Having studied in both China and the UK, here were the craziest differences: 🧵
COMPULSORY ARMY TRAINING during your summer break in China. 🔫
Lots of marching in uniform, singing songs, and military activities to improve discipline
Lots of marching in uniform, singing songs, and military activities to improve discipline
Ethnic minorities (such as the Xinjiang Uyghurs or Tibetans) would have lower entry requirements to enter the university, since they’re often from poor provinces, so it allows them a better chance of entering the best universities!
Students have to do compulsory exercise - 80km of running each semester. This is tracked on your phone. I know some students who will pay someone else to take their phone and run for them lol.
Chinese canteens are cheap and plentiful😍. There are 7 canteens with hundreds of options, and it costs £1 for the meal in the pic. In the UK, I only had 2 canteens on campus which had just a few options, and meals were a fortune costing about £6-7…..
No partying in China! 🚫🍻There’s a curfew usually between 10pm-6am as they encourage people not to go out. In the UK, there’d be nightclubs on campus and “freshers week” just for partying. Students don’t really do this in China, and most of my classmates don’t even drink!
Students must take MARXISM classes to graduate 🔴. You’re also encouraged to be a communist party member, where many of my classmates have weekly communist meetings and have to read lots about it.
Accommodation is shared between 4-6 of you. But it’s crazily cheap, about £100 for a semester.
Whilst in the UK it would cost at least £100 every week, but you’d get a room to yourself!
Whilst in the UK it would cost at least £100 every week, but you’d get a room to yourself!
BUSY! 📍Probably double the amount of classes in China to UK, and homework after every class making me much more busy and little time to properly revise for exams here
British exams would often be based on questions you’d done before. You might get hints off teachers so we could focus studying on certain areas. In China, you get no clues or anything and the questions are mostly all different from class problems. 🙇
There are a lot more research seminars in Chinese universities and they’re compulsory to attend for graduation, which I found helpful 📚
You usually have to publish your own research in China, whilst in the UK I never had to! So hard!!!
Campuses are often HUGE in China. At my campus you can rent an e-bike or even a smart car to drive around!
Of course these are just MY personal experiences at 3 universities - it may differ for different people :)
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