This past summer, I used my Gateway funding to pay for my flight to Taiwan.
My course classmates and I had been awarded the Huayu scholarship – a programme that sends British students to study Mandarin at Taiwan’s various universities. I was lucky enough to spend my two months of classes at Shida University in the Taipei city centre. When not in lessons from Monday to Friday, I explored Taipei and the beautiful countryside that surrounds it, hiking, swimming and eating my way to understanding more about the local land and culture.
The trip was a fantastic opportunity for me – not just to improve my Chinese, but to meet a plethora of new people, try foods I’d never heard of, and experience life in a tiny country across the world.
Meike Leonard
History and Politics