SUES - Shanghai
On Wednesday, we took a short trip from our hotel the Shanghai University of Engineering Science and met their Formula Student and Baja team! SUES has two Formula Student teams; RISE, their combustion team, and RISElectric who compete with an EV. They also have a Baja team which competes in off-road events and compete in efficiency race series with two teams (IC and EV)!
Before we even flew over to China, we had been in touch with several students from SUES over WeChat (the popular Chinese messaging app). It was great to finally put faces to the people we’d been chatting to!
SUES’s campus is as vast as it is green and gave us a great photo opportunity to show off our Lamb Banana!
After our initial introductions we each gave presentations to formally introduce each other’s teams, and for us, we floated the idea of setting up a collaborative team – the key aim of our trip.
Jiayin Li presenting his introduction of RISElectric.
After the presentations, we headed to the teams’ workshop where we got the chance to see all their vehicles, and more importantly discuss the proposition of a collaborative team.
We spent the whole morning and afternoon together, discussing the joys and difficulties of Formula Student. The most common Formula Student problem we’ve encountered is still apparent on the other side of the world – so much to do, too little time to do it!
On Thursday we travelled to Shanghai Normal University for the Liverpool in Shanghai event. This was a celebration of the collaboration between LJMU and Chinese universities. The Aurora building down on Shanghai’s Bund was also lit up with Liver bird to celebrate the occasion. It was a great event, co-hosted by Dr. Julia Wang our head of China engagement at LJMU, and showcased what all the students had been up to during their time in China! Our team manager, Aziz Makkan, made a presentation in front of the audience, covering what we do as a Formula Student team and what our aims were for this trip. The Liverpool in Shanghai event also included a football match on the schedule, we duly watched LJMU’s Sports Science cohort beat Shanghai Normal’s football team 1-0.
On Friday we headed back to SUES. In the morning we head to the nearby SAIC Volkswagen car plant. Here, they produce numerous models, some of which are unique to the Chinese market. We were given a really engaging tour of the factory on the back of a train of caddy vehicles. We headed back to SUES in the afternoon for an amazing sight; RISE, RISElectric and SUES’s Baja cars were being demoed in the university square just in front of the library!
It again showed how incredible Chinese hospitality is as they went so much out of their way to get all the cars ready for the demo! It was also almost unbelievable to see Chenxi drive his Baja car up and down the stairs to the library, but he is a bit of a nutter after all!
Saturday was the final free day we had left as our flights were in the early hours of Sunday morning. We spent the morning spending our final few Yuan in the markets of downtown Shanghai, then we headed back to go karting with our friends from SUES. It was a great time racing around an amazing indoor facility that was not too far from our hotel – if only we found out about it sooner!
And finally, we headed to a nearby Wanda for our final Chinese meal. We didn’t waste this opportunity, and all had huge bowls of noodles! It was our way of saying thanks for looking after us over the past few days and paid for the karting and food for our SUES friends!
All in all, the opportunity to fly out to China through LJMU’s Go Abroad scheme and to be a part in LJMU’s brilliant China Engagement strategy was an extraordinary experience. To be able to engage with students from the other side of the world with who we share a common interest was truly special. There were difficulties in being on the opposite side of the world, for example communicating complex technical information at times was difficult, yet our shared perseverance made sure that we got our ideas across to each other. The Team would like to say thank you to the university’s Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Nigel Weatherill, for his incredible support of LJMU’s Go Abroad scheme. His vision of enriching students’ lives during their time at LJMU does shine through and our university’s global! We’d also like to thank Dr. Julia Wang, Head of China Engagement, and her colleagues for organising such a memorable trip for us and the other students who travelled to China. All we hope is that this trip will be the first of many for LJMU e-Racing Team and our friends at SUES, in order to firmly set this collaboration up.