Name: Mino Andriantsimahavandy
Country: Madagascar
Do you want to hear my love-story with China? Okay! I was 22 years-old when I got a letter from the Embassy of China in Antananarivo. Antananarivo is the capital city of Madagascar, the country where I was born and raised. A country that I’d never left, not even once. This is how the house where I used to live looks like. Too old and out of date, isn’t it?
I hastily opened the envelope and from the very first line of the letter, I understood. My dream finally came true with this simple mail. It said: “Congratulations, Miss Andriantsimahavandy Mino. The Chinese Council Scholarship awarded you with a full scholarship…”. My heartbeats went faster, my hands shook. I was accepted by Fudan University to do a Master in Chinese linguistics and applied linguistics. China? What country is that like? To be frank, I had no idea. I didn’t know anything about China, except only a little about their culture. But for a moment, I’ve longed to leave Antananarivo. I’ve longed to live on my own. I wanted to be free. And here is the beginning of my journey to China.
Before enrolling to Fudan, I had to follow a one-year program of Mandarin in Nanjing Normal University. My classmates were all foreigners while the teachers were all Chinese. We made a very prompt progress in our language mastery. And I was glad to be the best student in my class. But we had very few contacts with Chinese people around our ages. So, life went on and finally I had to move to Shanghai.
It had nothing to do with Nanjing. Okay, Nanjing was fine. But look at this city!
I felt so small and from the very first day I reached Shanghai, I totally fell in love. It was beautiful. Nothing to do with the first picture I showed you. No! Don’t blame me for lacking patriotism please! Who doesn’t like modernity? Who doesn’t like convenience, cleanness, freedom and a life full of joy? Shanghai meant all these things to me. And I was amazed to spend 4 years of my young existence there. I had classes with a majority of Chinese students. We made friends and I was immersed in Shanghainese way of life. We hung out every weekend. Sometimes we took the bus from our dormitory directly to the Bund. Some other times, we changed subway lines a million times before arriving to the zoo… Every time I got out of my dorm, it seemed to me Shanghai was different every day. There was a lot there to explore and to discover. But more unexpectedly, the night-time was totally different.
But life got harder and harder. Even if I had the best grades in Nanjing it was very, very difficult to follow the classes in Fudan. Not only was I still not good enough in Chinese to understand perfectly the teachers, but also, my major appeared to be the most complex one. I heard that linguistics was “the math of Human arts” and Chinese applied linguistics was just not a piece of cake!
Nevertheless, the department appointed me a personal tutor. With him, I worked every evening after canteen rush around 5:30 p.m. He made me buy and read Chinese newspapers out loud every time we met. He explained me the new characters, I took notes and this way, at the end of the second semester I was ready to participate more in class.
By saving on my monthly stipend, I could spend the next winter holidays in France.
In Paris, I could sense romanticism at every place. It was also very attractive. One day, I took the subway to go to my sister’s house at the periphery of Paris. The subway stopped, and I wanted to exit. But the door didn’t open! The French woman next to me laughed and pressed at a button to open the door! What? In Shanghai every subway door automatically opens? Paris, how could you be so obsolete?
And then, I missed my Shanghai. As it happened, for me Madagascar meant the past, France the present, and China the future.
At the moment, I’m unfortunately not in China due to the ongoing pandemic situation. But I know China is my “jia wai zhi jia” and I’m confident I will go back there pretty soon.
Read all the unique stories by expats in China here.
To have your China story featured, click here.
Stories will be shared in English on our LinkedIn page, Instagram and Facebook page. Bilingual stories will be shared on our WeChat account mts_cn. Remember to like and share your favourite one!