Rebecca HUMPHRIES

Griffith University, Australia
Exchange to Shenzhen University, China

In November 2009 I was fortunate enough to have the chance to travel on exchange to China for 8 months. It was the most wonderful, eye-opening, mind blowing experience of my life to date and I thoroughly recommend an exchange trip to anybody.

I began my trip with a 4 week intensive language course at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou. Hangzhou is an amazing city, the food was excellent, the shopping fantastic (some of the best I remember finding in all of China, and learning to bargain was a lot of fun), and there were plenty of things to do and see, like the Linyin Temple, West Lake and Hefang Street.

In Hangzhou we were introduced to Chinese traffic and I experienced the most terrifying taxi ride of my entire life, as our driver seemed to take the road rules as mere suggestions, mind you we were so tired that we laughed the entire trip, and he got us to our destination perfectly safely. It was also during our time there that some friends and I visited the Yellow Mountain. In my opinion, it is by far one of the most beautiful places in China, if not the world. After going there, one can understand how it inspired many famous Chinese poets over the centuries.

After our language course in Hangzhou, I went travelling with friends to Chongqing, Chengdu, Xi'an, Wuhan, Zhengzhou and Hong Kong, where I saw Pandas, the Terracotta Warriors, the Yellow Crane Pagoda, the Leshan Buddha and the Shaolin Temple to name a few. In Chongqing, another highlight, we had the opportunity to dress up like Emperors and Empresses which was enormously fun, the costumes were spectacular and we had to pay very little for the photos.

After this time of traveling around, I began my semester of study at Shenzhen University in Shenzhen, near Hong Kong. Shenzhen was a young city, only about 30 years old. For this reason it wasn’t my favourite Chinese city, there were no historical sites and it was much more westernized than some of the other places I had visited, however I made some wonderful friends and the teachers at the University were fantastic. In many ways I was sad to leave.

As a Westerner in China I found there were two things that you needed to have with you at all times, the first was your camera, and the second was a packet of tissues. You needed a camera because there were so many fascinating new things and beautiful sites around every corner. The tissues you needed because you learned very quickly that unless you were in a fancy hotel (which we were not for most of the time) there would be no toilet paper in the toilets.

What I learned in China was invaluable. I learned a lot about myself and my own culture while learning about the Chinese people, their language, history and traditions, which have made me grow as a person. I would recommend overseas travel and overseas study to anyone.

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