A Funky and Intense Immersion Experience in the Heart of China

7 years after my adventure with Academic Explorers, I still look back longingly on the experience I had during this program!

One of the things I really love about AE is how much Sabrina pushes her students to experience the ‘unfiltered’ Beijing. In college, I spoke to many of my peers that studied abroad in Beijing and spent most of their time in the areas surrounding the major universities. Many of them were not challenged to speak Mandarin or live outside of their comfort zones. By contrast, Sabrina encourages her students to take advantage of the opportunity to interact with a world completely unlike that which they come from – whether it be taking the subway far beyond the Second Ring Road to the less touristic areas, or calling back an intimidating Chinese girl who gave me her number in a restaurant. In my experience, these were the adventures where I felt like I really saw China – massive electronics malls filled with hundreds of thousands of haggling locals, or impromptu ping-pong tournaments in tucked away city parks. Indeed, sometimes Sabrina is not nice in her insistence that you resist your Western habits (I can’t count the number of times she scolded me for walking around with my headphones on). In retrospect, however, I am extremely glad that she was resilient in encouraging me to take full advantage of the newness of my experience.

I was lucky enough to study Mandarin before I arrived in Beijing, and Sabrina rewarded me with some pretty spectacular one-on-one lessons. Sabrina’s Chinese classes were not typical to say the least! Some of my fondest memories include going to a bustling (and relatively unhygienic) meat and vegetable market to learn the names of major food items, or another time reclining in a couple of massage chairs in a posh furniture store while going over my homework (needless to say, we didn’t get much done that day!). Not uncommonly, Sabrina would throw me into challenging experiences and make me talk my way out of them. This immersive method was a fantastic way to learn how to use my Mandarin skills, and indeed I am still complimented for my conversational skills to this day.

It might be evident to this point that I haven’t mentioned the martial arts component of the program (which comprised 4 hours of every day, six days a week). I would say that as opposed to many of the other students I know that went on this program, I was less interested in the gongfu element. And still I was able to have a tremendous experience. For me, martial arts was the vehicle by which I accessed the people, places and ideas that left the strongest impressions on me – the amazing parks, the strange banquets, the mind-blowing concepts of energy that are central to Chinese thought. Furthermore, the intensity of our training encouraged me to bring a similar passion to all aspects of my life in Beijing, where I might have otherwise slacked off. It is this aspect of Academic Explorers – the intensity and challenge of the experience – that most contrasts with my other gap year program, and I feel really prepared for me for college.

7 years after my adventure with Academic Explorers, and I am finally planning on returning to Beijing! Despite many of the things that ostensibly make Beijing a not-so-attractive destination for a young person travelling abroad – the pollution, the chaos, the gentrification – I am choosing to return there because of the experience I had with AE. As opposed to evaluating Beijing relative to other cities in terms of its superficial qualities, I feel personally connected to the local characteristics of this city, and I am drawn to it as a sort of home-away-from-home. I feel very lucky to know a foreign city in this way, and I thank Sabrina and Academic Explorers for this.