David and Lois Sykes Scholarship Travel Diary – Asha McGrogan, (2021, English Language and Literature)

Thank you to David and Lois Sykes for the wonderful opportunity to travel around mainland China in the summer of 2024! I decided to stay for 34 days in 7 different cities, to make the most out of the long-haul flights. I was also able to reunite with my friend Ana, whom I had previously met in Oxford in 2022 whilst she was a visiting student. With Ana I travelled the route Beijing > Xian > Chengdu > Chongqing > Guilin > Shenzhen > Shanghai, with Xian, Chongqing and Guilin being my favourite cities. As a result, I got to spend a lot of my time on the public transport system, which, unexpectedly, became one of my favourite activities in China. As each city we visited, bar Guilin, had a metro, it made transport around the cities incredibly efficient. Highlights of the metro / train system include travelling for two hours on the metro in order to get from the sea to our hotel in Shenzhen, and getting my aerosol deodorant confiscated at the Badaling train station, at one of the sections of the Great Wall of China, and then having to go deodorant-less for 3 days because deodorant was very hard to find.

Part of the reason I wanted to travel to China in the first place was because I wanted to learn first-hand about the folk traditions and folklore of different regions in China. I specifically wanted to go to China in September because it falls over the Mid-Autumn festival this year: originally an agricultural festival (more prevalent in the South) but now celebrated everywhere. I got to learn about and experience some traditions of the Mid-Autumn festival while we were in Chongqing. As well as the Mid-Autumn festival, I got to learn about folk customs of what China refers to as its ‘folk’ ethnicities, such as Hakka roundhouses and the attire of women of the ‘Dong’, or Kam minority.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed my trip to China, and I am very grateful to David and Lois Sykes and University College for providing funding to make this trip possible.

Read full travel diary here.

Published: 28 February 2025

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