WeChat at university: Liam's New Colombo Plan exchange story

"It lines up with exactly what I want to do. Why not give it a go? Why not apply?"

Published on the 20 August 2026

Liam Hamill-Mamo's New Colombo Plan Scholarship experience in China

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Studying abroad wasn't just something Liam Hamill-Mamo took interest in after coming to university. It was a dream of his from much earlier.

After taking on Chinese as a subject in Year 11, Liam was keen to visit China through a high school exchange opportunity. Fate, however, happened to have other plans, both for Liam and the world at large...

"In about Year 11, we had the option to do high school exchange, but COVID came along and messed that up," he explains.

Post-pandemic, after enrolling in a Bachelor of Science (Computer Science) at UNSW, Liam knew he had to give student exchange in China another shot. Liam continued to take Chinese Studies courses at UNSW and even participated in Chinese Bridge, a language proficiency competition for international students, to maintain his speaking ability.

Before he knew it, second year had arrived and it was time to look through exchange options. That's when Liam came across an interesting opportunity: the New Colombo Plan Scholarship Program.

The New Colombo Plan (NCP) is an Australian government initiative offering support for students to study in the Indo-Pacific. With funding to engage in exchange, language training and internships for up to 19 months under an NCP Scholarship, Liam realised this would let him go far beyond just completing a few UOC in China.

"I saw I'm eligible. It lines up with exactly what I want to do. Why not give it a go? Why not apply?"

Having nothing to lose (and over 1.5 years worth of funding to gain), Liam submitted his application, first within UNSW and then to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). Finally, came the interview, where Liam's preparation and genuine passion for exchange paid off.

"I knew that this is what I wanted to do [...] it was more about how I could collate all my experiences to best show off why I'm the right person for this program.

The other application parts aren't as hard."

Soon after, Liam received an NCP Scholarship offer for his eligible institution of choice, Peking University. Before he knew it, Liam found himself at the end of second year, getting ready to jet off to China. But not before getting a chance to mingle with his fellow NCP Scholars at a special networking event down in Canberra. Meet and greet with Minister for Foreign Affairs of Australia, the Hon. Penny Wong, included.

"That was quite nice because it felt like maybe some people are a bit nervous about the experience, out of the comfort zone [...] it's nice to know that other people are going through the same thing as well," Liam states.

At last, in February of his third year, came time for Liam to finally take on this new adventure.

Confidence is half the battle when it comes to fluency

Upon landing in China, Liam was surprised to not feel homesick. He hadn't expected that his ability to speak basic Chinese would earn him easy brownie points with almost anyone he met. It was endearing for his efforts to be appreciated by the locals, helping him immerse himself into the environment quickly. So much so, that Liam couldn't help wondering how the international student experience may be different back home.

"I think me going there, I had it a lot easier than a lot of international students coming here. Maybe because English is just spoken so globally around the world, [in] big Western countries, everyone kind of just expects others to speak English," Liam realised.

"[But] when they see me speaking Chinese [there], they'll be like,'Oh, wow, you can speak Chinese. That's amazing' "

Needing to navigate a fully Chinese-speaking environment, of course, didn't come without its challenges for Liam. He had the fundamentals down, but there was much more to learn in situ. Especially for life off campus, like at the doctor's office:

"The doctor's like to me, 'Oh, you need to go do a body temperature check'. But I don't know what that word is, so I just have no idea what she's saying. She types it into the translator app and I'm like, 'Oh, that's what you meant'," Liam reminisces.

He quickly realised that moments like these were all part of the experience, and that being afraid to learn on-the-ground was "counter-productive".

"Part of it is the language that you've learned [...] the other part is also confidence. You can't expect to speak as fluently as you might in your native language. Even if there's a bunch of grammatical errors [...], if they get the meaning, you know they['ve] understood you."

Luckily for Liam, there was a dedicated campus society for international students to engage with local students, which helped him develop further confidence in interacting with others.

"[Something I wanted to make sure to do was] try to make friends with locals more. [You should] be proactive, join clubs [...] practise your language skills, make these connections, [and] go to events. Because by doing that, you're going to be able to meet so many more people and branch out more than you would be able to otherwise."

A particularly memorable outing for Liam was a society trip to the Summer Palace, a World Heritage Site distinguished for its preservation of imperial design:

"We had to go around and take photos of ourselves with all this different architecture and stuff in there. So we worked together in little teams to do that. We were given a map and everything is written in Chinese. So it's quite hard to understand where all the buildings are [...] I have a lot of good memories from that because I made some good friends."

Liam and friends from Peking University exploring the Summer Palace.

IChat, YouChat, We(All)Chat

As for studying itself, Liam found that the Chinese university grind wasn't as grueling as Reddit made it out to be.

"Top Chinese universities like Peking University and Tsinghua, they're very sort of elite in China. People often think [...] there's a lot of pressure in there and people have to study a lot. So going there, my expectation was that I'll have to work a lot harder and that the content is also going to be a lot more difficult."

To his surprise, Liam found the difficulty of course content to be on par with what he'd experienced at UNSW. Saving up his free electives for exchange allowed him to choose from a wider variety of courses too.

"It's good to use the free electives because you don't know what courses you're necessarily going to take or have available."

The courses Liam ended up taking ranged from exploring Chinese pop culture, to improving his international business skills, and even grasping 'Shakespearean' Chinese:

"There was a course that I took which helps you to learn Chinese through watching movies [...] the teacher will pause it at a certain point [...] and prepare a vocab list of harder words that we wouldn't have known and help us to learn those [...] that one was pretty fun because I got to watch movies, but also actually learn something," Liam recounts.

"I took one [course about] business in China. That one taught us about the Chinese words and terms you use for business, how business differs from like other countries [and] how it's undertaken."

"[Another one] was kind of like classical Chinese. Imagine Shakespeare in English, [but] it's the equivalent of that in Chinese. That one was, well, a bit more niche."

The platform of choice for student-educator communication also took Liam by surprise.

"No one's really using emails," Liam explains.

"Everyone uses WeChat and you just text your teachers, which kind of surprised me because they have a lot of respect for their teachers and they'll use these formal terms to refer to them. But then at the same time, you can text your teacher anytime on WeChat. And teachers will [also] be sending you homework and random things through WeChat".

It's not often that you can contact your teachers and connect with people on the same platform. Liam might not be texting his professors any more, but he's been able to keep in touch with the friends he made during his exchange experience.

Liam at Peking University campus.

"I think I can't really get away from WeChat now. One of my good friends [...] was sending me a few photos of his graduation the other day, which is really awesome. Really happy for him. Hope I can go back and visit sometime soon because [there's] so many great friends and people I know there now."

The perks of being an NCP Scholar

The friends he met at Peking University aren't the only connections that Liam's returned with through the NCP program. Being an NCP Scholar connects Liam with all of his own NCP cohort, plus the cohorts that came before. A community full of students and alumni with strong international experiences and connections can go a long way when paving your career across the world.

"Say I want to find roles for software tech in China, then I can reach out to the NCP community and say 'Hey, does anybody have any advice for this or that?'. And then I get a bunch of responses, not only from people that did it at the same time as me, but also two, three, four, [even] five years ago ... which is really, really invaluable."

Liam did in fact take on a software engineering internship in Shanghai following his exchange through the NCP program.

"I think I probably wouldn't have done it if not for the [New Colombo Plan] program because it encouraged me to go out and look for these experiences."

Liam participating in a half-marathon across the Great Wall of China.

Getting work experience abroad didn't only give Liam an opportunity to work on his soft skills in a non-English speaking context, but also helped him understand how business operates differently across the globe.

"For Western business, I think the outcomes are probably more important [...] whereas in China, that comes last. It's more about building a relationship with someone else. Which is something that I wouldn't have known otherwise."

Having recently graduated and moving into the professional world, Liam is glad to have fulfilled his Chinese exchange dream through the New Colombo Plan program.

"When you're doing an NCP [Scholarship], you're getting extra support, you're getting extra opportunities and more experiences will come on."

Liam's tips for exchange

"You've got like a lot of people from some countries that I [didn't even know] existed before. Like some really small countries in South America or Africa. I had never met people from these places before. I think that was what interested me the most. And because of that, then I was able to engage with these people and understand, you know, what are their cultures like? What is life like for them back home? That authentic experience that I can't get otherwise? There's even students [at Peking University] from North Korea. There's people from countries like Turkmenistan, the Central Asian countries etc.

So it was just kind of mind-blowing to me that so many people from all these places can be all in one place studying together, make friends and learn about like each other's languages, culture, all of that.

I feel like if I just like the country on the map now, it's probably likely I'll know someone from there which is just like so mind-blowing to me".
"One of the biggest things is the financial support [you get] for NCP. Not everybody's going to be able to support themselves overseas [necessarily], especially somewhere like Singapore, Hong Kong or Japan. I think for a lot of students, that's really unaffordable unless you have mom and dad to help support you there. So I think [the NCP scholarship] really helps – it can put you in a position where you can have a lot more experiences that you wouldn't be able to otherwise and give you a more like serious amount of time to go overseas and immerse yourself as well.

For instance, let's say you have someone that really wants to go on exchange, but if they use their own money, they're only able to support themselves for maybe a semester. But if they get the program, then they could consider a longer period. They could consider like a whole year and then they could add on language training as well to further upskill themselves, and also an internship. I think that really, really gives people a boost not only in the experience they're having overseas, but language skills like academic study, cultural immersion and the networking side as well.

So there's that. And then I'd say it's also good because of the NCP cohort. You're surrounded with a lot of like-minded peers that are interested in similar things to you as well.

[For someone,] if they know they want to do exchange and they're not certain if they suit the criteria or [NCP]'s for them, just for apply it anyways. Even if you feel uncertain. Don't wait until like everything is perfect. Just give it your best shot. You might get into the interview with them and do better than you thought. So just put your best foot forward!"
"I definitely suggest people do it as long as possible. [As in], I'd suggest don't apply and say you want to do a short-term exchange, even if that's what you truly want to do. Say you want to do a very long-term one, because you can always cut it down. It's easier to cut down your program and make it shorter than do something shorter and make it longer.

So just go in and tell them, 'I want to do like the full 19 months, or I want to do 12, 13, 14 etc.'. And then you can bump that down if you want. There's more flexibility [that way]."