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Every year, large numbers of students travel from China to Britain. Far fewer British students make the journey in the other direction. That is a loss, because few countries will matter more to their working lives, and few are so different from what they imagine. What surprises them Scale comes first. Shanghai alone has more people than many European countries. High-speed trains link cities hundreds of miles apart in a few hours. Payment, transport and daily errands run throu

Shanghai is China's largest city and one of its most outward-looking. A stay with a family there gives a British student what no tour can: ordinary life in a city of some twenty-five million people. Home life Most families live in apartment blocks, often in gated compounds with gardens and a guard at the entrance. Three generations are commonly involved in a child's life, and grandparents may live with the family or visit daily. Shoes come off at the door and slippers are pro

Visitors often use 'the City' and 'London' as if they meant the same place. They do not. The City of London is a single square mile on the north bank of the Thames, with its own Lord Mayor, its own police force and a history that begins with the Romans. What to see St Paul's Cathedral, Sir Christopher Wren's masterpiece, was rebuilt after the Great Fire of 1666 and is the natural place to start. The climb to the dome rewards anyone with the energy for it. Nearby, the Monument

Britain is a small country with a great deal of open land. Within a few hours of London, a student can be on a ridge in the Peak District, beside a lake in Cumbria or on a chalk path above the English Channel. For visitors who know the UK only through its cities, a day on foot can be the most memorable part of the visit. Where to walk The Lake District is the classic choice: steep fells, clear water and villages built of slate. The Peak District is gentler and closer to the l

Shanghai is the easiest introduction to modern China: well organised, simple to move around and full of contrast. Four days allow a student to see the city without hurry. Day one: the Bund and Pudong Start on the Bund, the riverside sweep of banks and trading houses built in the early twentieth century. Across the Huangpu River stands Pudong, which was largely farmland and warehouses until the 1990s. Go up the Shanghai Tower, the tallest building in China, for the view, and r

A week in another country does not transform a young person's life. That claim appears in a great many brochures, and parents are right to be sceptical of it. What a well-planned stay abroad can do is smaller and more useful. It gives a student direct evidence that the world is larger than home, and that they can cope in it. What students gain The first gain is confidence of a practical kind. To order a meal in a second language, to find the right platform, to ask a stranger

A hotel shows a visitor the city. A host family shows how the city lives. For a British student, a homestay in Hong Kong is one of the most direct ways to understand a place that is both Chinese and international. Home life Hong Kong homes are small by British standards. A family of four may live comfortably in a flat that a British visitor would think suited to two. Space is used with care, shoes come off at the door, and a guest quickly learns to be tidy. Many families spea

For many families in Hong Kong and mainland China, the British boarding school is known mainly from films and prospectuses. A short stay, or a well-arranged visit, shows the real thing: a place that is busier, warmer and more structured than most visitors expect. The house Pupils belong to a house, a community of a few dozen boys or girls of different ages, led by a housemaster or housemistress who lives on site. The house is where pupils sleep, study in the evening and spend

A first visit to Britain invites a familiar mistake: too many places in too few days. A student who spends the week on a coach remembers the coach. A better plan chooses fewer places and gives each one time. London Allow at least three days. The Tower of London, Westminster and the British Museum cover many centuries of history between them. Add one thing chosen for the student and not for the guidebook: a West End play, a football match, a gallery or a market. Oxford and Cam

Every student knows what the Great Wall looks like. Few are prepared for how steep it is, how far it runs across the hills, or how it feels to stand on it. It is one of the rare famous places that is better than its photographs. Which section to choose The Wall is not one structure but many, built and rebuilt over some two thousand years. Most of what visitors see near Beijing dates from the Ming dynasty. Badaling is the closest section to the city and the busiest. Mutianyu,