Time flies, and in the blink of an eye, it’s already December. I’m getting used to life in China. I learn new things every day. Other than new words and grammar, I am also learning a lot about China and the Chinese people every day. Since coming to China, I’ve met people from all walks of life. Whether walking on the street or entering a store, Chinese people are happy to chat along. Not only can I practice my Chinese, but I can also get to know local Chinese people, two birds with one stone!
One of the most significant things that I have found is that Chinese people are very generous. For example, when I go out to eat with Chinese classmates, they often bring a bag of fruit and give it to me as a gift. When exploring Beijing, Chinese friends tend to accompany me and take the initiative to introduce and explain the history and characteristics of Beijing. One time, I was waiting for a bus. I wasn’t quite sure how to buy a ticket, and it seemed that the app didn’t work. I asked the woman next to me to help me, but we both tried to buy tickets several times without success. After 5 to 10 minutes, we both gave up. How was I going to get home? The woman handed me some money without any hesitation and said to buy a ticket home. Although she was a complete stranger, she didn’t hesitate to help me. For me, this was really moving.
Beijing is a really great city and PKU is a fantastic University. I have already made loads of friends here. From joining clubs to playing sports, I have lots of opportunities to practice my Chinese. My Chinese friends also like to teach me Chinese slang. I do not speak fluent Chinese yet, but I am slowly learning! One step at a time!
Since my year abroad in Taiwan has drawn to a close, I’ve started reflecting on my experiences abroad and the happy times I had living in Taipei.
I wasn’t too knowledgeable about Taiwan before moving there. Despite having learnt Chinese for a while, I hadn’t spent much time looking at Taiwan in its own right. It was only on the plane to Taipei that I realised I was moving abroad to a country I knew very little about. Whilst it would have made my initial life in Taiwan easier if I knew more about what to expect, I still consider this a blessing in disguise. Not knowing what to expect allowed me to have my own unique experience in Taiwan and slowly discover the island in a natural way.
I arrived at the end of August 2023 and within a week was starting my language classes at National Taiwan Normal University.
The language classes were pretty intense and it took a while to grow accustomed to the teachers only speaking in Chinese. However I started to really enjoy my daily life living in Taipei. Living with my host family so close to the university made commuting so easy, and it was always fun to go for lunch with classmates in different areas after class.
It took me a few weeks to feel confident travelling around Taiwan and leaving Taipei. I started off with small trips to the outskirts of Taipei such a Beitou, and as my confidence grew I started to be more ambitious with my travelling, making the most of my weekends and holidays to explore different parts of the island. One of my fondest memories is travelling across Taiwan to Kenting for a few days during my November holiday. This was my first big trip and my first time taking the High Speed Rail. There were far fewer foreigners in the south and it was really encouraging to have so many locals complimenting my Chinese!
There were of course some tough moments during my time abroad. There were moments of home sickness and times when I wanted to be back in the UK with my university friends. Cultural differences also started to wear down on you over time. For example the extreme cash culture and reluctance to use cards was irritating at times if you forgot to bring cash with you. However, there are many aspects of Taiwanese life that I really miss being back in the UK. For example, the sense of public safety and trust in strangers. If you were to drop your wallet in Taipei, you could come back a full day later and find your wallet in the same area, placed neatly on the side of the street. This culture of mutual kindness and respect is inspiring.
Taiwanese food really made my time studying abroad. The sheer number of restaurants and cafes in Taipei is incredible. I was also able to eat at a lot of immigrant-run restaurants near where I lived. The favourites included Thai, Vietnamese, Sushi and Indian restaurants. The night markets and bubble tea both lived up to their reputation and made for some fun food trips with friends.
Moving abroad for a year was a challenge, but I gained so much from the experience. I now have a real sense of fluency when speaking Chinese and am so much more confident in myself.
I would like to express a great deal of thanks to the John Speak Trust. The support I received allowed me to get the most out of my time abroad. There was also something quite therapeutic about writing my monthly reports, sharing my unique experiences with others. To all the trustees and Debra – Thank you for everything.
I would wholeheartedly encourage anyone considering studying abroad to go for it!
Hello again and thank you for reading my second monthly report! I am excited to share with you what has happened over the last month.
At the end of July I had to say goodbye to a few friends who were only staying for the July section of the language course. After we received our certificates (pictured below), we got straight to organising a little celebratory evening to say farewell.
收取我们第一个月的成绩凭证 Collecting our first months’s certificates
Because Aurelie is half french, half chinese, and grew up in Shanghai, she has a lot of local friends and we spent Friday night with them. If you are wondering why most of these lovely people do not look typical Chinese, it is because nearly all of them are half french! They all went to french school in the french concession area of Shanghai.
Now we are halfway through the August section of the language school and we have just finished giving our mid-term presentations. The topic I selected was smoking and how it harms your health. This is quite a difficult topic to make interesting because we obviously all know that it damages your health. So to make it fun, I focused on my bad habit of being a social smoker and the reasons why some people become easily addicted and yet some people cannot go for a run without having a cigarette mid-way through! For example, I referenced that amazing Chinese marathon runner. He was over 50 years old, chain-smoked his entire life, even chain smoked during the marathon, and still managed to complete it in under 3hours 30 minutes – this is faster than my most recent marathon time of 3 hours 39!
On a different evening, I went with my Korean friend to a Korean bar. The whole time we were wondering why we were getting more stares than usual, and then we realised it was Chinese Valentine’s Day and people probably thought we were on a date! It seems many people in China not only are curious about foreigners, but especially interracial couples. On the Chinese internet, this is a hot topic. After a while, however, you do get used to all the people staring at you.
七夕节日在韩国酒吧 Celebrating Chinese Valentine’s Day at a Korean bar
With a few language school friends and a few friends from my masters degree, I have set up a running club that meets at Jiangwan Stadium on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Its a very friendly and not at all competitive. There is a mixture of nationalities, and the amount of Chinese classmates from my masters is growing! I expect when the language school finishes and I am only studying for my masters, almost all of the participants will be Chinese!
我们跑步组在江湾体育场的门口 Our running group at the gate of Jiangwan statdium
On Mondays and Fridays I go to Handan Southern Campus swimming pool. It is a proper 50m swimming pool. Although it is outside, we are in Shanghai, so the air and water are really warm. People in China take their lifeguarding responsibilities very seriously, whereas in Europe you might expect to see two lifeguards for a 50m pool, here in China there are between 6 and 8 lifeguards at all times! That is 1 lifeguard per 1 swimming on average. At the beginning I thought it was quite over the top, but then I realised the lifeguards themselves don’t really look like they swim very often, so perhaps it is necessary. Usually, there is about 1 person per swimming lane, although when I enter the pool it seems that one lane becomes very busy as even when lanes besides mine are empty, some people will still choose to swim in my lane follow me when I change names… that is how fascinated with foreigners some people in this neighbourhood are.
邯郸南校区50公尺的游泳池 Handan southern campus’s 50m swimming pool
All in all, it has been a good month. I am excited for next month’s report, when I will tell you about my first impressions of my Finance Masters. Until then, I have a lot of admin to do regarding residency. Have a great month!
中国认可工党的成功吗？China approving of the labour party’s success? (I am joking, its a hero’s memorial I just happened to visit on the day the UK elected Starmer)
I haven’t yet been in Shanghai a month, but the experience in this short time has been wonderful and complicated.
从农村来的中国人很少有机会认识到外国人。在上海看到从国内来旅行的人请外国人拍照是很常见的. 三个孩子请我拍照。 People from the countryside in China have few opportunities to meet foreigners. It is very common to see people from the inner country travelling in Shanghai and asking foreigners for photos. Three kids asked me for a photo.
Today when I was in class I received a phone call. Because I had missed their calls a couple of times before, finally noticing them calling me then, I immediately picked up. It was the police! Fortunately, they were only wanting to confirm whether or not I had filled our the foreigners accommodation registration form. This objective of this form is to ensure that all the foreigners living in Shanghai are on a list. If anything bad happens, the government can easily communicate with them. Besides, this is also one of the requirements for getting the resident card.
Getting a resident card is not an easy thing to do. I have already been on many wild goose chases. But I am slowly getting used to the love for bureaucracy here. I still have a few requirements I need to fill before I can get my resident card, but the international student office is working hard to help me.
I think my Chinese level is getting higher each day! Other than speaking Chinese with my classmates, I am also getting to know many Chinese people. On Monday night I went out for dinner with 3 Chinese
这些人都是我的同学们。 因为我们都来自不同国家，我们为一个共同语言是中文！再加上我们是高级班的学生，所以我们更好只说中文吧！ These are my classmates. Because we all come from different countries, our only common language is Chinese. Furthermore, because we are all in the top set, its better we just speak Chinese right!
people. After eating, we went to a famous bar called Sober Company. The bar
我跟三个新的中国朋友。 在 Sober Company Me and 3 new Chinese friends. At Sober Company
used to be on the list of Asia’s Top 50 Bars. We continued to hang out there, and the whole evening we spoke Chinese to communicate – a total of 5 hours. Just as we were about to head home, my head started hurting. I never thought I would survive in this kind of environment. I thought that in this kind of natural speaking environment, only speaking Chinese would make me feel a little awkward, but they mostly understood me and I understood about 50% of what they were saying!
In the next month I have many things I must do. Including the 3 pre-admission courses: accounting, programming, and statistics. I guess the next few months are very busy. I am looking forward to it.
我跟两位中国学生住在第四楼。 一位是我硕士第二年级的 第二位是经济硕士二年级的。 I live on the fourth floor with two chinese students. One student is in the second year of my masters programme. The other student is in his second year of economics masters.我大学最著名的大楼 My University’s most famous building 我的课都在里面进行！ My classes are all held inside这两个女生是我在上海最喜欢的朋友们。 他们俩是一半中国人，一个是一半法国人，另外一个荷兰热人。他们的中文很流利！ 我们常常只说中文然后要是一个话题太复杂，用英文说明 These are two of my best friends in shanghai. They are both half Chinese, one is half french and the other is half dutch. Both of their chinese is really fluent. We often only speak chinese and if the topic is too complex then we use english to clarify.
Last Month in Taiwan
This was my last month in Taiwan. I’ve been here since the end of August so I feel like I’ve seen a lot of the country and culture now. As I haven’t done any travelling recently, I wanted to discuss y experiences with Taiwanese food in this last report.
Two weeks ago I went to a Taiwanese cooking class. A friend of mine had been to this class and recommended it to me. We made chicken noodle soup, bubble tea and Taiwanese soup dumplings. I received a recipe for each dish that I can take home with me to England. The class was mainly Japanese tourists but also some local Taiwanese people. It was really fun to use my language skills to discuss food and I learnt some useful vocab!
This month I also visited the strangest place I have been to in Taiwan – a toilet-themed restaurant. All of the chairs are toilets and every dish is served in a miniature toilet. I had heard about this restaurant through social media and thought it would be a funny place to visit with my classmate. The food and service was not great but maybe this is part of the toilet themed experience? The funniest part was eating chocolate ice cream inside a small toilet… Experiences like this are really strange but are extremely memorable. I will miss strange places like this when I leave Taiwan.
Last night I want to HaiDiLau hotpot restaurant with my classmates. This is a well-known hotpot restaurant in Taiwan, although it isn’t cheap so you can’t go there too often! Despite living in Taiwan for nearly 10 months, this was my first time going to a specialist hotpot restaurant. You first choose your hotpot flavour, then you use an iPad to order meats and vegetables. There was also a dance performance during our meal which was fun to watch.
Food has been such an important part of my experience in Taiwan. It’s often cheaper to eat at a restaurant than to cook your own food so I’ve enjoyed some amazing meals during my time abroad. This is probably one of the things I will miss most when leaving Taiwan.
As my time in Taiwan is nearly over, I’m starting to reflect on my time here. I will write about this fully in my end-of-trip report, but I wasn’t expecting to feel so emotional about leaving Taiwan. I’m realising how many wonderful memories I have here.
Cosmo
Earthquakes in Taiwan
It’s now May and I’ve been in Taiwan for 9 months now. I’ve been mostly studying but have done some travelling as well. However, for this report, I’d like to share my experience of earthquakes in Taiwan.
There have been a lot of earthquakes recently in Hualien (southeast Taiwan) but most of them can still be felt from Taipei, and some have been quite large. Like Japan, Taiwan has a history of earthquakes, but most are small and can be hardly felt. In my first few months in Taiwan, I would sometimes feel very minor shaking for about 20 seconds, but by the time I realised the ground was shaking it had already stopped. These types of earthquakes are the most common in Taiwan and everyone is used to them.
On the 3rd of April in the morning there was an earthquake in across Taiwan that measured magnitude 7.4. The Richter scale is logarithmic. This means that each number is 10 times greater than the previous number. For example, a magnitude 2.5 earthquake is 10 times more powerful than a 1.5 magnitude one. So the 7.4 earthquake was 100 to 1000 times more powerful than the usual earthquakes which are between 4 -5 on the Richter scale.
My friend’s kitchen after the earthquake
Earthquakes this large are quite scary. The shaking starts small and keeps getting bigger and bigger. You can feel everything surrounding you shaking back and forth, and objects around you start to fall over. The best thing to do is to hide under your bed or a table and stay away from windows.
Luckily, the buildings in Taipei are mostly all earthquake-resistant, so there is little risk of major damage to a building. However some of my friends ended up with cracks in their walls and broken pieces of furniture. I’ve attached some photos of my friends’ appartments. Luckily mine wasn’t damaged at all!
For the next two to three weeks there were many aftershocks, most of which happened at night. These were mostly between magnitude 5 and 6. By now though I’m pretty used to these and know what to do if there is a larger earthquake.
It’s important to emphasise that I’m completely safe in Taipei, but I thought it would interesting to explain the experience of these earthquakes as they have been an unexpected addition to my experience in Taiwan.
A Trip to Alishan:
I’ve been in Taiwan for seven months now, although it doesn’t feel that long. It’s now the spring term at the language centre and I’m making good progress with language learning.
As it’s March I decided to go to Alishan in the south of Taiwan for a few days. Alishan is a famous area in Taiwan for its natural scenery, tea and cherry blossoms.
It’s not easy to get from Taipei to Alishan though. I had to take the High-Speed Rail from Taipei to Chiayi – a city in the south. From Chiayi I then took the Alishan Forest Railway, but this doesn’t arrive in Alishan. After the train journey you still have to take a 1 hour bus journey to get to Alishan. Although the journey was really long, the train ride was amazing as there were amazing views and you travelled through the forest.
In Alishan there are several hiking trails. On my first day I hiked to the top of Datashan, which is the highest point in Alishan (2,666m). The hike was beautiful but there were a lot of stairs…
On my second day in Alishan I got up at 5am and took the sunrise train. This train arrives at a viewpoint high up on a mountain and you can then watch the sunrise. Unfortunately, it was quite cloudy when I was there but the views were still incredible. You then walk back down the mountain which takes about 90 minutes.
March and April are generally considered the best time of year to visit Alishan as this is when you can see the cherry blossoms. I went early in cherry blossom season, so most of the trees had blossoms but the flowers hadn’t fully blossomed yet.
My favourite part about Alishan was the quiet atmosphere. I never used to consider Taipei as a busy or stressful city, in fact, I still think that compared to European cities Taipei is really calm, but the south of Taiwan is even calmer. I now understand why people in the South of Taiwan joke that people from Taipei are always in a rush!
I’m planning a trip to Kaohsiung soon which I’m really looking forward to.
Thanks for reading my report and I hope you enjoy the photos!
April in Taiwan
A lot has happened since my last monthly report, including an earthquake, but I have chosen to focus this report on my weekend trip to Kaohsiung. As always, I have attached some photos, so I hope that they give you a sense of the places that I’ve been visiting. I will discuss the earthquake properly in my next report!
This month I decided to make a trip to Kaohsiung as I still hadn’t been yet. Kaohsiung is the largest city in the south of Taiwan and is famous for its beautiful architecture. It was somewhere I had wanted to visit for a long time, so it was lovely to finally go. Luckily it only takes about 2.5 hours on the high-speed rail to get from Taipei to Kaohsiung, so I left Taipei after my Friday morning classes and was in Kaohsiung by mid-afternoon. I stayed there for two nights and returned to Taipei on Sunday evening.
Kaohsiung feels like a smaller and more relaxed version of Taipei. There is still a metro but it’s a lot smaller than the one in Taipei. Older people there also speak with stronger Taiwanese accents than in Taipei, but it wasn’t too difficult to understand what they were saying.
I spent Friday afternoon visiting the Lotus Pond in Kaohsiung. This is a large man-made lake in the middle of the city, and it is surrounded by numerous temples and pagodas. I used the free public bikes to cycle around the lake and would then stop at the main temples and shrines. The combination of the beautiful buildings and the calm lake made this one of my favourite places I’ve been to so far in Taiwan.
When visiting one Daoist shrine, a young local man – called Mark (English name) – approached me and explained that he was an amateur tour guide and would love to give me a free tour! Mark showed me around the temple and taught me how to use the shrine for fortune-telling. He also helped me practice my classical Chinese by translating the writing and engravings in the temple. Small experiences like this are what make my time in Taiwan great.
The next day I visited the Fo Guang Shan monastery outside of Kaohsiung. This is an enormous Buddhist monastery and is one of the largest monasteries in the world. There is also a giant golden statue of Buddha in the middle of the site. It took me a whole day to visit the entire monastery and visitor centre, but it was worth it.
Overall, I had a lovely time in Kaohsiung. If I ever come back to Taiwan, then I would love to spend more time there. Its calm atmosphere and tropical climate are a wonderful combination.
Cosmo
February has been a calm month in Taipei. Now that I’m very used to my new life in Taiwan, time is going by quickly. I’ve also started to explore smaller places in Taiwan as I’ve visited lots of the most famous destinations.
visiting the cherry blossom gardens of Yangmingshan National Park
Two weeks ago I visited Yangmingshan national park. This is a mountainous area north of Taipei. Although it isn’t very far from the city, because of the mountains it takes 2 hour by bus to get there. The weather wasn’t amazing on the day I visited but it was still worth a visit. The first place we went to was an old cattle farm. I couldn’t see any cows because of the fog but according to the farmer they were there! The scenery was very green and beautiful. It was lovely to be outside the city and in the countryside.
The next place I visited was the former holiday residence of Chiang Kaishek. The interior of the residence is western in design. This is meant to reflect Chiang’s desire to be seen as more western and to appeal to foreign diplomats. The gardens of the residence were also beautiful although the building itself looks like a military compound.
The final destination on my trip were beautiful flower gardens in Yangminshan. There were lots of cherry blossom trees and other types of plants. Even though the weather wasn’t that good it was still really pretty! I’ve attached a photo of me near a stream by the flower gardens.
As I write this report I’m currently in the middle of the Chinese New Year holiday so I’m enjoying my time resting from studying. I’ll explain more about the celebrations in my next report!
I’ve been in Taiwan for over four months now so am nearly halfway through my time here. It’s taken me by surprise at how quickly the time is passing now. I’m planning to write a bit about my Christmas experiences in Taipei. The big annual holiday in Taiwan is Chinese New Year in February, however, the language centre gave us a one-week holiday for Christmas. It was also interesting to see Christmas celebrations in Taiwan.
Shilin Christmas Market
Christmas market:
A few days before Christmas, I visited a German Christmas Market in Shilin district with one of my classmates. This was actually my first time going to a large Christmas market so I thought it was funny that my first experience of this was in Taiwan. The market only had vendors that sold German food as opposed to gifts or anything else. The food was delicious; it resembled a cross between Taiwanese street food and European dishes. Most of the vendors were Taiwanese however there were also many German expats.
Christmas party:
My language centre organised a Christmas party for us a few days before Christmas. We all had to bring food and snacks, including both Western and Taiwanese food. We also had the opportunity to make TangYuan – Glutinous rice balls served in syrup. They sound a bit strange when you explain them in English, but TangYuan is a really common dessert in Taiwan and quite tasty. This was a really fun experience and it was great to learn a lot of Christmas-related Chinese vocabulary.
I spent Christmas Day with my university classmates in Taiwan. It was a quiet but lovely day and very different to my previous Christmas experiences. We also went to Raohe Night Market – our favourite – in the evening. Christmas felt less important this year because it’s not so important for Taiwanese people so I wasn’t always thinking about it.
As it’s now 2024 and my time in Taiwan is going by so quickly, I’ve started to think about my goals and intentions for the rest of my time here. My Chinese, especially formal Chinese, has improved so much recently but I have now set three main goals for the next few months:
1. Improve my tones and pronunciation
2. Practice speaking more idiomatically
3. Learn 5000 Chinese characters (I currently know about 3500)
