It was 10th of May 1998. We arrived at Hong Qiao airport of Shanghai. There to welcome us was the male teacher of Soo Chow University Foreign Affairs Department, Mr Huang Xing, and the disorderly situation of the airport, plus the heavily polluted air of Shanghai. An hour and a half’s drive in an air-conditioned coach along the Huning Expressway, however, brought us to the paradise on Earth, Suzhou.

Suzhou, a name that evokes 2,500 years of cultural spirit, left a long lasting memory in each and everyone of us. The clean streets of the city, where cars and bicycles have their way, the small lanes lined with small white houses without toilets, the canals that weaved their ways quietly through the old city, little shops that dotted the lanes selling warm buns and all sorts of pork and poultry meats, and not forgetting the large shopping arcades of Shilu street and the giant factories in Suzhou industrial park and New District. All this and much more never fail to fascinate us Singaporeans, residents of an island city, too preoccupied with business and finance.

Despite all the beauty of Suzhou, staying there for nearly two months certainly was not like living in heaven. There was initially some minor conflicts with the Suzhou University teachers over the matter of attending lectures organised by them. Then there was the dissatisfaction for some over the type of working experience provided by the attached companies. Also, there was the difficult experience of travelling in some tourist attraction, where all sorts of people would start to bug you for better offer of transports and programs. Living and working in Suzhou was certainly not easy, but at the same time it was pretty exciting.

The working experience in Suzhou certainly varied according to the company we were attached to. Some of us were assigned to multi-national corporations such as Phillips and Siemens, while others were in Singaporean firms such as Jurong Consultation, and local companies such as Commercial Bank of China, China's Life Insurance and XuCheng Hotel. Jurong Consultation was especially warm, planning the attachment program from the first day to the last. The students who work there were very grateful for the experience as well as the warm treatment. Siemens provided heavy loads of work, which became heavier when Chinese was used in nearly all of it. Students who were attached to Siemens, no doubt, saw their mother tongue improve tremendously. Some of us had the chance to go out to the streets to meet the Chinese, be it marketing the hotel or doing market surveys. Those were certainly valuable experiences as we were able to see how the Chinese did their business.

Most of us developed very good relationships with our supervisor. The Suzhou people, we all must admit, are very warm and friendly. On the day of graduation (organised by Soo Chow University), some of us actually shed tears while talking about the bond we had developed with our supervisors through work and open interactions. Some of the supervisors too had a hard time holding back their tears. It was certainly a very fruitful professional attachment for all of us. Today, we carry with us the name of Soo Chow University Alumni. They certainly treat us like one big family.

The overseas Professional Attachment in Suzhou was certainly not just about working. The Chinese has a saying: “Reading ten thousand books is inferior to travelling ten thousand miles.” Suzhou was a good base for travelling. China, the Divine Land, was no longer documentaries on TV, neither was it the excited tones of relatives and friends who had been there. We had actually touched the stones of HuangShan and felt the coldness of clouds passing us. We had seen the vastness of Taihu, the exquisite work of furniture carving and garden building in Suzhou. Some of us even had the chance of sitting in the vast pasture of Mongolia, waiting for the sun to go down. Such experience and learning can never be gained by staying at home and reading about them in our comfortable rooms.

Two months of Professional Attachment and travelling had ended. We were very glad when we arrived back in Singapore. But we knew, deep inside us, our relationship with the Divine Land had only just started. We will be back.