From culture shock to a ‘second home’
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“I felt like I was leaving a part of myself in China because it has been a very tough journey to integrate myself into the culture and connect with the people here,” said Calista Ajibola, a British student aged 18, who has just completed a two-year boarding school scholarship programme in China.
Even for someone who had been learning Mandarin for five years and who had achieved the top grade in the subject in her General Certificate of Secondary Education exam, or GCSE, using the Chinese language, still posed some challenges, as textbook knowledge and real-life application can be very different disciplines.
“People often couldn’t understand me when I first arrived in China and would ask me to switch to English. I had scored a nine in my GCSE Mandarin exam, so it was incredibly frustrating, at times even disheartening,” she said.
“But as time went on, armed with the courage to make mistakes, a determination to improve, hours of practice, and plenty of help from my Chinese teacher, my Mandarin eventually reached the point where I could … guide my family around in China, chat with taxi drivers, haggle over prices, and sort out problems that came up.”
Ajibola returned with a mature command of the language, a clearer vision for the future, many genuine friends, countless memories, as well as 30 packs of Chinese-branded instant noodles, and a pile of refrigerator magnets.
“The scholarship programme is probably one of the best things that has ever happened to me,” she added.
Launched in 2023 by the UK charity Engage with China, in partnership with international schools in China, the scholarship programme has enabled 34 British pupils to embark on a two-year journey to study A-levels in China.
H-J Colston-Inge, director of Engage with China, said the aim of the programme is to foster “China literacy” among British youths.
It was in 2018 that she realised there was a major educational gap in UK schools, as knowledge of China was almost entirely absent from the classroom. Compared to short-term study programmes, she said, the project aims to offer a fully immersive journey, one that allows pupils to truly experience, with their own eyes a country on the other side of the world that is culturally and socioeconomically, very different from what they are used to.
Zoe Capps, who has just completed her first-year scholarship in Hangzhou, the capital city of East China’s Zhejiang province, said life in China, a place where “everything felt unfamiliar” at first but which has now become a “second home”, has made her much more “mature”.
“I always used to say I’m very mature for my age, but I really wasn’t,” she said. “But now, I have a clear idea of what I want to do in the future. I know where I want to go, and I know what I need to do.”
The students have not only developed strong language skills that will give them greater competitiveness in future education and career paths, Colston-Inge said, but have also gained a global mindset and a sense of empathy, an understanding that the world can be vastly diverse.
“No one typically sends their 16-year-old to study in China, so these students are bold, curious and globally-minded,” she added.
“Life-changing” is how Colston-Inge often described the many refreshing China stories she has heard from the pupils, especially since many of the scholarship winners come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.
Colston-Inge, who studied Chinese at university and is now dedicated to passing on her enduring fascination with China to the next generation, quoted Laozi, a Chinese philosopher from the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BC), “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
“Having 34 (scholarship winners) looks tiny, but just compare that with the 250,000 students coming from China to study in the UK, and that previously, very few children were going to China at the age of 16.”
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