2008.9-Pauline Gouin,EDHEC,France

MBAChina
2010-08-17 15:55 浏览量: 4078

  - Culture shock


  When I first arrived to Shanghai in August 2008, I felt really lost. Shanghai is really huge with a lot of skyscrapers compared to European cities, not so many people speak English, and everything from food to traffic lights seemed different. But even thought the culture shock was big at the beginning, I really like China and Chinese: the atmosphere, the overcrowded cities, the amazing food, and the historical and cultural sites…


  China is a fascinating country, which is developing so rapidly that there is always something interesting going on. Before coming to China, I learnt about Chinese histories and Shanghai development but I was really impressed when coming to China by all the World Heritage sites. I didn’t know that there were so many amazing places to visit in China, from the Great Wall to the Temples and carvings.


  China is also much better organized than France for instance: people are always on time, trains and planes leave on time, and things are often much easier thanks to that great organization.


  Finally, I was also very impressed by the speed of the actual development in China. China and especially Shanghai is developing so rapidly that you can actually see it: there are construction works and skyscrapers every where and the business district of Pudong for instance is even more impressive given the fact that its development really started less than twenty years ago.


  - IMBA program


  The IMBA program was very interesting and it proposes a large range of courses covering every area (finance, accounting, human resources, marketing…) so it’s a very complete program and every student can find courses that suit his major. Teachers were of a very high academic level and coming from different countries in the world (India, England, China…) so they could also provide us with information about business in their countries and cultural differences at work.


  What I liked most about the program were the case studies that we had to work on in each course. I had to work as a team with Chinese students so we could share our previous working experiences and different points of view and get to know each other better by studying a practical situation. So for me, it was one of the most interesting parts of the course. Most students have a long working experience (five to ten years) and a good academic level so they could provide the rest of the class with information about their company and the way they work here in China or abroad.


  The only thing that could be improved in this program is that some courses covered such a large rank of notions (Corporate Finance, for instance) that we did not have time to study them really deeply.


  As a conclusion, I would recommend this program because I have learnt a lot not only from the good teachers but also from the other students who all had very interesting backgrounds.


  -  Living situation


  Housing is less expensive here than in Europe and I found it was very easy to find a flat. I was living in a shared flat near Jing’An Temple, which turns out to be a very nice district of Shanghai.


  Living expenses (food, entertaining, travelling) are cheaper than in Europe if you buy Chinese products but imported products are very expensive.


  This enables me to travel around China and discover some other cities like Beijing, Hangzhou, Datong, Xi’an, which has amazing World Heritage sites. Travelling in China is a very nice experience because in each region, the landscapes, the food, the culture are a bit different so I had the feeling of discovering different countries in this huge country. Furthermore, transports in China are very well developed (train, plane and bus) and quite cheap so I could easily go from one city to another.


  - Language Learning


  I did not take Chinese class, but as not all the people speak English in Shanghai, I had to learn a bit of Chinese for my everyday life (numbers, simple sentences). I will learn Chinese if I come back to China to work.


  - Your other special experience in China


  My other special experience in China was travelling. China is a wonderful country with a very rich history and travelling enables me to understand a bit better its complicated and fascinating history.


  - Some tips for future exchange student


  I would recommend future exchange students who do not speak Chinese to take at least three or four classes of Chinese in order to know basic sentences like “I want/ I don’t want” because, otherwise, the everyday life in Shanghai can be very complicated.


  I would also recommend them to choose a flat not too far from the university or in the centre of the city because transports (bus, metro, taxi) are cheap but there are a lot of traffic jams so living far from the university can be very time-consuming.

编辑:

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* 文章为作者独立观点,不代表MBAChina立场。采编部邮箱:news@mbachina.com,欢迎交流与合作。

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