Blog written by Claire Carlin
I am a second year student at Manchester Metropolitan University studying Public Relations and Marketing. I moved to Manchester in September 2014 when I decided that I was ready to leave a small town in the Irish countryside and move to a big and busy city.
I enjoy socialising with my friends, meeting new people, and travelling (hence why an internship at InternChina interested me so much!). I have a bucket list full of countries I want to travel to and explore and particular activities I want to do in each.
Experience Asia 2016
During my internship at InternChina I will be the Project Manager of Experience Asia 2016. It is an event run by IC, which invites a variety of different companies to attend and promote the funded opportunities they offer to students throughout Asia. These include: internships, teaching programmes, voluntary programmes and much more!
In 2015, Experience Asia was held at The University of Manchester and had nearly 1000 people attend. Every exhibitor that attended had a lot of interest in the programmes on offer and had many students sign up with interest. InternChina had two students register with them on the day who ended up being accepted onto the fully funded programme by the British Council.
Experience Asia 2016, will take place at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU). I am hoping that this will be the biggest year yet, with more companies attending, more students coming along and a significant rise to the amount who actually get to go out to Asia on one of the many funded initiatives being promoted.
Moreover, I will also be helping with social media platforms. These include: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and WordPress (writing blogs). Public Relations is thus also a side that I will be working on and am very keen to get started.
I am very much excited about the work that I will be doing during my time at InternChina and cannot wait to see the turnout at Experience Asia 2016. Hopefully I can help lots of students get the internship or programme of their dreams in Asia.
If you cannot wait until next year to start experiencing the real Asia, apply now!
Hi, everyone,
My name is Ali, I am turning 25 this year (sadly) and currently live in Manchester UK. I’ve been luckily enough to work for a worldwide bank in a very successful sales role where I was rewarded significantly for my efforts there in my first ever job fresh out of college as a fresh faced 18/19 year old.
I am so immensely proud to be joining the InternChina team as their first ever full time UK employee! It’s my first few weeks in the role of Bookings Administrator and it has been very busy but I have enjoyed every minute so far. Our managing director Jamie has made me feel very welcome along with all the other staff based in the Chinese offices.
After spending a considerable amount of my free time in Manchester as all my friends were located there, I decided to take the plunge and move to a big city. There I was successful in acquiring a role for the government as an Information Advisor for the UK public in relation to their employment rights. In this role that I highly enjoyed, I meet some fantastic people but when I found out InternChina was hiring I put all my efforts into pursuing a career that meant more than just your average 9-5 role.
Fortunately in the last 10 years I have been able to visit a few countries around the world with friends and family. These include going to the Caribbean for a family wedding, touring through most parts of Europe with friends on skiing and summer holidays and the best trip of my life to Asia in spring 2014.
My holiday to Asia was great for so many reasons, none more so than the amount of places I was able to fit in to the trip. Starting out with a few days Hong Kong, I then got the ferry to Macau where I made it rain in the Venetian, that was followed by some eventful to say the least nights out in Zhuhai and Shanghai. From there I took the cultural element of the trip a little bit more serious and went on to visit the giant pandas in Chengdu, the Terracotta warriors in Xi’an, and the Great Wall of China in Beijing. The trip which lasted just over 3 weeks then sadly came to end in Korea where I had an equally fantastic time in Seoul.
All in all I couldn’t recommend Asia more but in particular China! From the incredibly friendly and warm locals to the amazing cities, landscapes and superb cultural experiences on offer it most certainly has something for everyone.
I am now really excited to start my career with InternChina, help the company grow to best of my abilities and hopefully get to visit China and Asia on many more occasions.
Last Friday, MMU hosted a lunchtime reception the ‘celebrate small business, entrepreneurialism and enterprise’. The event was attended by the The Rt. Hon. Chuka Umunna MP and The Rt. Hon. Ed Miliband MP
Ed Miliband is a prominent figure in UK politics as he’s the current Leader of the Opposition and head of The Labour Party. It was great to briefly talk with him, he’s someone who truly believes in the importance of companies like InternChina, and the benefit they bring to everyone who takes up the opportunities that we have to offer.
Also speaking at the event was Chuka Umunna, the UK’s Shadow Business Secretary who echoed Ed Miliband’s comments, adding that Manchester is an ideal city to operate a business from, as it’s now the fastest growing city in the UK outside of London.
I never thought I’d meet someone like Ed Miliband – it’s not usual I’m lucky enough to get invited to such an event! It goes to show that taking up an internship can be rewarding in unexpected ways.
It also comes at a time when the Labour party has announced that their election manifesto will include commitment to reduce student tuition fees. Without stating my own political views, as a student, I think that’s pretty good news!
If you want to be part of the InternChina story – why not Apply Now!
If you follow us on Twitter or like us on Facebook, you’ll probably have been aware of an event InternChina was a part of last week called ‘Experience Asia 2014’. InternChina helped organise it in conjunction with the University of Manchester by working closely with our connections at the university.
We managed to attract several prominent organisations from across the UK that were able to offer students opportunities to travel, work, intern and study in Asia – it’s always great to meet people working in a similar field to you!
The number of enthusiastic students that came to talk to us at the InternChina stand was brilliant. It’s great to see so many young people intent on travelling to China to gain invaluable experiences.
Suffice to say, the event flew by, and many of the hundreds of students that attended, left with exiting new plans to go to Asia this year! Don’t worry too much if you were unable to be a part of the event, it’s not too late to apply for an internship with us this summer. We also have funding opportunities available so be sure to take a look!
We’re hoping to attend future Experience Asia events and look forward to the next one with keen anticipation.
Do you want to join those going to China this summer in Qingdao, Zhuhai or Chengdu? Join in the adventure here!
As you can see from the number of InternChina blog posts on the topic, Chinese New Year is the most exciting time of year for us! Like Christmas to many westerners, Chinese New Year is a time when families get together and everybody enjoys a holiday. Now that I’m back in Manchester I wanted to see what the local Chinese community did to mark the occasion and I was pleasantly surprised!
On the night of Chinese New Year we took some friends to an authentic Chinese restaurant in town – Han Dynasty. This was quite simply the most authentic Chinese food I’ve ever had outside China. We love the northern-Chinese style ‘Jia Chang Cai – 家常菜’ such as Aubergine, Pepper and Potato (地三鲜), Chinese Schnitzel (锅包肉), Egg n Tomato (西红柿炒鸡蛋) and Garlic Shoots with shredded pork (蒜薹肉丝). These were all on the menu (so we ordered all of them!), as well as a huge range of dishes, full hot pot selection and on-the-table BBQ. Our friends were amazed and we have been talking about the food there for days afterwards! The restaurant also has a nice feeling of Authentic China, with Karaoke rooms downstairs and no other westerners (老外) in sight!
On the Sunday after Chinese New Year there is a festival to mark the New Year in Chinatown, with traditional performances, street food, some random fairground attractions and fish n chip stands (not very Chinese, but who cares!) and all culminating in a spectacular firework display. It was fun to celebrate with Chinese people in Manchester and made us miss China a lot! 新年快乐!
I am currently based in our Manchester office and dealing with all Generation UK applications, for more information about this please visit here!
InternChina – Visit to Qingdao Municipal Museum
Qingdao has a history of more than 120 years, and the museum is as a great place to learn more about the history of the city. As last week’s InternChina event, we decided to visit Qingdao Municipal Museum.
The museum has exhibitions about several different aspects of Qingdao, and the themes of these exhibition includes Qingdao local history, ancient coins, ceramics in Ming and Qing dynasties and Qingdao local folk customs.
We started with the history of Qingdao exhibition. Although Qingdao city has only existed for about 120 years, there were some people who lived in this area around 6000 years ago. Unearthed vessels and tools were exhibited to display how ancient people lived their lives. There are some collections of models that shows the historical stories vividly, for example, the wars that occurred in Qingdao and the scenery in Qingdao hundreds of years ago.
Afterwards, we continued our visit with the coins and ceramics exhibitions. The oldest ‘coin’ on the exhibition looked like a knife with a hole at one end, people used the hole to collect and carry the coins on strings. Also, there were lots of ceramics there. They were made in different dynasties, and therefore styles and techniques used were totally different.
After that, we experienced a traditional folk custom called woodcut painting. This kind of painting is mainly made for Chinese New Year celebration. Traditionally, the paintings are about characters in Chinese myths. They are believed to be able to protect or attract fortunes for the family. To make this kind of painting, the wood should be cut into moulds according to the picture you want to paint. The mould is then coloured and used to print the picture onto paper. In the museum, they had some moulds already and we just did the painting part by ourselves. We followed the steps taught by the ‘teacher’ in the museum; eventually, we made our own pictures successfully.
We experienced lots of ancient Chinese stuff during this visit and it was a great opportunity to get ‘closer’ to Qingdao.
Want to know and experience more Qingdao? Apply now!
Peking Opera Watching experience in Qingdao
Last Friday, for our weekly event, interns in Qingdao watched Peking Opera at the Qingdao Grand Theatre. Actually, for me, although a Chinese from Qingdao, it was my first time to watch live Peking Opera, and it was special.
Peking Opera, also known as Beijing Opera, is called 京剧(jing ju) in Chinese. It is a traditional Chinese theatre and has a history of more than 200 years. It is an art form that combines music, vocal performance, mime, dance and acrobatics. The works of Peking Opera are mainly based on Chinese history and folklore.
The performance we watched that night was called ‘遇皇后打龙袍’, literally meaning meeting the queen and hitting the dragon robe. The story is from a Chinese classic literature. Bao Zheng is one of the most well-known ancient Chinese government offical in the history, and he met an old lady on his way back to Beijing. The old lady claimed herself as the mother of the emperor and had been set up by others. After verifying the old lady was the queen, Bao helped her to get back to Beijing and she blamed the emperor for all the misery she suffered. She ordered Bao to punish the emperor and Bao hit the dragon robe instead of hiting the emperor to save himself from being punished.
When the opera started, we were amazed by the unique sound made by the musical instruments, as they are quite different from what we heard from an orchestra. The songs have much more variations with stronger beats. They were in perfect cooperation with the singing of the players. Also the costumes the players wore were gorgeous as they have several colours and pattern on each one of them. The players also ‘told’ the story by their movement, for example, a walk around the stage would mean they took a long trip to somewhere. Even though it was kind of hard for us to get used to the music and to follow the story, we are glad that we decided to join the event!
Do you want to experience the unique Chinese culture with us in Qingdao? Apply now .
Happy New Year to everyone reading the blog! 2013 was a huge year for InternChina and I thought I’d take the opportunity to sum up the biggest company events of 2013 with a New Year’s blog post.
After a successful year in 2012 we decided to invest in the continuing growth of IC, in order to carry on improving our programmes and offer more choice to future interns coming to China with IC. The biggest part of this investment was to open a new office in Chengdu. We’ve been up and running in Chengdu since February and have already placed nearly 50 interns. Chengdu is a fantastic place to run programmes and offers something a bit different to Qingdao and Zhuhai. Personally I think Chengdu is the best example of rapid Chinese modernisation, but also manages to maintain a relaxed vibe and the opportunity to escape the hustle and bustle with beautiful countryside easily accessible. The Tibetan district is really cool and the wall hanging I bought there is now hanging in my flat in Manchester!
I’m now based in the UK, mainly working on our marketing in Europe and specifically promoting Generation UK, the funding programme which we have become an approved supplier for. The completion of this agreement with the British Council was another major development in 2013 and after a long process of application and vetting, we are now proud to be a part of an amazing funding campaign for UK students. This development really cements our place as one of the leading companies providing internship programmes in China and will help hundreds of British students gain unique insights in Qingdao, Chengdu and Zhuhai over the next year. We were proud to take part in the Experience China Fair in London in 2013, as part of the Generation UK campaign:
Another major development for IC in 2013 was the launch of our new website, which you are viewing right now! Big thanks to Jack Fairhead for all the help with creating the site!
We were also excited to complete 3 significant long-term contracts to supply programmes for new and existing partner universities in 2013. We now run group programmes in all 3 of our destinations.
I have been busy on the road promoting IC and British and German universities in 2013, which was a great way to meet students and market our programmes. We’ve never been able to exhibit at European exhibitions before, but now that I am based in the UK we are able to do this:
We were sad to say goodbye to Rita from the Qingdao office in October, but as we move forward, we have also welcomed some new faces to the team, as you’ll see on our updated About Page.
On another personal note, I got married this year! I’ve put some pictures in the gallery below and as you’ll see there were some Chinese touches and some familiar IC team members present at the wedding! Apart from jetting to the UK for my wedding, IC team members have also been busy travelling to other exotic locations such as Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, the USA, Japan, South Korea, Thailand and many more!
Finally, the highlight of my year in 2013 (apart from getting married, of course!) was our first ever all-IC team get-together in Chengdu. This was the first time we’ve had almost all of IC’s permanent staff (Yifan stayed in Qingdao to look after baby Mia!) in one place, so as you’ll see from the pictures, we made sure we used the opportunity to eat, drink and even do a little bit of work together! I’m looking forward to more good times and progress for IC in 2014!
If you want to be a part of the IC story, why not Apply Now!
Inner Mongolia Trip: 30th of September to the 6th of October
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More information on travelling to Inner Mongolia :
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/searchResult?q=inner+mongolia&facet=origin%3Athorntree_thread
Where to find friends to go with you on an Epic Adventure : http://www.internchina.com/zh/contact/apply
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Hello everyone,
My name is Philippe Touzin and I am the Marketing and Graduate Recruitment Manager for InternChina. I am based in the city of Zhuhai and this is the second part to my blog on travelling to Big Sky Country: Inner Mongolia (China).
Part I: http://internchina.com/inner-mongolia-trip-30th-of-september-to-the-6th-of-october-part-i/
Gallery of the Inner Mongolia Trip
2/10/2013-Hohhot, Inner Mongolia Province – Grass Plains
8:00am: Breakfast and then we went for a Hike in the grass plains, walked up some hills, saw some Lama Buddhism stone prayer “temples” and flags , herd of horses, sheep and endless plains- we took some photo shoots and then went back to our farm for lunch. The afternoon was Mongolian Bow and Arrow training/shooting session, followed by horse riding.
The horse riding was not part of the tour, and cost 150.-rmb per hour, so we went out for 3hours and rode around with our guides. We all came back feeling like Mongolian Men with sore asses, and the best part was when John Pitts fell of his horse- I didn’t get to see the fall, but Max’s description and the thought of it got us all laughing for about 2hours! (John Pitts: Product design/production manager for a design and manufacturing firm that supplies the top MNE’s in the world with highest quality electronic goods/ accessories)
We had a rest and then dinner again (stew of potatoes, mutton, mutton ribs,…) which was cooked by the wife of the farmer- followed by copious amounts of Horse milk alcohol (sour horse milk + extra baijiu!) and beer, and more card games in the yurt.
Baijiu: Chinese alcohol, usualy over 60%!
On our way back from the farm to our yurt, I met the Grandfather/owner (Mongolian name: Nasan Oqir- 70 years old ) of the lands who invited me for some beers together. He was very cool and explained that his father had built this house and his livestock consisted of:
-300 sheep
-60 horses- which he herds riding his motorbike from sunrise to sunset, every day.
-30 chicken
-2 dogs
-1 cat
-2 rabbits
-and 2500 sqkm of land!!
He wakes up every day before sunrise, rides his motorbike to the neighboring farm (15km) where his best friend lives,… drink some horse milk alcohol together, have breakfast and then gets to work- He offered me a job working for him and honestly it was very tempting!!!
Dulung came to save me before he took out more Baijiu and I returned with him (quite drunk already) to keep partying with my friends. At some point in the night-when we finished all our alcohol, we went out in the plains with all our blankets (temperature: 10 degree Celsius) and lay down to star gaze- Amazing!!
Dulung was quite drunk and passed out, so we ended up having to carry him back to the Yurt, by creating a human King Chair which ended in a few falls and lots of giggles.
3/10/2013-Hohhot, Inner Mongolia Province – Grass Plains
9:00am: breakfast (we had the same staple Mongolian food every morning- Rice with mutton soup + warm horse milk- and some sort of bread)
Spending the morning going for some more walks and then thanking and saying goodbye to the family for having hosted us. When we had first arrived we brought with us a bottle of Famous Old Grouse whiskey, as it is customary to bring a gift when staying with the family- and this was a good present apparently 🙂
Our car had changed for the last leg of the journey to a normal car, which was fine but meant we were 4 big boys at the back-OUCH- we departed and of we were! But 1hour later we were stopped by the police…they were not too amused to see 4 people sitting at the back and after we talked with the officers, giving our foreign charm, they agreed to take Dulung to the next village so he could catch a bus and no other problems. The police also decided it was a good time to have a photography session with us- so quite alot of posing and Victory signs later we were off again!! But we forgot to take pics with them also! 🙁
We had some emotional goodbye’s with Dulung, our guide. He is our age and our time together was more 5 buddies travelling, laughing and getting drunk together- we still keep in contact using our weixin, and have invited to stay with us in Zhuhai where we would guide him to the local Island!! (next blog? :D)
Weixin / WeChat: is a Chinese app (similar to whatsapp) which everyone uses here in China. You should download it if you’re coming to China!
We arrived in Hohhot at 8pm, tired and exhausted, no showers for 5 days, bodies filled with sands everywhere, un-kept beards and full of amazing adventure memories. Inner Mongolia/become mongolian men/adventure time= Success!
We checked in to the same hotel : Wanli Hotel and had the longest showers in the world. On our way to the rooms we found the room service lady/ her trolley and raided it for extra shampoo and shower gels as we were super dirty! :p
We had a early dinner and then me and Joe went back to the room to sleep-NACKERED-…John and Max went to a bar called: Seattle Bar- Do Not Go there– they had 3 drinks and don’t remember coming home- we are pretty sure their drinks got spiked with drugs as we are all heavy drinkers.
4/10/2013-Hohhot, Inner Mongolia Province – Grass Plains
10am wake-up. John had a lie-in but Joe, Max and myself went walking from our hotel to the Great Mosque of Hohhot (where john met up with us). Hohhot was on the old Silk Road and there is a big cultural mix, including a thriving Muslim community. The walk was long but got a good feeling of the city- not much going on- but the Mosque was beautiful and the surrounding area very interesting with street markets and pet markets: they had all kinds of animals and MASSIVE snakes.
Had some good lunch= Big grilled Naan breads with lamb bbq, followed by going to visit Lama Buddhism temples, pagoda’s, old street market and yes…we got more fireworks for our last night in Hohhot!!! The guys were super nice, we were the first foreigners to have gone in their shop so they gave us all the fireworks for free!! We proposed to take pictures so they could print it out and use it as advertisement!
Last Dinner and night life
For our last dinner we had a Meat Fest-6kg of meat between 4 guys- 1 huge lamb leg and a full rack of ribs- It was the BEST Lamb meat we had ever had and we washed it all down with local beer- we ended up having some locals join our able, one of them being the 2nd best Inner Mongolian champion wrestler and a bunch of girls of one who nearly vomited on Max. :p
After this we headed to a Mongolian bar which had live music and local Mongolians drinking- it was fun and good until- the Mongolians got too drunk, one got angry wiped out a mini sword and smacked one of them hard on the head (with the scabbard still on thankfully), then he ran out , came back and slashed another guy on the arm with the scabbard off and then ran out again, this time chased by other guys carrying, not chairs, but tables—it was shocking but slightly comedic at the same time. I then approached then with Joe and offered to give first aid as IC employees in all offices are first aid trained. They both needed stitches but they’ll be ok.
After that we finished our drinks and decided to go clubbing, found a “Box Club” which, I swear, smelled like horses! Club are the same everywhere else in the world and we ended up drinking / making mates with another Mongolian and coming home at 4am.
5/10/2013-Hohhot, Inner Mongolia Province – back to GuangZhou
12:00 get up and check out. We had been eating Mongolian food all week and were hungover so we went to McDonald’s to set ourselves right. We then kept going with some more tourism by going to tourist shops and buying some small gifts (combs, bracelets,…) for our friends and family back home!
3:00pm return to Guangzhou Airport. On arrival in Guangzhou you can easily take a express bus to the Center of Zhuhai, Gongbei station (last stop). For more info please contact: info@internchina.com
I hope to go back and go into real Mongolia (the country), although the travel and experiences we had felt very authentic and Mongolian. I highly recommend learning some Chinese and speaking some basic Chinese as this way you get to skip all the mass tour groups and discover the Real Inner Mongolia (or chat with Andal guesthouse 🙂 )
Thank you for reading, and please do not hesitate to stop by Zhuhai InternChina office for some tea and stories.
USTRAAAYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!
(cheeerrs)
Philippe
More information on travelling to Inner Mongolia :
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/searchResult?q=inner+mongolia&facet=origin%3Athorntree_thread
Where to find friends to go with you on an Epic Adventure : http://www.internchina.com/zh/contact/apply
Calling All UK Students – GenerationUK Programme
We’re delighted to be working with the British Council China as part of the Generation UK campaign.
The initiative aims to encourage and support more young people from the UK to gain international experience in China. The Generation UK campaign will provide funding for our 2 month placements in the sectors we have available – see www.internchina.com/programmes/internships. Funding is available to UK citizens (British passport holders, including Irish passport holders for Northern Irish domiciled) enrolled at a UK university or a recent graduate from a UK university at the time of application. The British Council aims for over 15,000 UK students to participate in a study abroad placement by 2016, so there’s never been a better time to apply!
Here at InternChina, we have placed in excess of 1000 students in China over the past seven years with companies in industries from IT to Education and Finance to Photography. Because of our new UK office in Manchester, we’ve built strong links with all the surrounding universities, as well as those further afield.
Former Intern and MMU Student Joseph Fry left this comment after being placed in China through us – “it would have taken three years to accumulate the professional experience in the UK which I was able to accrue within 3 months in China”.
www.youtube.com/embed/e2MTSHnctW0
The British Council’s ‘Generation UK’ initiative indicates how highly valued work experience in China is, and the wide-spread enthusiasm behind the scheme means more UK residents can take advantage of the internships we offer. To discover if you’re eligible, head to www.internchina.com/generationuk for full T&C’s and the application process.
For more information you can either email our team at: info@internchina.com or call our Manchester office on +44 (0)161 8188823.
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