Annie Yu had never thought she would have to shower with 100 classmates in a packed university bath house. She didn't imagine, either, that she'd be sharing a cramped dormitory room with three other classmates.
But those weren't even the biggest challenges she faced while attending Peking University. The worst, she says, were the classes in Maoism and Marxism. 'It was really a shock,' the 23-year-old Hongkonger said. 'We never studied so much about socialism and Mao Zedong's ideas in Hong Kong.'
She says it took her more than six months to adjust to campus life at Beida, as the university is nicknamed, after starting there in 2005.
She was one of only three graduates from St Mary's Canossian College to head to the mainland for university. Relatively few Hongkongers, only about 525 a year, attend mainland schools for undergraduate study. The mainland's elite institutions are trying to change that through stepped-up recruiting.
That will be a hard sell, says Dr Zou Chong-hua, division head of the Beijing-Hong Kong Academic Exchange Centre, a non-profit Hong Kong agency that helps mainland universities recruit Hong Kong students.
The level of teaching at Hong Kong universities is high, Zou noted. Besides, Hong Kong students get little exposure to mainland schools and they have traditionally opted for universities in Britain and other developed countries.
