Life as an exchange student at Peking University
Why Peking University?
I wanted to know how people there lived, learned, did research, worked, and what made them similar to or different from me. These were why I participated in the Exchange Program.
Naturally, Tsinghua University and Peking University became my first choices. Nonetheless, as stipulated by the host institutions and as a student from Taiwan, I was not allowed to join the Tsinghua program (See “HKUST Mainland Exchange Program — Special Notes for Non-Local Students” for more information.), so without facing a dilemma, I chose Peking University (PKU).
Language: Accent and characters
Surprisingly, the biggest challenge facing me was the language:
- I learned most of the terms in English, so the Chinese translation often confused me.
- Some instructors had a strong accent.
- I had a hard time reading the teaching materials in simplified Chinese. The first chapter of the Psychology textbook took me 6 hours, which I believed should have been done in at most 40 minutes if it had been in English.
Fortunately, I got used to the aforementioned difficulties after around three weeks. I looked up the Chinese terms frequently, highlighted them in my textbooks, and learned Pinyin, the writing system adopted there. These helped me learn and get used to Simplified Chinese more quickly.
Heavy schoolwork
From around May to June, I made my study plan for the final period and realized that even if I studied for 14 hours a day, I could not finish it. Thus, I did study for that long every day from then on. The way I studied was very similar to what I did in high school. There were self-study areas everywhere in the academic buildings, and I spent plenty of time there.
Key difference: Motivation for attending a university
In my opinion and according to my observation to my close friends in HKUST, attending a university was not just about obtaining a high GPA. Instead, what mattered was the knowledge we gained and the skills we learned during the process.
On the contrary, some students in PKU were crazy about the GPA. “I know what concerns you the most is the grading scheme, so here it is,” said some of the professors there. Moreover, there was much promotion in various forms regarding graduate school admission consulting, including posters, sponsors of students’ activities, and talks concerning admission tips.
There was probably a public perception that the university education was not complete without a graduate school degree, I guessed.
On-campus residential life
The residential life was quite different from the HKUST one.
In the local UG dormitory I lived in:
- No hot water for bath offered from 22:55 to 15:00
- No light in bedrooms from 23:00 to 06:00 on school days.
- There were curtains for shower rooms, but most people took off their clothes before entering the shower room, and some of them did not close the curtains at all.
To be honest, I did not like the residence, but living on campus with local students provided me the precious opportunity to make friends with them, and my roommates were all warm and friendly. We talked about literally anything, hung out together, celebrated holidays together, and shared snacks and fruit.
Jog for 80+ km
I seldom did exercise when I was in HKUST, but I jogged for over 80 km last semester!
There was a beautiful lake on campus, which was once part of a royal Chinese garden. I enjoyed jogging around it. Besides, I also jogged in the playground at night. Sometimes students played Chinese pop music on the playground speakers, and I like to listen to it while jogging.
School Team of Aerobic Gymnastics
As an amateur gymnastics enthusiast, I joined the School Team of Aerobic Gymnastics, which was an unforgettable experience. Although in the beginning, it was hard for me to conform to the intense training, I spent extra time jogging, stretching, weight training frequently and finally got used to it.
I was grateful to make friends with those people on the Team, who were lovely and always friendly. We chatted a lot during break times and after those training sessions. Our friendship will last forever.
Mountaineering Association of Peking University
Since my buddy was one of the core members on the Mountaineering Association as well as the Teaching Assistant of the introductory bouldering class, he brought the world of bouldering to me.
Rock Climbing & Bouldering
I joined the association, went to every bouldering class and learned a lot of interesting techniques. Thanks to my buddy, I did rock climbing and finally reached the top of a 6-story-high climbing wall tiling outward though I screamed a lot and was about to cry out of fear.
Buddy
Also, my buddy showed me great hospitality. He introduced many of his amazing friends to me and bought me the ticket for an orchestra concert on campus.
Singing contests of the computer science school
To meet more computer science majors, I volunteered to be the host of the singing contests from the first to the final rounds. To speak Mandarin in a way the audience was more comfortable to, I imitated how the students there spoke, which turned out to be a fun role-playing game for me.
Although I still ended up pronouncing in a Taiwanese way, it was for sure an interesting experience for me. I enjoyed some of the performance so much that I searched the Internet for those songs and started listened to them afterward.
The most important of all, I made some cute friends from the same major and same year as I was. One of them even promised to send me an EECS t-shirt as a souvenir!
The White-Haired Girl, a Chinese Opera, Ballet
There were many performances in Peking University Hall, including concerts, dances, operas, and even movies. PKU students enjoyed discount tickets for all (or most) of them. In addition to the aforementioned concert, I watched The White-Haired Girl, one of Shanghai Ballet’s two masterpieces.
It was about a well-known story that was adopted in the elementary school textbook in China, praising Chinese Communist Party. Although I was not that into the story for such political purpose, it was a novel idea for me to merge ballet with Chinese music, Chinese clothing, and even some Chinese martial arts. To conclude, I liked the performance so much and recommended watching it.
Internship & jobs
Although I did not take too many credits compared to my PKU friends, I spent most of my time in schoolwork and DID NOT take any part-time job, internship, or research project there (though it was common for my exchange student friends to do so).
In spite of that, I participated in Google and Alibaba’s campus recruitment events and had a surprising reward afterward, which was the Google Women Techmaker Scholar Program. (I may write another medium story for it! It’s amaaaaaazing!!!)
The recruitment events themselves were not special, but I learned what kind of opportunities were offered in China and when I should take action if I was interested in them.
Additionally, the Software Engineering instructor invited several guest speakers to talk about the latest trend in the field:
Haoran Yu, the entrepreneur founding Jisuanke
Jisuanke was an online platform for computer science education, targeting children and teenagers. He talked about how to improve the efficiency of light project development other than adopting the standard software development procedure.
A PhD student who was just back from WWW 2019
He gave a talk regarding the topics and the interesting ideas he learned from the conference, which were so new to me and I enjoyed the lectures a lot.
These helped me connect with some successful people in the field, but I have not found the connections useful yet 😜
Travel
I traveled twice during the exchange period.
One was to Chengde. My friends and I went there by renting a car. We had a car accident there, unfortunately, but the other things went smooth and one of the cops even treated us Manchurian cuisine when he was off duty.
The other trip was to North Korea 🇰🇵! North Korea was a place that was like somewhere in other planets and was thus definitely worth a visit!
Feel free to comment on this post and ask me more questions. 😄
BTW, there may be another story for my academic life here (i.e. courses taken, etc.) Stay tuned!
