I am from Germany. From September till January I spent one semester as International exchange student in the School of Management at Xiamen University. This report is about my time in Xiamen.
The campus of Xiamen is said to be one of the most beautiful ones in China. That is true. The campus is pretty huge and very green and beautiful. There is a lake in the middle of the campus where you can sit and relax. Beside the teaching buildings you can find supermarkets, banks, mobile network operator stores, several canteens as well as some cafés on the campus. Moreover, Xiamen University offers a gym, basketball and tennis courts, playgrounds and a swimming pool. For the swimming pool we had to so a little health check at the hospital opposite of the University. After completing the check, we got a card which allowed us to enter the swimming pool. The swimming pool is open on the weekends which was great.
At the beginning of the semester we had the possibility to apply for a buddy that would show us around and help us with arranging our daily life. Especially in the first weeks every help you can get is helpful, e.g. when opening a bank account, choosing a mobile network operator or going to the hospital to do the health check needed for the swimming pool. We tried to do it on our own put that was sometimes not that easy. But it would have been better to have a buddy already in advance cause the first few days are the most difficult ones.
One aspect of daily life where you definitely need help is finding an accommodation in Xiamen. There are different possibilities. Either you live on-campus, which you have to tell the University in advance, or you look for an apartment off-campus on your own. I and a friend decided to live off campus. It was more expensive than the dormitory on campus, but we had much more space. Our real estate agent could speak English what was really helpful.
A really good thing at Xiamen University was that we got all the necessary and useful information regarding our stay and study time in Xiamen already beforehand. Therefore, we have enough time to prepare everything. The whole time – before and also during our stay- the coordinators of the School of Management tried their best to answer every question we had.
During my stay at Xiamen University I have completed seven courses, which we had to select in the first week of the semester. After the first week we could again change some courses if we wanted to. We had the possibility to choose courses offered by the International Affairs office, the School of Management and the School of Economics But the course selection was not that easy for me. There were a lot of courses to choose but unfortunately some of the courses I found interesting were at the same time, which had a huge impact on the selection. What was also not that good was one thing in respect to the courses of the School of Economics. At the beginning they told us that it is no problem to choose the course, but during the semester the professor was always referring to other courses of the school of economics which we didn’t chose. That made the courses really difficult to understand as all the Chinese had the expertise of the other courses.
All in all, I would definitely recommend spending one semester as exchange student at Xiamen University. I enjoyed my whole stay in Xiamen. It was a unique and very interesting experience for me and I would definitely do it again. It was sometimes a hard time because of the cultural differences between China and Germany but the School of Management tried to make it as convenient as possible for us by organizing events like the Christmas Dinner, the Welcome evening with the Mooncake festival dinner and the Company visit of BAMA Tea company. They were helpful in order to understand the Chinese culture to some extents.
