Six months of Industrial Attachment in Zhuhai Sanyi Battery Co Ltd in the Canton province of China has no doubt given us a golden opportunity to experience life, gain exposure to Chinese culture, understand the lifestyle and many more little details that we will not be able to pick up while going sightseeing in China.

The ferry from Hong Kong to Zhuhai took about 75 minutes. We were all indulging in our own thoughts throughout  the whole journey. The fact that we had to live in a foreign country without knowing much about it made us feel both anxious and insecure. however, after six months’ living in China, we feel that our initial fears were unnecessary. The locals were warm, friendly, helpful and polite despite our poor command of Mandarin.

Our training programmes were more design and maintenance based. Some of the jobs which we undertook included design of machineries and electrical wiring diagrams, trial testing of new machines, maintenance of electronics equipment and even doing some translation work. Apart from all these basic training we got to learn about battery manufacturing process too. We now understand the various technologies behind a battery cell and this is certainly an eye-opening experience. On the whole, the training provided was quite interesting.
 

With our colleagues from the Engineering Department

We had a five-day week. Hence, during the weekends, the three of us would go sightseeing. Guess what, at the end of the attachment, we realised that we had actually been to a lot of places like the city of Guangzhou where the population is very dense, Shenzhen which is comparable to Singapore, Zhongshan which is the birth place of Dr Sun Yat-Sen, the Chaozhou where the inventor of Chaozhou fishball mee came from and Guilin which is famous for its beautiful mountains and rivers. In fact, the scenery in Lijiang is indeed very breathtaking. We also visited Beijing, the capital of China, enjoying places like Gu-gong, Tiananmen, Yihe Yuan, the Great Wall, etc. Apart from travelling in China, we went to Macau which is just a 15 minutes’ walk over from Zhuhai, and on the way back to Singapore, we visited Hong Kong to witness the return of Hong Kong to China, a big event in the history of mankind! Oh yes, not to forget another historical event which we experienced in China, that is, the passing away of the late leader of China, Deng Xiaoping.

On the whole, being on an overseas attachment has given each of us the opportunity to acquire invaluable work experience. Having to be independent both in and out of the work place definitely boosted our confidence level to meet all the future challenges in life. Interaction with the Chinese definitely changed our view of the Chinese as being a closed community. To sum it all, we felt we had made the right decision. The three of us agreed that this is the best chapter of our life thus far. We certainly encourage the next batch of students to take up the challenges of an overseas IA. We would like to take this opportunity to thank OPA for making all the arrangments and its help in our project and subject registration.
 

Farewell party in our hostel. Notice that the table is actually our bed

If you are thinking of going to China, here are some Do’s and Don’ts which we would like to share with you:

Do:

1. Keep a lookout for your belongings and passports.
2. Take an English-Chinese dictionary. It’s best if you can take two, one for general terms and the other for technical terms.
3. Take a box of Panadol and some commonly-used medication like Vicks, Tiger-balm, etc if you are a frequent user of these.

Don’t

1. Discuss the issue of IA allowance.
2. Give the Chinese any commitment that you can help them apply for a visa to visit or work in Singapore. This is beyond our ability as IA student.
3. Scold using vulgar languages.