The things schools can't teach you

After working in the field of Sino-Arab trade for more than four years, one thing has become apparent to Han Haifen: School is where one acquires limited, basic skills, but work teaches you a great deal more.

After graduating from a three-year Arabic course at Zhejiang Yuexiu University of Foreign Languages in 2011, the 25-year-old was sent to Morocco by her employer, a clothing manufacturer, to handle its business in the country.

"Before that, I never imagined that what I'd learned at college wouldn't help me much at work. But the fact is, during my early days there I understood very little of what the locals said," she recalled.