Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
you first move to Beijing. Some families choose to live close to work and have the
kids commute to school on the school buses. Others find it easier to live close to the
school, which means that the kids will have the fun of living just a few doors down
from their schoolmates, and that extracurricular activities are easy for you to man-
age.
The executive principal of the British School of Beijing, Michael Embley, recom-
mends that families don't rush into signing a lease but first move into a serviced
apartment (available at almost all high-level housing compounds) until they get a feel
for what works best. You'll give yourself time to not only find a home that suits your
family's needs, but also to really understand what commute time is like in Beijing.
Currently, all of the world's top 10 universities—according to QS World University Rank-
ings—are from either the United States or the United Kingdom. The Chinese government,
however, is determined that China will soon join this elite group and has set itself on a fast-
track course to do so. What schools like Cambridge and Harvard did gradually over a cen-
tury or more, China wants to achieve within the space of a single generation. This means
it now spends billions of
yuán
every year on pushing two of its star universities toward a
golden slot in the global top 10, and both are in Beijing—Peking University and Tsinghua
University. Right now they're ranked at 44 and 48, respectively, on the QS scale. Accord-
ing to the 2012 China University Ranking by China University Application Center, the two
universities went neck and neck for the top spot, with Peking seizing the first prize with a
score of 98.1 out of 100 and Tsinghua with 97.6—the year before it was exactly the same
figures, but in reverse.
One of the six criteria that the QS system use to rank a university is the number of
international students that that university has, and China's universities are likely to score
more highly on this factor in the coming years. As part of the efforts to increase its uni-
versities' standings, the Chinese government is working on making them more attractive to
foreign students. There is an ever-expanding array of courses that you can do without so
much as a
n
ǐ
h
ǎ
o
(hello), and education comes packaged in everything from an intense two-
week course right through to a doctorate or associate's degree. Many international schools
also have satellite campuses in Beijing, such as Stanford University (at Peking University),
