In just 30 years studying abroad has become commonplace

"The other thing is that if you wanted to study abroad you needed a visa, and they were difficult to get," says Yuan, who retired from a hospital in Shanghai last year.

"Living standards in China were low and developed countries were wary about granting its citizens visas, thinking there was no way they could support themselves and pay their education fees."

Chen Zhiwen, editor-in-chief of a website that publishes information about education, recalls how difficult it was to study abroad in the 1980s.

"At the time, there were so many barriers to doing so that hardly anyone really thought seriously about doing it. It was nothing but a pipe dream."

Being able to get a visa essentially came down to having government financial backing, Chen says.

"Anyone else was almost sure to have their visa application rejected."

In the mid-1990s the policy of supporting students going overseas to study was further relaxed. Those willing to pay their own way would no longer be required to pay a fee to the government, and in the late 1990s agencies that helped with applications to study at overseas tertiary institutions were set up, and the number of those making applications began to surge.

"In the 1980s going abroad to study was seen as a bit of a craze, but these days it has become just a normal thing to do," Chen says.

Now China has become the biggest source country for university students for more than 10 countries, including Australia, Britain, Canada, Japan and the US. The 2015 Open Doors Report by the Institute of International Education says China became the top country of origin for students going to the US in the 2009-10 academic year. It has retained top place six years in a row, after eight years of double-digit increases.

Even as the number of Chinese going overseas has risen, their ages have fallen.

The Open Doors Report said that in the 2009-10 academic year, 127,628 Chinese students studied in the US, 31 percent of them undergraduates. Five years later that figure has shot up to 41 percent.

Among the Chinese undergraduates in the US is Zhou Yutong, 20, who studies at George Washington University in Washington. After graduating from a high school in Beijing, Zhou went to the US to pursue a bachelor of arts degree in communication and French literature in 2014.

"I thought going abroad would be good for a change," Zhou says.

Zhao Xinying contributed to this story.

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