My China story is a long-lasting one as it has been quite a long time since I first met with Chinese culture with very warm “Ni hao!” in Ankara Atatürk High School ten years ago. After then I never want to break up my ties with this language and culture as it amazed me with every piece of infor...

28 August 2019

As a student of International Relations, the first two sessions of my undergraduate studies were focused on learning the West: history, political-economic ideology as well as culture. For a Champ like me raised and trained in down town Lagos, it is a very good learning adventure. During these day...

22 August 2019

​ Over the past three years since my first internship in Beijing, I’ve developed an ever-growing interest on China through various academic and professional experiences which culminated in my application to the Yenching Academy.I first visited China in June 2016 on a university scholarship, whe...

22 August 2019

As I am writing this, I am only a few weeks away from finally packing my bags and departing to study at the Yenching Academy for the upcoming two years. Although right now, it feels like my life practically revolves around China, I grew up relatively oblivious to its cultural and economic signifi...

22 August 2019

On an ordinary Wednesday morning, the day began exactly as one would expect in the small suburbs of Sydney. The whistling wind, the glaring rays of the hottest summer since 2006 and a ‘word’ that would lead me on a personal and professional journey. What was that ‘word’? It all began within...

22 August 2019

Five years have gone by since the day when I scribbled my first Chinese character and, after all this time, I still get asked the same question: why China? I usually like to take people by surprise replying: "for the food, of course, it is delicious!" But as I prepare to move to Beijing, I want t...

09 July 2019

My name is Thabiso, and I fell in love with China when I studied at Fudan University, Shanghai under the Centre for BRICS Studies in 2017. I chose to study in China for my Master's because this country (China) is a powerhouse to be looked at in the near future. The economy is thriving at a very f...

09 July 2019

​I'm Lily Falzon, an incoming YCA scholar from the United States. Although I was born and raised in California, my China story has been in the making for some time. My great-grandfather, Wang Xiaolai (王晓籁), was a prominent businessman in early 20th-century Shanghai and served as Chairman of S...

09 July 2019

THE 21ST CENTURY: THE ERA OF THE CHINESEI dreaded Wednesdays throughout the second semester of my freshman year at the university. The reason being that my stern African politics professor with monstrous narcissistic tendencies (or so I perceived in error, as this perspective changed later) taugh...

09 July 2019

The Value of Having a Degree in China StudiesThank you for giving me the opportunity to speak at this commencement ceremony. As Mencius once said that it is one of the three pleasures to educate the world's talented people. I had the pleasure and honor to teach the best students from the best uni...

03 July 2019