Yijingmei Xing—Jingmei—is an International student currently studying remotely from China.

Due to the pandemic and closed borders, many students can’t come or return to Australia for their international education and few schools in Melbourne can provide online learning.

 

BSSC has several students who temporarily transferred to the college from Melbourne schools for semester one this year. Jingmei is one such student.

 

Hi, I’m Jingmei and I live in Xi’an Shaanxi Province. Geographically, it is the central part of China, but we always say Xi’an is one of the representative cities of the Northwest part of China.

My family really enjoys life—but we seldom spend time together over the weekend because we each like to hang out with our friends.

I love Hip-hop dancing. I’ve been learning and performing for four years and I’ve joined a crew called Recho-E.

The pandemic in China is under control, so it doesn’t really affect my family now, but they were worried about my safety when I was studying in the US. I stayed in America until May 2020 and fortunately came back to China before the situation there got worse.

I chose to study internationally because I wanted to learn about a different culture. We grow up with Chinese culture and only experience other cultures through a trip or via the Internet.

The educational mechanism (in the US and Australia) is quite different. I had much more choice about which subjects I would like to study at high school. The teachers also gave much more freedom during school time.

Australia was initially selected by Jingmei as an alternative to the US and she is presently hoping to return here once a process for relocation is developed.

I chose Australia due to the good climate, good music and art atmosphere, and the cultural diversity.

I am studying Maths Methods, Specialist Maths, Chemistry, Physics, English as Second Language and Chinese as First Language.

Maths is my favourite subject—although it’s getting harder and harder and will be a great challenge. The main reason I chose maths is that it’s so much easier get good grades than in any other subject.

Remote learning means I need to balance my time carefully. As well as the online classes I also have to go to the local school.

As I don’t want to give up any of my hobbies, I need to carefully balance study with the rest of my life.

All the best,

Jingmei