{"id":150,"date":"2018-01-12T17:02:22","date_gmt":"2018-01-12T17:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/westminsterabroad\/?p=150"},"modified":"2018-01-12T17:02:22","modified_gmt":"2018-01-12T17:02:22","slug":"study-china-summer-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/westminsterabroad\/2018\/01\/12\/study-china-summer-school\/","title":{"rendered":"Study China – Summer programme in Shanghai"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Study China Programme <\/a>is managed by The University of Manchester and funded by the UK Government Department for Education. It is a 3-week programme during which you will not only complete an intensive Mandarin course, but you will also get the chance to interact with Chinese students, academic staff, local families and businesses.<\/span><\/p>\n

Applications for summer 2018 are now open. Find out more about the programme in Sophie’s blog!<\/span><\/p>\n

Why did you decide to apply for the Study China Programme?<\/span><\/h4>\n

To be honest, it has always been a pipe dream to travel to Asia and visit countries such as Japan\u00a0and China.\u00a0Sitting in my Halls of Residence back in May, in the\u00a0middle of my biggest deadline of my second year, I\u00a0applied for the Study China programme. I had\u00a0absolutely no expectations of even getting an email\u00a0back, never mind a place, but by the end of the month I found out that I had been accepted. I was being offered a place on the\u00a0trip!<\/span><\/p>\n

The next few weeks flew by with very short deadlines\u00a0being set for inputting personal information, choosing a\u00a0priority list of prospective universities in China and then\u00a0booking flights.\u00a0I was lucky enough to receive a place in my first choice\u00a0university: East China Normal University<\/a>, based in\u00a0Shanghai – I was thrilled.\u00a0August 4th came round all too quickly after that and the\u00a0nerves started kicking in. What had I gotten myself into?\u00a0Who was I going to meet? Was I going to like China?\u00a0The information was about to unravel itself.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Tell us a bit more about your experience: What was it like to fly to China on your own and what were your first impressions?<\/span><\/h4>\n

This was my first solo trip. Now, I don\u2019t like doing things\u00a0by halves, so I decided that on this first solo trip and\u00a0indeed first solo flight of my life I would make it one of\u00a0the longest too: 15 hours in fact. And in the end, when\u00a0you added in the delays I had in Charles de Gaulle<\/span>
\n airport, it was hitting above 20 hours of solo travel.\u00a0I arrived into Shanghai Pu Dong airport at around 7pm, my body clock by this point was ruined and I\u00a0just wanted to be able to get to the university\u00a0campus accommodation and get some sleep before\u00a0the morning after\u2019s agenda.<\/span><\/p>\n

Before arriving on the Study China programme, it\u00a0was explained to me that this was going to be a cultural and educational\u00a0trip, showing me a part of China that I may not\u00a0normally have had chance to see for myself.\u00a0I was told that the programme consisted of 40 hours\u00a0of Mandarin classes split over a 3 week term,\u00a0cultural trips in and around Shanghai and an\u00a0overnight stay in two local cities of Shanghai.<\/span><\/p>\n

The first week was hard. It was hard to settle into the time\u00a0difference and jet lag, the language barrier and the\u00a0cultural differences.\u00a0<\/span>Another thing that was particularly hard to get used to: THE HEAT!! Days were extremely hot with\u00a0no let up in the evening as the sun set. Temperatures usually were between 35 and 40 degrees\u00a0with extreme humidity that I had never experienced before. We were quickly told how this\u00a0particular summer was the hottest Shanghai had seen in over 20 years\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

A couple of the girls I became friends with quickly found China\u2019s answer to Manchester’s Trafford Centre:\u00a0Global Harbor<\/a>, a huge 7 floors worth of shopping centre built by the same architect who built the\u00a0one just off the M60! In it we found a Chinese Tesco, called Tesco on all the store guides and\u00a0shopping bags, but no-one knew what we meant when we asked \u201cWhere is Tesco?\u201d – turns out it\u00a0was actually called Vanguard, but just sold Tesco branded stock.<\/span><\/p>\n

I might sound quite uncultured, but by the middle of the first week we\u00a0were already fed up of having rice or noodles for breakfast, lunch and dinner.\u00a0We were used to a bit more diversity in our diets and were\u00a0getting a little stir crazy with the food and craved some little\u00a0piece of home.\u00a0Global Harbor was the place! Italian, Mexican, Steak, fast\u00a0food, you name it, it was there!<\/span><\/p>\n

How did you find the academic programme?<\/span><\/h4>\n

Mandarin classes started quite early (8:45am) and lasted until around lunch time where you were\u00a0able to either have the afternoon to yourselves or soak up Chinese culture in either song,\u00a0calligraphy or Tai Chi. It was great to learn about what the Chinese people actually did in their spare\u00a0time or what music they liked to listen to\/what was popular. We used our recently taught Chinese\u00a0skills to pronounce words in songs or to write different Chinese characters on keepsake fans for\u00a0example.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was also great to know more about MoBike, a system\u00a0that has recently been introduced to Manchester City\u00a0Centre, (near my hometown and the city in which the Study\u00a0China programme originates.) This MoBike system and\u00a0many others are all over China, with many pedestrian<\/span>
\n walkways crammed with push bikes, with the popularity to\u00a0cycle everywhere becoming the latest huge trend!!!<\/span><\/p>\n

On our first weekend in Shanghai, we were\u00a0welcomed into the homes of a local\u00a0family. We hardly knew anything in\u00a0Chinese so we were relieved to find\u00a0out that our family spoke English.\u00a0We spent the entire day with them, going\u00a0to a local calligraphy museum, a few\u00a0shops and then back to their house to\u00a0play games and help cook dumplings.\u00a0We stayed for dinner with them and\u00a0spoke about how our lives differed,<\/span>
\n education, jobs, travel and food etc.\u00a0We were surprised to learn that the\u00a0mother of this family had actually been to\u00a0the UK on business and quite near to my\u00a0hometown no less.\u00a0We soon realised that the world is a small\u00a0place!!!<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Now that the programme is over, any plans for the future?<\/span><\/h4>\n

By the end of the trip, I wasn\u2019t expecting to be able to speak fluent Mandarin or anywhere near\u00a0really. It\u2019s an extremely hard language to learn and an even harder one to master, but I got by in\u00a0restaurants and shops. I am currently doing an internship in Stockholm (Sweden) and I am even using key phrases in the Chinese restaurant here in Stockholm, much to the surprise of the Chinese owner!!!\u00a0I have come away feeling quite attached to China, its people and its ways. Yes, it\u2019s extremely\u00a0different to anything that I\u2019m used to, but I have to say that I miss Shanghai and actually cannot\u00a0<\/span>wait to have the opportunity to be able to go back in the near future!!<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Have you got a story to share with us? We would love to hear from you! You can submit your testimonial\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Study China Programme is managed by The University of Manchester and funded by the UK Government Department for Education. It is a 3-week programme during which you will not only complete an intensive Mandarin course, but you will also…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":93,"featured_media":158,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,14],"tags":[19,20,22],"class_list":["post-150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia","category-summer-school","tag-gointl","tag-justgo","tag-westminsterabroad"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/westminsterabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/westminsterabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/westminsterabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/westminsterabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/93"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/westminsterabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/westminsterabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/westminsterabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/westminsterabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/westminsterabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/westminsterabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}