James Regan

Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia
Exchange to China University of Mining and Technology, Mainland China

For someone who’d never lived out of home before, leaving my life at the departures gate of Melbourne airport for 3 1/2 months was one of the most exciting things I could ever think of to do.

I lived in a city called Xuzhou, located in one of the most populated provinces of China. During that time I visited some of the oldest civilizations in the world, tried to learn Chinese, ate dog, completed a research project on an ancient tomb, experienced the coldest weather of my life, met many warm and generous people, performed on stage in front of hundreds of people, taught English to schoolchildren, and gained a greater understanding of the Chinese people than I’d ever imagined possible.

At the start of September last year, I landed at Pudong Airport in Shanghai late at night and unsure if there would be someone there to meet me or where I would spend the night. There were numerous moments like this, arriving at a train station not sure who you were supposed to be meeting but always being overwhelmed by the helpfulness and enthusiasm of the Chinese.

Xuzhou is a small city by Chinese standards (about 1.8 million people) and is home to the China University of Mining and Technology (CUMT), which seemed like another city in itself. CUMT is divided 2 campuses, an old campus and a sprawling new campus which is still being completed. From the balcony of my dormitory, I looked out across tennis courts, an athletics track and a soccer pitch, along with the site for CUMT’s planned sports stadium. The new campus is large enough to need its own shuttle bus and many students have bikes just to ride from class to class. For around 50 cents, students can eat a mountain of food at one of the university cafeterias, or head downstairs to pick up something from the mini supermarket or takeaway food shops.

Xuzhou itself is a mining town and CUMT’s School of Environmental Science and Spatial Informatics is a large faculty with countless offices and lecture theatres. All staff were very warm and friendly, especially considering the language and cultural barriers. Classes started at 8am each morning and ran until 5pm stopping only for the lunch break, when all staff and students have an afternoon rest for 2 hours. Most shops, restaurants and offices in China are deserted during this time. The new campus of CUMT is a 20-minute, 20 cent bus ride into the downtown area of Xuzhou where I got my fix of Western food, along with shopping and karaoke. It was only a 4-hour train ride to Shanghai and 5 hours to Beijing via the new fast train, making interesting weekend trips very achievable.

There are an enormous amount of extra-curricular activities on offer to CUMT students, which is why most students don’t need to leave the campus all semester. Some activities I either watched or was invited to play were kung fu, tennis, dancing, soccer, athletics and basketball. In addition to this there are various English language learning classes and competitions, something that every foreigner will be invited to from time to time. In fact when meeting someone new, I was generally asked 2 questions; “Do you play basketball?” and “How many bottles (of beer) can you drink?”. My fellow students were great ambassadors for their university, never hesitating to invite me to join in whatever they happened to be doing, to act as a translator, even offering to help carry my bags and fix my bike.

I met many great people, from fellow students and exchange students to foreign English teachers from all parts of the world. I surprised myself by how much I had adjusted to my new way of life in China and experienced a form of culture shock when settling back into my daily life in Australia. China was a real eye-opener, and has only whet my appetite to see more of the country. This really was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and I hope that many more people are able to be offered this experience.

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