David and Lois Sykes Scholarship Travel Diary – Jacob Christianson (2020, Chemistry)

When I was a child, my parents would host Chinese schoolchildren in our home for their week in Manchester as part of a trip to experience British culture and learn English. My experiences with these children, being similar ages to me, was fascinating; they were from a land roughly 5000 miles away yet we shared interests such as video games and playing basketball in our local parks. To contextualise my experiences with these children, I borrowed Edgar Snow’s 1937 Red Star Over China in my first year at Univ. This was the first report of the Chinese Red Army, then a guerrilla force, published in the Western world. Snow travelled with the Red Army, interviewing senior members (including Mao Zedong) and staying with villagers. I was intrigued by the stories of heroism in fighting and travelling, as retold by Red Army officials, and wanted to understand how the socialist principles of the early Chinese Communist Party (CCP) translated into the globalised, seemingly capitalist nation that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has become. I was able to experience China thanks to the generosity of David and Lois Sykes.

My month-long trip took place in two parts. The first was a journey by train from Beijing to Xi’an, stopping at Datong, Pingyao, Luoyang and the final Maoist commune Nanjiecun. The second half consisted of a 357km cycle across rural Shaanxi Province from Xi’an, the eastern terminus of the Silk Road, to Yan’An, the centre of the Chinese Communist Revolution from 1935 to 1947. Travelling solo and venturing off the beaten track meant I could connect with local people in an attempt to compassionately assess thoughts about the CCP and China today. Google Translate was invaluable when trying to cross the language barrier; assume conversations were conducted using software unless otherwise stated in this diary. I sometimes use the English names that Chinese people gave when introducing themselves.

Read the full travel diary here.

Published: 14 November 2025

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