Fudan university (cultural exchange school)

Fudan ICES is a chinese language school for westerners with too much money to pay for an highly estimed education in one of south China's top university. For 10,000 kuai a semestre you get the priviledge of sticking very closely to the curriculum of textbooks, writing characters on blackboards and sitting 22 hours a week on back-pain wrenching chairs- which means you pay the same amount afterwards in physiotherapy (can't claim on their expensive, useless health insurance). On arrival you do the foreigners physical examination which wants a scan of your lungs in a truck lacking so much privacy that you practically expose yourself topless in front of your fellow students. Being in such a big school you would think you would at least make 1 chinese friend, not so. Unless you get lost and happen to ask the same person directions, or go up to some random person and scare them with your western directness (and face), the chances of you making friends are nil. When you eventually make one friend, they tend to be loyal. International students have two residences, but avoid the fudan halls at all costs unless you want to further break your back with their hard (wooden) mattresses.