A Trip To China

360GEM Trip to HCBITZ

4-10 November 2018

China was never a country that I’ve ever dreamed of setting my foot in. Growing up in Malaysia, the occasional encounter with Malaysians of Chinese descendant convinced me that I had a decent amount of understanding about Chinese people and their culture. This short trip that only spanned for a week not only proved my ignorant naiveté wrong, but also exposed me to a lot of different lessons and experiences that have benefited me in various ways.

One of the least talked about knowledge that you can get by travelling is the airline company that you will want to avoid for your next trip. All students are instructed to buy their flight tickets from Air Asia. This was done to ensure the smoothness of the trip and helps in managing the group which consisted of 29 people. It was never a choice to begin with but still the experience of trying to sleep in a cramped space with stiff sits was memorable. A funny one indeed.

Upon reaching Macau, not much difference can be observed initially. An airport is still an airport. Until we were given a tiny piece of paper that can be easily mistaken for a grocery receipt that you throw into trash cans right after you receive it. Surprisingly, it was a very important document that visitors need to keep in order to stay in Macau legally.

After passing various immigration inspections and picking up our luggage, we were greeted by a lecturer from Beijing Institute of Technology, Zhuhai (HCBITZ) who walked us to a pre-booked bus to exit Macau. The university provided us with rooms in the university hotel as our accommodation. The hotel was unique as it was located on the eleventh and twelfth floor of the university library building.

Throughout the seven days of our excursion, we went to a lot of different places ranging from historical places to leisure parks to shopping malls. As someone who enjoys drawing and reading novels as hobbies, I am inclined to appreciate the artsy things displayed such as the architecture of historical buildings, the distinctive housing layout compared to Malaysia, the characters that they use to form their language and so much more. Of all the amazing things that I discovered there, my favorite was their potteries and sculptures displayed in a local museum in Zhuhai. The apparent portrayal of culture and identity, the intricacy and the diligence poured into   the works instantly caught my heart. Apart from the more traditional and smaller scaled display of art, modern architectural design of the Macau Tower and Zhuhai Opera House also gave a lasting impression of modernity that reflects on the amazing extent of progress that the Chinese has made in the area of technology.

As a part of our program, every Universiti Tenaga Nasional (UNITEN) students are assigned to a “buddy” who are students from HCBITZ. Although I didn’t get the chance to spend much time with my own buddy due to him being busy with his examinations, I was welcomed to join my friends and their buddies. Be it a late-night walk around the campus, going out to shopping malls, eating out or buying stuffs at the convenience store, I was always invited with great enthusiasm. The buddies were very friendly and displayed enormous interest in the similarities and differences between us. The program was a great initiative to cultivate and encourage communication between two people from a very distinct background and upbringing. The language barrier that existed was funny, but it taught me a lot on how to communicate when there is a hindrance in the exchange of information. I also find that communication does not rely entirely on trading hollow words with context, but also depends majorly on body language, voice inflections, and the jokes and laughs in between. Of all the places we went in China, this is the most memorable part of our trip.

Maybe it is because of my limited vocabulary, but I have the feeling that my words aren’t enough for me to convey every single thing that I feel and experience during my time in China. The trip was fun and it taught me a lot of new things at the same time. I have learned to celebrate differences, looking through different lenses and learned empathy. All good things must end, but the memories, the pictures, and the WeChat accounts that I’ve added is sufficient enough for me to fill the gaping hole in my heart left by the bittersweet feeling of leaving China.