Having been very impressed by the enthusiasm of the representatives of the HKAUW whom I met at the GWI conference in Cape Town I was determined to take up the offer of joining them for their 60th anniversary celebrations, and the prospect of a post-celebration visit to Guangxi Province added to the attraction.

This was my first visit to both Hong Kong and mainland China, so I could write at great length about all the vivid impressions, some expected, others not: the famous sky-line of Hong Kong, familiar from TV; the spectacular scenery of the Lijiang river, also familiar from pictures, but far exceeding in real life any reproduction; wonderful Chinese food; sitting at a café in Yangshuo, drinking excellent if very expensive coffee, watching what looked like a Deliveroo courier deliver a McDonald’s to the shop opposite; the view from my hotel window of the rush hour in Nanning, consisting largely it seemed of electric scooters. Above all, I could write about the great warmth, friendship and laughter shared with a wonderful group of women both in Hong Kong and in Guangxi.

However, we are university women and I spent all of my working life in academic libraries, so I would like to make a few remarks about my impressions of the universities with which we came into contact. Having worked for over thirty years in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, home to great collections of Chinese material, I knew from conversations with my colleagues working on these collections that the university scene in China had changed enormously in recent decades. It was wonderful, therefore, to be able to go and see a bit of it for myself.

It is worth noting that Hong Kong has four universities in the top 50 of the QS World University Rankings (more, incidentally, than the whole of the EU, excluding the UK). I was not aware of the extent of interchange and cross—fertilisation between universities in Hong Kong and mainland China. From conversations with academics in Hong Kong and during our visit to the Guangxi University of Foreign Languages I gained an impression of an outward-looking dynamism that is paying dividends. We were told that all children in China are now learning English from the age of six, and that Chinese students, in order to gain entrance to university, have to pass exams in Chinese, English and maths. It was clear from the students that we met at the GUFL that Chinese parents are very aware of the aforementioned university rankings, in that they want their children to study in the US or the UK. As Julia Woo pointed out, this may lead to a rather limited view of the rest of the world, and they should perhaps be encouraged to study in a wider range of countries.

Having revealed my university library background, I was somewhat embarrassed to be given a short personal tour of their library by our hosts at GUFL. We had already been told that the Chinese government sets a standard by which universities must have twenty books per student; my inquiries revealed that these are conventional printed books, and the government is not yet persuaded to abandon them for e-books. In the library it was clear that many students shared this view, as a lot of books and periodicals were in use or waiting to be re-shelved. I spoke to the deputy librarian who told me that all students in China have access to, if I remember rightly, a million and a half e-books, and he also showed me the library catalogue, which as we might expect is available via an app.

Throughout our visits both to Hong Kong and to Giangxi, we were very privileged to gain insights into the life of those places that are not available to the tourist, for which I am very grateful to our hosts, especially Julia and Bella. They accomplished very well the mission described on the website of the Chinese University of Hong Kong: “to combine tradition with modernity, and to bring together China and the West.” I hope that we may be able to help with this aim, within GWI, and look forward to further opportunities to do so.

Susan Miles

British Federation of University Women