HUNAN-BORN LI XIN is 24 years old and a long way from home. Her parents, a tax office clerk and retired accountant, are paying her living expenses while she takes an 18-month master's course in international business at Gothenburg University, Sweden, studying in English.
Ms Li admits to getting lonely sometimes, but she is far from being the only Chinese student in Scandinavia. There are tens of thousands of them on university campuses all over Europe.
Chinese students have been venturing overseas since the Beijing government began the reforms that opened China up to the outside world in the late 1970s and 80s.
However, students then tended to go to the US, Japan, Canada and Australia, whereas now Europe is also attracting vast numbers of Chinese postgraduates, undergraduates and even secondary school pupils.
They hope that when they have completed their studies, the door to better jobs and more money will open for them, both abroad and at home. The European attraction is the wide availability of English-taught courses and free or low tuition costs, according to the British Council.
Ms Li said: 'There are too many Chinese people in the UK already and the tuition fees there are too high. Even if I was accepted by a university in the US, it's not easy to get a visa now. In Sweden people speak English and tuition is free.'