I’d longed to visit Asia for many years and to my delight, in June this year my wish came true and I had the opportunity to travel to China! I’d been unfortunate in 2015 and was forced to withdraw from a planned trip to India, so I can’t articulate how excited I was when I found out that I’d been accepted onto my university faculty's study trip this summer. The trip would consist of 19 Business, Law and Social Sciences students jumping on a plane ( or 3) to China undergo a study exchange with three Chinese universities, with some cultural sightseeing in between.

Yellow Crane Tower, Wuhan

Feeling very nostalgic about the trip, and greatly missing the experiences and people I had the opportunity to meet on the trip, I thought that I would jump at the chance to share some of my 2000 photos and the ins and outs of my trip with you guys. Go and grab a cuppa, you could be in for a long read!

The first destination for our 18-night trip was Wuhan. We jumped on a short haul flight to Amsterdam before catching a connecting 9 1/2 hour flight to Shanghai before then taking a further domestic flight from Shanghai to Wuhan. After almost 19 hours of travelling, we finally checked into our first hotel, the Wuhan Wugang Hotel, our home for the next seven nights, our longest stay in one place, and the place where we first experienced an authentic Chinese breakfast, including noodles!

The focus of our trip was to complete an exchange program with a number of Chinese universities and work with the students on a combination of work experience projects, seminars and cultural activities.


In Wuhan, where we collaborated with students at Wuhan University of Science and Technology (WUST), our group of 19 UK students were split into groups of 3/4 to undergo some work experience (I worked for Jingdong2Home which works in a similar way to Deliveroo) and gain an insight into the running of businesses in China, before preparing a pitch presentation at the end of the week to present in front of all of the students involved and the CEOs of each company - nerve wracking to say the least! Nevertheless, by the end of the pitch on Friday, despite some stressful and hasty working on the Thursday evening, the relief made it all worthwhile and we could go and eat our final meal satisfied with how we’d performed.

In between our work experience and presentation preparations, we had the opportunity to see some sights within Wuhan. Our first destination was the Yellow Crane Tower, a tower originally built for military purposes. Our time in Wuhan also allowed us to explore the street food region of Hubuxiang, with the assistance of our partnership students who helped us to translate.

During our stay, we were given the opportunity to tour each of the universities we were partnering with. Compared to UK universities I have visited, the scale of Chinese university campuses is vast - almost like their own towns - and even the university food courts are fierce competitors to the Trafford Centres food court.

Speaking of food, the food in China is really something - both good and bad. Admittedly I wasn’t as brave as others in the group where food was involved (people were trying chicken feet, turtles and eel), the safer options that I did select, however, were delicious and even better, inexpensive - though completely different to westernised Chinese takeaway dishes. One of my favourite meals would have to be at a restaurant in a mall local to our hotel in Wuhan where the chef prepared our meal in front of us, even setting fire to ice cream.

On our last night in Wuhan, we decided to celebrate our presentations being over and done with, by taking a trip to the local 24-hour karaoke bar. Complete with a few too many alcoholic beverages, the evening was fun filled and a laugh to say the least, however, I shall be hiding any evidence of me stepping up to the stage and ‘singing’.