Robert Hart, Assistant News Editor
Cordelia Ambrose, St. Lucian graduate student at East China Normal University (ECNU) in Shanghai, China, discusses her experiences studying in China with a delegation of Caribbean journalists last week. Behind Cordelia are colleague students at the university who took time out to chat with the journalists. - CONTRIBUTED
CORDELIA AMBROSE, a 30-year-old St. Lucian graduate student in the People's Republic of China, says she wants to see more West Indians take advantage of the opportunities they may not now realise are available in that booming economy.
Cordelia surprised a delegation of Caribbean journalists who visited China over the past two weeks when she greeted them on their visit to the East China Normal University (ECNU) in Shanghai.
TEACHER TRAINING COLLEGE
Cordelia, an Educational Science graduate student at the ECNU, which is a teacher training college, is one of only two Caribbean students at the university. The other student is from Guyana.
"China is growing rapidly, so we as Caribbean people should get our slice of the cake," Cordelia said when asked if she thought there was any benefit to West Indians traveling to the Asian nation.
The signs of such growth were blatantly obvious with the endless stream of cranes and massive structures lining the skylines for all to see in both Shanghai and Beijing, China's capital.
At the ECNU there are 24 international students carrying out doctoral studies, 44 doing their masters and 136 undergraduates.
LANGUAGE DIFFICULTY
But Cordelia admitted that the language still presented a difficulty for her even after completing her second semester of studies in the education field, which she believes will allow her to provide new ideas for education when she returns to the Caribbean.
She said, however, that her six-year-old son was getting very good at the Mandarin language of the Chinese.
YOUNG SCHOLAR
"I think in two years time he will be my teacher in reading and writing," she laughed.
ECNU already has a website teaching the Chinese language free of cost on the Internet. There are also over 10,000 students enrolled in distance education programmes at the university.
ECNU currently boasts over 13,000 undergraduate students and more than 4,500 seeking Masters degrees.
As a public school, studies at ECNU cost approximately 5,000rmb (J$42,000) per year.
Private school studies in China cost about twice that amount.
