Univ postgraduate Cate Laporte-Oshiro (2013, Contemporary Chinese Studies) will be travelling in China from 23 August to 6 September, thanks to support from the David and Lois Sykes Scholarship. She has set up a travel blog for her trip.

Cate has just finished her MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies at Univ, and will be continuing on to a DPhil in International Relations in October.

In her first post, Cate describes her trip: “I will be in Sichuan Province from August 24 to 30 and then Guilin Province until September 6. In Sichuan, I will be meeting up with fellow Oxonian and classmate from my MSc, the lovely Rachel, who has been working in the city of Chengdu. Chengdu, where I’ll be based for the next week, is a huge economic center in Western China, important in communication, transportation, electronics, finance, agriculture, industry… Thus, this next week will be a good opportunity to keep expanding my understanding of China’s economic development. Equally important, Sichuan Province is home to my favourite kind of Chinese cuisine – very spicy stuff – as well as some great panda reserves, beautiful mountains, and historical and cultural sites.

“Next, I’ll be headed to Guangxi Province, which is much more rural, with an agricultural-based economy. Despite rapid urbanization, agriculture remains an important part of both the Chinese economy (and the international economy!) and the lives of the some 300 million Chinese farm workers. Rural and urban economies and policies have always had interesting interconnections, and it’ll be interesting to see more of the rural side. And beautiful of course! Rivers, karst landscapes, and rice terraces will be involved…”

Find out more about the range of travel grants and scholarships available to assist Univ students on our Travel Grants page or read further travel reports.

Published: 24 August 2014

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