When asked what has impressed her most since joining the Class of 2026 this August at Duke Kunshan University (DKU), Qiushuang Qu didn’t hesitate.
“I didn’t expect college life to be so fast paced,” said Qu, who is no stranger to a hectic lifestyle.
Thanks to her one-year experience studying as an exchange student in the U.S. during high school, Qu is used to a learning environment taught in English. But the native of China still finds it challenging to navigate several courses that require a heavy dose of English reading materials.
Still, there was a touch of optimism in her voice, a quality common to first-year students as they adjust to the exciting and sometimes overwhelming freshman year at DKU. Among this year’s extraordinary group of new undergraduates, Qu stands out as a published author – she wrote a book about her one-year experience as an international exchange student at Highland Park Senior High School in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
To her delight, Qu finds DKU provides many of the features that she liked best at Highland Park, including a 24-hour gym, a wide variety of elective courses, a dormitory that allows for both personal space and easy connection with fellow students, and the opportunity to customize your experience to achieve academic and personal goals.
For Qu, life at DKU offers a fresh start with endless possibilities.
Living abroad alone as a teenager
Qu’s father was determined to send his daughter to study for a year in the U.S. as an international exchange student when she graduated from junior high school, but had difficulty finding a Chinese senior high school that would take her when she returned. Qu’s parents approached many schools and finally the headmaster of Yantan No. 2 Middle School agreed to admit her as a first-year student once she completed her exchange year in the U.S.
With this problem solved, Qu was now ready to study abroad, but the then 15-year-old had mixed feelings about the prospect of living alone for the first time. She remembers thinking, “Wow, I am now going to the U.S. to study for a whole year! But am I able to cope in a different country?”
Adjusting to life in a different country is not easy, especially with the added dimensions of adapting to cultural and language differences. Qu’s way of coping was to write down her activities, thoughts and feelings every day in a diary, which helped her reflect on her experience and embrace her new life with keen enthusiasm. It was also an effective way to share her life with parents and grandparents back home in China to let them know how she was doing. Her diary, titled My Experience as an Exchange Student in the U.S., was published in 2021. It is an accounting of her year alone as a teenager in the U.S.
In Minnesota, Qu’s host family was a couple and their young daughter. She was welcomed at the airport by the mom and daughter, and was glad to find they liked the gifts she brought from China. The daughter, whom Qu called sister, was a fan of Chinese tea. It turned out that a brother of the host family dad had married a Chinese woman and has two children. What a nice coincidence!
Growing up, Qu had taken piano and dance lessons, which gave her the confidence to play electric piano for her host family and to perform a traditional dance at the school’s arts festival. Performing in a beautiful ancient Chinese costume borrowed from the Chinese Society on campus, her dance was warmly received and fellow students told her they were surprised to find that Chinese students are not all nerds who care only about their studies.
Going through cultural adjustment
In the U.S., Qu experienced some cultural shocks. For example, her host family likes to invite friends to their house during weekends or holidays and Qu, in appreciation for her free lodging, offered to do household chores before and after these parties. Qu joked her efforts might not have been welcomed by the daughter, who does household chores to earn pocket money. Once, Qu washed loads of dishes after a big party, which was a lot of work even with the help of a dishwasher. Afterwards, the mom warmly thanked her and gave her a big hug. Qu was happily surprised, as members of her own family seldom openly express their emotions to each other with thanks and hugs.
At school, Qu found the students around her often had strong ideas of their own and were “much more mature than me.” In an Engineering Design course, the teacher encouraged students to make things on their own and come up with ideas to improve existing products. In her group work, Qu came up with five ideas to improve the design of coffee cups, and she was proud that three were included in their group presentation.
Mulling over Environmental Science major
Qu’s WeChat avatar is a young woman in the middle of a snow field with her skis next to her.
She developed a passion for physical exercise during her exchange year in the U.S., as students there typically spend a lot of time on sports. Now Qu enjoys tennis, football, ski and golf, among others. For Qu, one of the attractions of DKU is that it blends the Chinese and American college education, with a strong focus on physical exercise and sports. She has quickly become a frequent visitor to the well-equipped 24-hour gym on campus.
At DKU, Qu prefers to study in the library, which means she must log into the library’s booking system when it goes live at 6:30 a.m. to ensure landing one of the highly popular study rooms.
Because DKU uses English as a medium of instruction, many students sometimes struggle to keep up, including Qu. But she has become increasingly confident with her approach, which involves writing down unknown terminologies with their Chinese translation. She has now accumulated multiple pages of new words in her notebook and goes through the list from time to time to help memorize each of them.
At DKU, undergraduate students declare their majors in their second year, after exploring disciplines through coursework and talking with their academic advisors. Students are assigned an advisor based on their intended major choices reported in a questionnaire before the start of college.
Qu has not made up her mind about her future major. “I told my academic advisor I want to be an astronaut when she asked me what I see myself doing in 10 years,” said Qu with a big smile. “She just laughed.” But she is now getting closer to her answer. “I am mulling over Environmental Science. I have studied chemistry in high school, so I have some foundation, and I am interested in this field. There are still gaps between what we do in China and the international best practices in waste sorting and waste use, and I want to do something in this area.”
At the opening convocation, Qu was greatly inspired by remarks from Chancellor Feng Youmei, who told students that their ambitions and achievements would be closely tied to the fate and fortune of humankind in this century.
“May you live up to the times, be a thinker, a promoter and a practitioner in the harmonious development of the world, and make the world a better place,” Chancellor Feng said at the ceremony.
Qu aspires to become a global citizen with an international perspective, as DKU trains each student to be. She believes that environmental science addresses a very urgent global issue facing mankind: the extreme weather caused by climate change and the great damage it is causing worldwide.
As for other goals, Qu said, “I’ll continue to write my diary, maybe for four years nonstop and maybe in English this time.”
