Masha Eroveefa is on exchange program: first impressions of China
Masha is a third-year student of the educational program "Sociology and social informatics". She takes an active part in research projects of the Laboratory. It was Masha who every day reported about our work in Novosibirsk and shared the research notes with you!
We’d like to share the wonderful news: Masha has moved to China as a participant of the student exchange programme. We talked to Masha and collected her impressions from studying abroad. Read the article to find out why studying at HSE is similar to studying in China? How do locals feel about foreigners? And where is the «Paradise on Earth»?
University and the studying curriculum
I study at Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University — is the only university based on the cooperation of British and Chinese universities. Xi'an Jiaotong University — is one of the oldest Chinese universities, whereas Liverpool University — is a big British university.
All education processes are in English. There are many foreign teachers. The university does not have any educational specialisation. There are many research departments on campus in various fields: medicine, biology, architecture, programming.... There are more than 21,000 students, but some are still online.
Not so many foreign students study here. For example, there are no more than five of us in the 250-person class. It is said that before the pandemic there were a lot more international students, but because of closed borders, many moved to their home countries.
Officially, I study on the “Media and Communications” program, but in fact I have only two subjects from this program: Quantitative Research Methods and Social Network Analysis.
Moreover, I have two subjects from the programming field, and they’re not really related to my major. The first one is “Human-Centric Computing”. It is about how technology helps people in real life. What rules must be followed in the technical equipment of social life (application design, for example).
The second one is “Complexity of Algorithms”. It is completely about programming and mathematics. More precisely, how code should be written, so that it is normally computed by the machine for a short period of time.
About the decision to participate in student exchange program
I have long been interested in studying abroad, but previously there was no opportunity to go anywhere. I’ve studied the cost of living and programs that correlate with my studying at HSE University. As a result, I had a choice between universities in China, Turkey, and South Korea.
The first priority was China. Firstly, I really liked the campus. Secondly, I already had experience of communication and working with representatives of this country. Hence, I had a knowledge of the culture and life in this country.
The preparation process was long enough: initially, it was not clear whether I could go to study abroad. Due to a pandemic, China’s borders were closed until January 8, 2023, and it was unclear whether it would open at all. Studying visas could be obtained only in Khabarovsk, and if I had arrived earlier, I would have been in quarantine for more than 20 days. Moreover, there were almost no direct flights to China, we literally took the first flight Moscow-Shanghai since December!
During the preparation process, I had to solve a lot of issues with the documents, and try to anticipate all possible situations in advance. And the last but not least point is Chinese language. I have never studied it. So, I tried to learn it a bit before the trip. As a result, though, it is not very successful. But English is enough.
Expectations of the trip and the first difficulties
I expected that studying would be difficult, but these fears were not justified. At XJTLU, as at HSE, the learning process is based more on independent work than on work in the classroom. Also, there are a lot of projects. The format of this work is already familiar to me, so there are no problems yet.
Difficulties appear in the project work because Chinese students speak English poorly. They understand the speech, they read well, but spoken language is a problem. They interact with each other in Chinese, so we sometimes have trouble understanding each other in projects.
The Chinese are shy, so I expected some difficulties in communicating. Fortunately, everything is OK. The locals make contacts and will to help. Moreover, there are few international students here, so many are interested in communicating with foreigners. But sometimes I feel in the spotlight because of this.
A big surprise for me was the audience of 150+ people. I’m not used to studying with so many people in the classroom, so the most exciting thing for me was a teacher’s request to introduce myself in front of 250 students.
Impressions of China
I think the most striking impression for me was the fact that life in China is not very different from the Russian reality. At least that is what I think. Yeah, there are other people, culture, traditions. But in general, everyday reality is very similar to Saint Petersburg, for example. The only thing is that the Chinese prefer spicy food in large quantities. Portions are just huge, I’m not used to eating so much…
Locals pay attention to foreigners in the streets. Sometimes the Chinese start to film us when we just walk past, or sit in a cafe. At the same time, everyone is quite friendly, I have not experienced any negativity against me, even though I do not speak Chinese. Every acquaintance offers me his help, and asks for contacts.
Also, the size and architecture of the city were also impressive. The university is located in the suburb of Suzhou, which is considered relatively small according to Chinese standards. More than 12 million people live here! The city combines business centres with skyscrapers, campuses of several universities with science centres and the old part with canals and buildings in traditional Chinese style. Suzhou is called "Paradise on Earth" because of the high standard of living.
About classmates
There was an interesting case while I was working on a project. I performed in a group with five programmers who speak English poorly. After the first seminar, they called me to talk. I thought that they would ask me to change the group, because they have difficulty communicating with me. On the contrary, they apologised for speaking Chinese and promised to try to speak English as much as possible in the future to make it easier for me to interact with them.
There is a friendly international community. Foreigners stick together, they are friendly and open to communication. Among my acquaintances there are Indonesians, Malaysians, Norwegians, Koreans, Mongolians; some are from Thailand, Ecuador, Japan. There are also four Russians, and we were invited to an event for Russian students dedicated to March 8 (we’ll see how many others here). They are all here studying for bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and I have not met any exchange student besides the two of us from Russia.
We all live in the same dorm, so I literally find new people at every turn. First I met the neighbours, then their friends, and so on. Some foreigners say they are lonely and have no one to talk to, but I have no such problems.
