by Baron Fisher

After 18 hours of flight time, along with a 12-hour time difference, the first stop of my fall semester abroad landed me in Shanghai, China. I was too excited to be affected by jet lag just yet, but it was disorienting to have almost 2 days disappear from travel. Going forward, I used every morsel of time to experience all facets of living in China.

Shanghai is a vibrant city with a gorgeous skyline of skyscrapers interspersed with historic architecture. It’s the financial capital of China, headquartering Chinese and global banks. The hustle and bustle of city streets was apparent, and the roadways were jam-packed yet eerily quiet because most of the cars were EVs. China’s public transportation system is impressive, with a high-speed rail system that reaches speeds up to 217 mph, connecting all major urban areas with clean and affordable trains. As I made my way to campus, I stopped in Suzhou whose history dates back to over 2,500 years. I also visited Hangzhou because I wanted to see a tea plantation, and Longjing is one of the most famous Chinese teas.

I arrived in Beijing after a week of traveling to spend the Fall 2024 semester abroad at Tsinghua University’s Inter-University Chinese Language Program (IUP). Tsinghua’s campus is in Haidian District on the northwestern outskirts of Beijing, where a cluster of China’s other top universities are also located. The day-to-day academic rigor was intense, with four hours of daily class consisting of one-on-one tutorials interspersed with small group classes. The expected homework study time was four hours daily, and I certainly had to maintain that schedule so as not to fall behind. The discipline ingrained in the Chinese academic system was noticeable. IUP is renowned for its intensive training pedagogy focused on improving language proficiency to a professional level. Several Wesleyan greats have connections to IUP. Gong Wei Laoshi, my first-year Chinese professor, was a former IUP teacher. Professor Stephen Angle, my advisor, attended IUP a couple of decades ago when he was freshly out of college. 

Even half a world away, as I sat in the Bayi Laoye (巴依老爷) Uyghur Restaurant in Beijing’s Haidian District, I maintained connections to Wesleyan as I had dinner with my Wesleyan Chinese Language partner, Yunxi Wan ’27. Yunxi, who I met with weekly on campus to practice Chinese, noticed how obscure words like “rush hour” 高峰时间 had seeped into my vocabulary. 

On campus at Tsinghua, I became friends with students from Canada, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, Jordan, Mongolia, New Zealand, Norway, Palestine, and Russia, as well as my roommate from Ireland. With only 800 Americans studying in China during the year, it was the first time I was distanced from a strong American community, although I did have two fellow Floridians in my cohort. It was surprising to me that most friends had never visited the United States. My time abroad found me embracing serendipitous moments, such as when my classmate’s roommate ended up being a fellow traveler I met two years ago on a layover in Istanbul, who was a PhD student from Jordan. 

While the day-to-day academic rigor was taxing, it was offset by the many opportunities I had to explore vastly different parts of mainland China. About 93% of the Chinese population lives in cities on the Eastern Seaboard, but I felt fortunate to visit places of global significance such as Xinjiang and Tibet. Often traveling outside Beijing, we encountered accents or dialects that we couldn’t use in Standard Mandarin Chinese to communicate. There are over 300 dialects in China. There are also 56 ethnic groups, with 91% being of the Han Chinese ethnic group.

In short, I went to over 12 provinces/municipalities/autonomous regions under the administration of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) including Shanghai, Suzhou in Jiangsu Province, Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province, Beijing, Chengde in Hebei Province, Chongqing, Xi’an in Shaanxi Province, Kashgar and Tashkurgan in Xinjiang Autonomous Region, Chengdu in Sichuan Province, Lhasa in Tibet, Tianjin and Harbin in Heilongjiang Province.

Keeping up to date with the news and with a State Department travel advisory at a level 3, I was anxious before traveling to China. The biggest misconception is that China is unsafe. During my time there, I felt a lot of adjustment anxiety until I was able to familiarize myself with local customs and laws to avoid any misunderstandings or uncomfortable situations. Since my time there, the advisory level has been lowered to level 2, and the visa process has been made easier for Americans as well.

Adapting to, overcoming, and embracing the challenges of being a resident and student in China was one of the many rewards of the experience. Little details often caught me off guard, such as despite spanning 5 different time zones, China only observes one time zone. There are eight major Chinese cuisines, depending on the province you visit. My favorites were spicy Sichuan cuisine and Xinjiang lamb. Visa cards are not accepted everywhere, but they use a mobile payment platform, WeChat, that can be used to pay for everything, including street vendors. I will be sure not to complain about Middletown’s winters after experiencing a daily average of 5 ℉ in Harbin.

There are a lot of things that really amaze me about China, such as their speed and efficiency. Potholes on campus are fixed in one day, and I never had to wait for my luggage at the carousel after a domestic flight. During flights, the cabin crew leads a stretching exercise routine for the passengers.

I hope that everyone takes the opportunity to learn more about China. Wesleyan has excellent foundational language programs. The resources and guidance provided by the Fries Center for Global Studies Center and Office of Study Abroad make cross-cultural education easily accessible. Alternate options include a CEAS class taught by Professor Angle, Modern Chinese Philosophy, which provided me with a great introduction to the intellectual movements governing China’s changes. 

For additional interactive, discussion-based learning, I am leading a student forum this spring called “Tea Time Talks: Contemporary China from Mao to Now.” Noticing that Americans and students at US universities could benefit from having a more in-depth, balanced understanding of a fascinating and important place like China, the goal is to advance Wesleyan students’ literacy of China’s political landscape and economic transformation and focus on constructing productive US-China relations. We’ll be hosting events throughout the semester and sharing knowledge gathered from my time abroad, so I hope anyone who is interested in learning more about China feels free to reach out. 

The next time you are considering a trip that greatly expands your worldview, make sure China is taken into consideration as it’s a beautiful country to explore.