Zhao Liping, 22, is one of 29 Chinese students majoring in the Vietnamese language at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University, Hanoi.

The junior-year class is in Hanoi on a yearlong exchange program between the Vietnamese university and Guangxi University for Nationalities in Nanning, the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.

The program has lasted for decades, but the number of students in previous years was 40.