{"id":373,"date":"2026-03-11T07:51:54","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T23:51:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.youthtorch.org\/?p=373"},"modified":"2026-09-27T21:32:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T13:32:08","slug":"searching-for-loneliness-interview-project-3-building-a-sense-of-belonging-in-futuristic-cities-international-students-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.youthtorch.org\/?p=373","title":{"rendered":"Searching for Loneliness: Interview Project 3 | Building a Sense of Belonging in this futuristic City"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xCCVJojdIeU?si=MnyypCBZM4pku-sU\" width=\"800\" height=\"480\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This interview, Yamen, a Palestinian student, shared his experiences studying in China with a British student. Both stated that China offers almost all the necessary learning and living resources, making it &#8220;the best choice&#8221; for them at present. When asked about their initial impressions of China, they described the campus and city environment as &#8220;modern&#8221; and &#8220;futuristic.&#8221; Both arrived at the campus last year but said they haven&#8217;t felt significantly lonely and have already made many friends. Regarding language, Yamen pointed out that without understanding the language, it&#8217;s difficult to truly understand the culture, making language learning particularly important. He usually connects with other international students through English-speaking classmates. As for ways to reduce loneliness, they mentioned that in the UK, they build connections through community activities such as playing football or attending prayers at the mosque; similarly in Palestine, they maintain relationships through community and religious sites. For them, a sense of belonging comes from genuine face-to-face interaction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\ufeff This interview, Yamen, a Palestinian student, shared his experiences studying in China with a British student. Both stated that China offers almost all the necessary learning and living resources, making it &#8220;the best choice&#8221; for them at present. When asked about their initial impressions of China, they described the campus and city environment as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,11,15,34],"tags":[72,69,70,320,68,405,71,24,305],"class_list":["post-373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-social-research","category-society","category-travel-china","tag-british-student","tag-china-life-university","tag-culture-cross","tag-high-school-interview","tag-internationalstudent","tag-loneliness","tag-palestinian-student","tag-psychology","tag-suzhou"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthtorch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthtorch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthtorch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthtorch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthtorch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=373"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthtorch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":997,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthtorch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373\/revisions\/997"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthtorch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthtorch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthtorch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthtorch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}