12 years ago, Mei Aicai only scored 320 points on the Gaokao examination [out of 750 points]. With this, he thought his academic career was over, and suddenly found himself at a loss for what to do. At that point, a friend dragged him along to go study abroad in Ukraine, and even though he thought Ukraine was in Africa at the time and couldn’t speak a single word of the language there, Mei Aicai still boarded the flight to this strange new country, never imagining that once he went, he would be there for 12 years… Upon arriving in Ukraine, Mei Aicai took a preparatory course at the local university, and because he didn’t speak the language, he made a mockery of himself. “When I first arrived, I saw black bread in the store. I thought it was made with chocolate and bought a whole bunch, but when I took a bite, it was both bitter and hard, like a rock. In the end, I had to throw it all away,” Mei Aicai said.
