My China Experience – Capital University of Economics and Business (CUEB)

Yuan O’Neill is an alumna of our BA in International Business and she graduated in 2020. Yuan specialised in Economics and Chinese. She is now working in PWC as an assurance associate. We met up with Yuan to ask her about her Erasmus experience in China, here is what she had to say…..

Tell us about the university in China?
While in China I studied at the Capital University of Economics and Business (CUEB) in Beijing, China. Our class timetable consisted of 8:30-12:30 in the morning classes. We usually had 2 different Chinese modules each day. The modules we studied were, Chinese Grammar, Chinese Aural, Chinese Oral, and Chinese Comprehension. We studied 2 business modules each semester. These were taught through English. We usually had this class once a week in the afternoon. The 2 modules we studied that year were based on Chinese business law and the Chinese Business environment. Our accommodation was on campus, and I shared a room with another DCU student.

How did you find settling into life in China?
Moving to China was a big cultural shock. Settling into Beijing at first was quite hard. It was a very busy city. We found it hard at first to get to know people. We decided to join the Beijing GAA team and a Beijing Rugby team. This helped us meet other students who were studying over in Beijing. These teams also allowed us to meet other Chinese natives. I was able to immerse myself with Chinese natives, who loved helping me with my Chinese, and they loved practicing their English with me. We also got to know many of the other students that were studying at CUEB with us. I would often meet up with them and we would work through and practice the topics we learned that week in class. I loved traveling on my weekends. We would go to different surrounding cities such as Tianjin or we would explore parts of Beijing that we hadn’t been to before. The subway system was so quick and easy to get around Beijing. On our longer holidays, we would visit cities such as Shanghai, Xiamen, Xi’an, Hangzhou, and Suzhou. I loved being immersed in Chinese culture and history. Seeing how each city differed from the others was amazing.

Tell us about your favorite module?
My favorite module was the Chinese oral class. The reason for this was because the book we studied our oral skills from was based on conversations between people. In class, we would break up into pairs and we would act out these scenarios with each other. We would often present in front of the class. We could make this quite funny at times so it was a fun way of practicing our aural and grammar skills too. My oral Chinese was one of my weaker areas before I went to China, but with the help of this module and also with the help of being in Beijing, it became one of my stronger areas by the time my year was up.

Tell us about your career to date?
Since graduating from the BA in Business International in DCU, I have been working in PwC Ireland in the assurance department. I started interviewing for jobs in my final year of my degree. A great bonus to my CV was having a year abroad in Beijing. Many of my interviewers were impressed that I spent a year in China studying. They loved the idea that I had Chinese as a language as many of the firms I was interviewing for were international with many offices across China. I was (and still am) very open to the idea of moving to China once I have completed my professional accountancy exams.