Global Exchange in Beijing Institute of Technology, China

The past 2 months have really flown by with juggling my studies to visiting tea/spa houses (one such tea house pictured below), travelling to different cities, finding new cafes and tasting the specialties of each region. Everything still feels fresh – the convenience stores around every corner, the huge malls, the dorm lifestyle, the cityscape, the weather, the people, and it’s quite evident Beijing is home to many historical sites.

Before arriving in Beijing, I’d heard that their Summer is sweltering with consistent ~35-degree heat, where their Winter is freezing and goes into the negatives. Honestly, arriving here during their Autumn season was perfect. I got to feel the heat for the first 2 weeks and then the lovely fall breeze, and later I’ll experience however cold it will get. Be prepared for all seasons. Currently, it’s the start of November and all the trees are turning a warm yellow as pictured below of our campus trees.

I study a Bachelor of Accounting and used my free electives to go on a semester of exchange to Beijing, China. Over here, I chose to study the Chinese Language Program offered by BIT which varies in difficulty depending on your level. They do a placement test in the first week to properly assess you. We have lessons five days of the week (Mon-Fri), essentially two UTS tutorials a day, and after class you’re free to do whatever. I really wanted to improve my Chinese, so I’ve been enjoying this course – as an L3 student personally I really like my teachers, they teach in a logical way and the content is useful. Regarding other courses, i.e. computer science, engineering, etc, I believe their schedule is different and you can choose which lesson times you want from the availabilities, with subjects lasting differing amount of weeks depending on content.

BIT has two campuses, one in Haidian close to city centre and one in Liangxiang which is an hour and a half by metro to the city. For this semester, students studying Chinese Language have been placed on the Liangxiang campus to study. It’s a really pretty campus, has a few canteens and has many courts catering to all types of sport. You can even ride a bike around campus because it’s so big – one of my favourite parts of campus life. I also participated in their culture festival and sports day which was cool.

I’m lucky to be rooming with three wonderful girls, in a student dorm that’s close to campus and I’ve experienced and learnt so much with and from them. The canteen food is pretty good and soo cheap!! (as is most things compared to Australia) You can usually get a meal between 10-25 RMB. Although, as a vegetarian, the first few weeks were a struggle especially being relatively far out from the city and having a language barrier. Hot pot and Meituan egg fried has become my comfort meals when in doubt.

If I could give my past self some advice, it would be to appreciate the days where smog is sparse, and the sky is a clear blue; to travel into the city centre more after classes; to plan in advance some weekend trips but to not stress out about it, and to use xiaohongshu to find places of interest. Also, it makes life a lot easier when you open a bank account in China so you’re able to pay people back and get better discounts. Although we’re now able to link a visa travel card with Alipay and WeChat, there’s currently still no way to transfer money or send red pockets to people with an international card. And as a final tip, be prepared to buy an air purifier especially if you’re sensitive to air quality.

Wishing all future exchange students the best of luck!!

Yopi Yong Ping Wang
Bachelor of Accounting
Beijing Institute of Technology, China
New Colombo Plan Mobility Grant recipient

For more information about the UTS Global Exchange program please visit: www.uts.edu.au/thinkglobal