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Sojourn at China

By: Shahjahan Shabbir Ahmed Rana

On a bright and sheen morning an air craft from Islamabad kisses the fragrant land of Beijing on 5th of September, 2008.  Heart was beating with uncomfortable speed and hands were fumbling over the luggage placed in the compartments and mind was working at an enormous speed to cope up the matters expected to be faced onward. Who will pick up, what will happen, from where to get the cab, where to move, where to stay, how many stations yet to be explored, mind was filled with plenty of questions. But an innate pleasant power of confidence and determination was the asset to deal such jolted situation.

It happens to me a mini marathon as the passengers from all sorts of color and age were almost rushing through the giant lounge to fetch the luggage. Reluctantly, I joined them and luckily soon got the trolley for luggage to set in and wondering like a bird. A gentleman helped me the way out for posting the stamp for check in abroad. At first sight all the Chinese people were looking of same facial characteristics and it became very difficult to recognize them from each other (later this problem was solved after spending some time among them). A sigh of relief crosses the throat, when I had seen a sturdy man raised placard “SCI students” written over it was standing outside the iron bars of the people receiving for the passengers and the love ones.  A short while later not more than 30 students from Pakistan gathered with happy looking and satisfactory faces, although they were strangers for each other but started talking very frankly. China had impact on their moods and manners. I was also involved with few of them and really enjoying the initial moments of my first international flight. A group of vigilant and diligent looking police corps was patrolling across the main gate of airport; it was quite attractive seen for me as some pretty girls were the part of them.  A moment later we were gazing out through the windows of luxurious bus the skyscrapers and very neat roads of Beijing. The hoardings and signboards were sprinkling with strange looking Chinese characters and nothing could be understood by reading them. I was wondering how the Chinese people can read and write such complicated characters (soon I learned it was a piece of cake for them as they started learning Chinese since childhood for their first official and national language). An hour later we were stepping out a beautiful modern architecture place in the heart of Beijing for initial stay and necessary documentation of the SCI students, named as “Beijing Foreign languages and cultural University (BLCU)”.

On the eve of 8th of September I left for Yangling by train. The train station of Beijing was huge and heavily crowded. There were innumerable heads of human beings spread everywhere. Train engines were honking and coaches were jolted heavily by pulling the suction hydraulic breaks producing idiosyncratic sounds. I still remember the name of that train was T-54 though I had the sleeping birth but sleep did not come over me. It was tense and joyful journey from Beijing to Yangling. In the beginning I had no idea that it will take how many hours to reach Yangling, a person spoke in English to solved the issue and eventually it took 13 hours to reach the destination where a couple of good looking officials namely “Wang Ke” and “Tiger” were standing having placards in hands to warmly welcomed me.  We slipped in taxi and after a brief drive stepped out in front of International student’s dormitory. At first sight the beautifully erected campus buildings of Northwest A & F University won my heart and soon realized I will fall in love with her. After handing over the admission letter to one of the officials I got the keys of my dear room 207.

At time I took a sigh of relief and fall over my sleeping bed for a nap soon it was over and hunger got in way.  Later it was revealed there was a canteen for Muslim students not less than a great blessing of God.  My taste for Chinese food was yet to be developed and it took a couple of weeks to shape in. Later I started eating fried noodles, fried rice with eggs, dumplings stuffed with mutton or beef, etc. I developed my taste and started trying my hands on many other food items prepared around the hotels of Yangling as well.

Cultural exchange between Pakistan and China scholarship program was awarded to me and one of the terms carry the condition to learnt Chinese language well over a year. Our Chinese language classes were started just after my arrival at Yangling and those were in tandem from 8 A.M to 5 P.M with 2 hours lunch break at 11 A.M. The classes of Chinese language were divided into 4 groups i.e. listening, reading, writing and speaking. I enjoyed my early ventures of Chinese language and found very interesting on the other hand was very difficult, too. Especially reading and writing the Chinese characters were cumbersome job. Many pictographic characters were interesting to write but most of them were difficult to drag on the piece of paper. I found spoken part of learning Chinese language was rather easy to handle but all other sections were hot to handle. I was class monitor of my section and got the responsibility to open the door early at morning about 7:50 A.M before the commencement of the classes. During class performance I often got appreciation and encouragements from my Chinese language teachers, truly all of them were very nice, kind and professional. I must mention respectable Miss Ying and Miss Su were tremendous among the lot. Both of them were agile and very diligently discharge her duties. I was really impressed by their teaching methods and approach. Learning Chinese language was entirely interesting and extraordinary experience for me. I consider myself fortunate enough to speak and understand a language of more than 1.4 Billion people of the world.

 Learning Chinese language last over 1 year and later I joined my major courses and started PhD research. My major studies were comprises over 3 years and I did some wonderful work over there.  I learnt many novel biotechnological techniques regarding plant gene transformation and published 2 impact factor SCI papers.

Of and on we were traveled many parts of Shaanxi province and seen places like Xian City, Terra-cotta warriors, Bronze museum Baoji, Xianyang City, etc. All were fantastic and worth mentioning preserved lots of my unforgettable memories.

Last but not least on the fresh morning of 15th May, 2012 I had successfully given my defense arguments of PhD dissertation and it been wonderful experience to mention. 

 
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