Student makes the most of campus life
Print Edition
Curious about Chinese culture, Tatiana Skuratova came to China in 2011 when she was less than 17 years old and could only say “how much” in Chinese.
After studying Chinese for one year at Dongbei University of Finance and Economics in Dalian, Liaoning Province, she decided to continue her China adventure in a bigger city. She picked Shanghai.
She spent another year studying Chinese at Fudan University and started her studies as a politics and international relations major at Tongji University in 2013. Now the 20-year-old Russian student speaks fluent Mandarin.
Skuratova is very active at school. With her excellent spoken Chinese, pretty appearance and cheerful personality, she was chosen as one of the hosts for Tongji’s graduation party last year.
After that she joined other Tongji volunteers in August to teach English to high school students in Gansu Province. She was the first foreign student to join the annual volunteer program and the school has since considered inviting more expatriates to join similar activities, Skuratova says.
They spent six days in Dingxi City, teaching students who were preparing for China’s college entrance exam.
“I was deeply impressed that they were so eager to learn English,” she recalls. “Six days are too short for them to improve their language proficiency but I taught them my own experiences in learning a foreign language. For example, I told them to find the inspiration to stay motivated and to stick notes of easily forgotten words on walls to help them remember.”
During her first semester as a sophomore, Skuratova took part in a social entrepreneurship project with the Sino-Finnish Center at Tongji, and started up a survey on food waste in the school as a team leader with six other students.
Basketball team manager
The team designed a mobile phone application that showed each canteen menu in advance every day, allowing students and teachers to buy what they wanted and reduce waste.
Although the solution was rejected by canteen managers, Skuratova says she met more people and learned a lot about how to communicate with people from different cultures and make decisions as a team leader.
Skuratova was also active off campus. During the second semester of her first university year, she organized a basketball club with a Chinese friend for foreigners who had just arrived in the city.
The club attracted more than 80 players from local colleges and companies and their team finished in second place out of four in a competition organized by the China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone.
As manager of the basketball team, she was busy arranging practices and games. The club lasted only half a year as she was too busy with her studies, but once again she made hundreds of new friends, including foreigners and Chinese.
Having lived in China for more than three years, Skuratova is now an experienced life tutor for newcomers.
“Sometimes I feel I’m a Chinese because I know more new Chinese words than new Russian words, and my best friend is a Chinese girl. I can understand jokes here but could not get the meaning of what my mother was talking about on the phone as I don’t know the latest catchwords in Russian,” says Skuratova, who returned to her homeland only once in the past three years.
She also has some advice for other foreigners in the city.
“If you want to learn more and become connected with the city, don’t be shy and try new things,” she says. “And if possible, learn some Chinese before coming.”
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