My journey to China started at the end of August from Germany. Thus, the orientation day started on 9th of September, my friends, who come from the same university as me in Germany, and I travelled a little bit through Beijing and Xi’an before we arrived in beautiful Xiamen. We spent a few nights in a youth hotel close to the Marco Polo area. In the first week, we arranged to rent an apartment, did our enrollments, opened a Chinese bank account and got a Chinese sim-card from China Unicom. Unfortunately, you need to open a bank account before you can get a sim-card and to use your student card to eat at the canteen on campus. In the beginning, this was quite challenging because without mobile data I could not use any translation app, which is even more problematic if you do not speak any Chinese, and could not navigate my way.
After the orientation days and overcoming the first hurdles we had another week of leisure time before the semester finally started on the 17th of September. We got a course list from our supervisor a few days before and luckily, she registered us in the system because everything is written in Chinese. I was an exchange student at the school of management but we also had the possibility to choose English taught courses from other faculties. It was a pity, that we received the course list so late, so we could not arrange with our home university in advance if the courses we choose are suitable for them. This was kind of annoying because I did not want to take several courses just for fun, my intention was to bring credits back home.
One of my friends from Germany and I found a two-bedroom apartment one bus stop from the Siming campus. It is a local area, not very pretty, but really central and also not that expensive comparable to other students’ apartments. We lived in the 6th floor without an elevator just a few minutes from the Xiamen Overseas Museum. In our street were many local, small restaurants which seemed on the first view dirty and not nice to eat in, but they actually provide the best food. The agent, who helped us to find our flat, also arranged us an appointment to get Wi-Fi. Unfortunately, the Wi-Fi is not comparable with the one in Germany, it is usually really slow and with the VPN (Express VPN) even worse.
Anyway, our semester started and not every course began to this point. The Chinese language course, the one I actually needed the most, began in the 4th week of the semester. In the beginning, it did not seem there is much difference between the Chinese and German university system, but after a couple of weeks, we realized that is totally different. At Xiamen University, the grades include not a 100% exam like at my home university, no, the grade consists of attendance, participation, assignments, presentations, midterms, papers and end terms. Of course, not every course has the same regulations and all of them but I needed my time to get use to this style of school system again.
I was really lucky with my professors and teachers, they all had a pretty good English, which is not common, and were very friendly and helpful. Even when we had visitors from Germany, we asked them to go a little bit earlier or submit our paper a few days later. In general, if you ask kindly and not too often, they will corporate easily with you.
During the time of the moon cake festival the school of management arranged a dinner for all its exchange students and teachers to get to know each other better. Moreover, they offered us a day trip to the Ba Ma tee plantation and last but not least they arranged a Christmas dinner in one of the common student bars.
To the time, when I was in Xiamen there were a group of exchange students from France, Spain, Ireland, Austria, Sweden, Germany, Korea, Taiwan etc. There are also some students from the west which do their whole bachelor or master degree, some even in Chinese, at Xiamen University. Xiamen is in relation to other Chinese cities small, cozy and clean, no smog at all. You get easily to know many exchange and local students. The general life in Xiamen is really nice, the beaches are beautiful, cool streets to stroll around, big shopping malls to empty your wallet and nice areas to eat local and also western food.
At the moment, the public transportation of Xiamen consists of busses, the system is very big and easily to reach different areas of the island, but it takes a while especially in the rush hours. To solve this problem, just at the end of 2017 Xiamen opened its first metro line, which goes through the central up to the North Railway Station, which is located on the mainland of Xiamen. It will follow some more metro lines to connect every district in the next years.
The cultural differences between China and Germany are sometimes extreme and I still have some problems to get used to various attitudes and behaviors of Chinese people. In general, if you are open-minded, friendly and willing to try your best to get along with them, you can handle it. It will be definitely an adventure.
All in all, it was a great experience and I would recommend everybody an exchange semester in Xiamen. On the one hand, Xiamen University is one of the best universities in China on the other hand Xiamen is in my opinion one of the most beautiful cities in China.
