanghai, Novotel Shanghai Clover. • 5-Star Hotels: Grand Hyatt Shanghai, Waldorf Astoria Shanghai, The Peninsula Shanghai.

Meals
Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are included today.

Morning — Wukang Road & Fuxing Park
Meet at Wukang Road and walk the historic street amid well-preserved Western-style villas and plane trees; visit the Wukang Mansion, a famous Art Deco landmark. Continue to Fuxing Park, a classic Shanghai park blending French and Chinese styles where locals practice tai chi and play chess.

Afternoon — M50 & Anfu Road
Enjoy a leisurely lunch at a cafe in the French Concession, then visit M50 Creative Park, a former textile mill turned art zone with galleries, studios, and design shops. Explore exhibitions, meet local artists, and see street art, then walk Anfu Road's boutiques and cafes for the local artistic lifestyle.

Evening (Optional) — Performance or Dinner
Attend a performance at the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre or dine at a French-style bistro (optional, not included).

Morning — two rounds, judged
The tournament runs with written ballots, timekeepers and a judging panel of teachers and local students. Two rounds are debated: one prepared motion given out the previous evening, and one impromptu motion with twenty minutes of preparation. Teams are mixed so that no side is a single nationality, and the judging criteria are published in advance - argument, evidence, rebuttal, delivery and teamwork, in that order of weight. The impromptu round is the one people remember, because it exposes the difference between a speaker who has memorised a case and a speaker who can think standing up.

Late morning — the committee brief
The morning finishes with a briefing for the afternoon's simulation. Participants are assigned delegations and given a two-page background paper on the motion - typically something at the intersection of trade and climate, such as a border carbon levy or a shipping emissions standard. They are told which interests they represent and how their delegation is expected to vote, which is not the same as how their delegation will behave once the caucusing starts. Shanghai is a reasonable place to hold this exercise: the city was opened as a treaty port in 1843, and by the 1930s it supported a foreign-language press, dozens of foreign chambers of commerce and a genuinely international merchant community, so the idea of negotiating here has a long local history.

Lunch
A working lunch: delegations eat together in their assigned groups rather than in national ones, which is deliberate and produces better committee dynamics in the afternoon.

Afternoon — the committee
The simulation runs for three hours in two caucuses and one formal session. Rules are simplified but real: motions to open debate, amendments, points of order, and a vote at the end. Deals are made in the corridors and usually fall apart in the formal session, and the chairs - teachers and two local university students - interrupt to ask delegations to state their position without reading it. The outcome matters less than the transcript: after the vote, every delegation reads out its own negotiating record and the group scores how well it held its interest while keeping a coalition together.

Evening — closing ceremony and dinner
The day ends with a short closing ceremony: certificates, a speaker-by-speaker comment from the coaching panel, and the presentation of the tournament result. Dinner follows. This is the last structured session of the programme, so the feedback is written down as well as delivered - each participant leaves with a page of specific comments on their speaking that they can work on for as long as they want to.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Accommodation
In Shanghai.

Morning — Departure Transfer
Your guide and driver will pick you up from your hotel and transfer you to Shanghai Pudong International Airport (PVG) for your departure flight home, bringing your journey to a close.