Let’s talk about the students. You’ll meet that one person who learned Mandarin just to read Journey to the West in the original. Then there’s the quiet guy who speaks Farsi like a poet and can order kebabs in three different dialects. And don’t forget the girl who casually drops a fact about Genghis Khan’s postal system into a conversation about Uber Eats. It’s like a UN conference, but everyone forgot to wear suits and brought dumplings instead.
The professors? They’re a whole other level. One minute they’re lecturing on Ottoman miniature paintings, the next they’re showing you TikTok dances from Cairo. I had a prof who paused mid-sentence to tell us that "the Mongol conquests were just the medieval version of a road trip gone wrong." Try un-hearing that. (Honestly, they should launch a podcast called "Ancient Screenshots.")
What You Actually Study (Spoiler: It’s Not Just Dead Languages)
Sure, you can learn Classical Chinese or Sanskrit here. But the faculty is obsessed with the living, breathing cultures. You’ll study anime distribution in East Asia and how Syrian refugees use WhatsApp to preserve their family recipes. I took a class on "Tea, Trade, and Treachery" that was just a deep dive into the economics of chai. Yes, you can get a degree in tea gossip. No jokes.
And the irony? Everyone assumes you’re training to be a spy. Aunt Linda asked me if I "learned code-breaking" yet. I told her, "Actually, Aunt Linda, I’m learning how to cook the perfect biryani while reading 10th-century Chinese poetry." She hasn’t called back. Joke’s on her—those skills are way more dangerous than spy craft. (Read: you can charm anyone with a plate of mantou and a haiku.)
Equality and Diversity | Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
