Testament to change

Photo provided to China Daily

"It was a bit disappointing as it is a small city that we'd seldom heard about," he says. "We were even a bit reluctant to go in the very beginning."

It was the campus as well as the students that cheered them up on their arrival in the city in August 2009. The costal city is three times as large as Canberra. The campus, holding about 26,000 students and staff, seemed like "a city within a city" to them.

"The kids looked very similar to Western kids, wearing T-shirts and jeans, and they cycled to class," Olah says, recalling his first impressions.

"They've been very nice to us from the very beginning."

It was through later and longer interactions in class that he gradually noticed cultural differences, some he even described as a "culture shock".

"There was a class discussion after the National Holiday of 2009 where I shared my travel experience in Yantai," Olah recalls. "Students were keen about my travel story, and I was surprised to learn that only one of them went traveling during the holiday. Most chose to go home."

Another surprising finding, during a class about China's automobile industry, was that none of the 31 students majoring in International Business and Trade in that class had a driver's license.

"In Australia or America, almost 100 percent of a sophomore class would have their driver's license. Actually many of them would have their own car or motorcycle," he wrote in his diary later that day.