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Launching a career by winning an overseas internship in a foreign country is the goal of many Chinese students but, as Zhang Ying reports, life away from home has some drawbacks as well as undoubted benefits.
Li Min strode out of Pudong International Airport into the sizzling August heat. He's just back from Tokyo and is still struggling with the humidity as well as the bustling traffic in Shanghai.
Although he's back in his home city, Li still finds it difficult to adapt to city life after his half-year overseas internship.
Li, an optical science and engineering major junior at Fudan University, applied last year for a management trainee internship through AIESEC, an international NGO which provides overseas working opportunities every year. In January this year, he set out for Japan.
In recent years, overseas internship program for college students has been getting increasingly hot. It's estimated that more than 1,000 students in Shanghai try for the program every year. Apart from overseas internships through the two international internship committees, AIESEC and IAESTE, there are also Chinahr.com's Dreamplus, Fudan University's Time Warner program and Shanghai Normal University's Disney program, among others.
Asked why he selected Japan as his destination, Li says: "First of all, I just want to practice my Japanese. I had learned Japanese for seven years since middle school. In fact, my first foreign language is Japanese rather than English. Second, I'd like to experience a different lifestyle. I visited Japan twice, but that was all about traveling. I think internships are more like 'living' there."
Over the past half year, Li worked in the White Goods Department of Electrolux, the largest white goods producer in Europe. What he did was doing research on market entry. He carried out the whole project independently, including data collecting, market analysis and strategic planning.
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