The survey respondents include 50 males and 24 females, of which the number of males is the double of that of females. This is because Sudanese society is conservative and conventional, most girls get married at the age of 23 or so, and most parents are unwilling to allow their daughters to study abroad alone.

Among the respondents under survey, there are 2 students under 18, 36 students between 18 and 25, 35 students between 26 - 35 and only 1 student above 35, of which the respondents between 18 and 35 account for the largest number. This means most students come to China as soon as they graduate from high schools or universities.

From Table 2, we can see that the number of undergraduates and postgraduates is the largest, as these two kinds of students have more opportunities to gain scholarships. The other types of students are mostly short-term advanced students who study various majors in China’s colleges and universities. Among these majors, Chinese (Language), Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages (TCSOL) and Engineering rank the top three. A few students have chosen Medicine, Translation and Interpreting, International Logistics and International Relations.

For the students under survey, the time they’ve spent in China also differs. 22 students have been in China for less than 2 years, 25 students for 3 - 5 years, 21 students for 5 - 8 years, and 6 students for over 8 years. Among them, undergraduates account for the largest number, and doctors or post doctors account for the least number.

From Table 3, we can see that about 65% students have passed the exam of HSK Level V or above, which show that Sudanese international students have proficiency in Chinese. Although they’ve learnt basic Chinese in Sudan, most of their teachers are Chinese people, and they also have a hanger for knowledge. Hence, they have a solid foundation of Chinese.

Gudykunst & Kim (2007) believes that the living environment adaptation problem comes first in the cultural adaptation. Such climate changes caused by different geographical locations and differences in food culture, schools’ accommodation management systems and public service systems have affected the cross-cultural adaptability of international students in China to some different extent.

Sudanese students attach much importance to their study and school management and they expect to study in schools which meet their requirements like many other foreign students. Many foreign students complain that their specialized courses are boring but they face high pressure and are assigned much homework at the same time. All these factors will have an influence on their academic performance. Sudanese students are more dependent on teachers, and only through the guidance of teachers can they make progress. However, they find that the situation in China is different. Chinese teachers only give students general guidance to students, and students’ study mostly rely on their own efforts. This may also affect Sudanese students’ attitude toward study.

During international students’ life of studying in abroad, it is inevitable to have cross-cultural communication with people of different cultural backgrounds. They are faced with a new cultural background completely different from their own country after they come to China. They will certainly run into cross-cultural communication problems as well as cross-cultural communication barriers.

Sudanese students in China study in different cities. Most of them are in the in the north, especially in Gansu Province with the largest number that is mainly concentrated in NWNU and Lanzhou University. Instead, few Sudanese students choose to study in southern China. Each part of China has its own dialects such as Hakka language, Cantonese and Southern Fujian Dialect. These dialects may exert negative influences on Sudanese students’ Chinese learning and make their Chinese slipping.

Some foreign students will feel uneasy, anxious and even become wakeful after they first come to a new country. The mental adaptability of international students in China has a lot to do with the length of their stay in China: those who have been in China for a short time have relatively more depressive symptoms. The international students in China mainly have such psychological barriers as loneliness, self-imposed isolation, impatience, irritability, anxiety and depression, and they are prone to adopt negative reactions including fantasy and evasion in the face of stress events. Many Sudanese students in China have mental problems such as anxiety and restlessness during their early days in China, but they become accustomed to their lives in China as they stay here for a long time. Therefore, those Sudanese students who have lived in China for over 4 years have totally adapted to lives in China.

Sudanese students have different opinions on the life in China. Some are fairly satisfied with their life in China, some are not quite satisfied and some others are not still not sure. Sudanese students who have just come to China are not quite comfortable with China’s living habits, and the influencing factors main include local climate, eating habits and social interaction, etc.

From Table 4, over half of Sudanese students are not pleased with new environment, and feel hard to adapt to the life of cities where they are because of language barrier after they come to China. In an unfamiliar environment, they often feel lonely and lost because they have no relatives and friends around, so they will also feel a sense of anxiety.

Food has always been the biggest difficulty that international students have faced. Most Sudanese students have a belief in Islam, so they only eat halal food. They call speeches, behaviors and food conforming to Islam law as “HALAL” and those that don’t conform to as “HARAM”.

Muslim food culture has two important features: legitimacy and pleasance. Legitimacy here has two meanings. The first is that food must be permitted by the Koran and are made as stipulated by the Islam law. The second is that food should also conform to social public law. Pleasance here means that each step for food making from procurement of raw materials to serving to the table should be clean, healthy, pollution free and nonhazardous.

As a result, the biggest problem that Sudanese students in China face is to find halal food. The staple food of Sudan is Arabic flatbread and bread. They like to eat hand pilaf and can only eat halal meat. They are used to eating with their right hand and are prohibited drinking all kinds of drinks. These eating habits are strikingly different from ones in China. Table 5 and Table 6 show their viewpoints on Chinese food.

Due to the huge difference in eating habits, many Sudanese students cannot get used to Chinese food and often have stomachaches. Table 6 illustrates Sudanese students like eating halal food and they generally eat meals in restaurants for Lanzhou stretched noodles or other Arabic restaurants. But there are also some students consider that the halal food in China are not to their liking. In the survey, 9 students feel the halal food tastes bad.

The climate in Sudan differs in each part. The arid desert has high temperatures sometimes up to 50˚C and it has an average annual temperature of 21˚C. Cities in northern China are cold and dry, while coastal cities in the south are warmer and humid. Thus most Sudanese students can adapt to the climate in the cities where they live, and some students have weak adaptabilities. The three international students the author interviews from Beijing Language and Culture University and NWNU consider that the climate in their cities is much cold so that they are likely to get cold and ill. Table 7 reveals the respondents’ evaluation on climate and that 47% Sudanese students cannot adapt to the climate of their cities.

As shown in Table 8, 45.95% students are very dissatisfied with transportation in China, indicating that almost half the students hold that it is inconvenient to travel. 25.68% of them deem that the transportation in China is convenient. That is because the cities where they are have small population density, the frequency of using transportation is not high, and traffic jams rarely occur. But in big cities, there is a high population density and a high travel demand, so traffic jams occur frequently. Especially in certain periods, transportation is very inconvenient. For example, during rush hours on working days, it is inevitable to be crowded by bus, subway or taxi. And during such traditional festivals as the Spring Festival, the Mid-Autumn Festival and the National Day, it is extremely hard to buy a high-speed rail ticket. Many people had to choose a slower way like long-distance buses as they cannot scramble for the tickets.

Sudan’s schools are very different from Chinese schools. Although each school has dormitories, the public facilities are not so good. Sudanese students pay more attention to campus environment after coming to China. Table 9 represents their opinions, i.e. nearly half the students are dissatisfied with the campus environment of their schools. According to a further investigation, it is found that they are mainly not satisfied with the conditions of their dormitories.

Sudanese students are very dependent on teachers and they need the guidance of teachers when doing everything. Each time an activity is held, they will need their mentors, or they will not rehearse on their own. Sudanese student generally don’t like too much homework, and homework has been always one of their troubles. However, homework is very common for Chinese students.

From Table 10, it can be seen that Sudanese students in China don’t feel liking going out. Over half of them prefer to stay in the dormitories, and they neither go out to amuse themselves nor work outside. Based on the author’s further understanding, many Sudanese students feel that they have high pressure and much homework, so they opt to stay in dormitories for learning.

FFrom Table 11, it can be seen that more than half of Sudanese students are satisfied with the teaching quality of their schools. But they feel stressed out after coming to China and deem that Chinese is very difficult in listening, speaking, reading and writing. This is mainly because Sudanese students are heavily dependent on their teachers. Before studying in China, they lack initiative and motivation in learning and depend much on their teachers. However, teaching methods in China are a bit different, and teachers expect students to do by themselves and give them more space in learning. Therefore, Sudanese students will feel and stressed after coming to China.

In recent years, the number of foreign students has increased year by year, and the demand for related services has increased as well. But related service management agencies and personnel have not increased accordingly. Most international students feel discontented with management systems of colleges and universities. From Table 12, it can be seen that over half of Sudanese students think that school management systems in China are very rigid. For instance, too many absences will affect their exam and the students may be even expelled from school. Besides, students are not allowed to return late to dormitories that will close after 11 o’clock. Though these regulations are stipulated for safety of international students, some of them will regard them as a restriction of personal freedom and cannot understand. On the contrary, some schools are not strict enough to manage international students in China, so it becomes common for many international students to be late for or absent from classes. It is known that China has no speciality as international students management, and administrative staff for internal students management are currently trained discontinuously. So there is a lack of professional management talents.

The international students are curious about China before coming to China. But there will be also a cultural shock and physical and mental inadaptation in a new environment as values and ideas inherent in their own parent environment will have a certain impact on them. This causes that the international students will opt to avoid or neglect when coming across different cultures. For Sudanese students, cultural difference has affected their lives in China. Their understanding of the new culture is limited to the cognitive level, and there will be many unpredictable situations in real life.

From Table 14, it can be seen that most of Sudanese students adopt a positive attitude to deal with cultural conflicts. The Chinese cultural education they’ve received in Sudan are entirely divergent from the real life. The cultural knowledge they’ve learned from classes is relatively basic and shallow, but the cultural connotation in real life needs to be continuously explored and felt.

Due to personality, age, adaptability and other factors, it will be difficult for foreign students to have interpersonal communication. The students who are outgoing and open-minded have more opportunities, while those who are introverted and reticent will have less opportunities. From Table 15, it can be seen that the biggest problem Sudanese students confront after coming to China is interpersonal communication barrier. According to the author’s findings, most Sudanese students under 20 are introverted and unwilling to go out and take part in activities. They also don’t feel like actively contacting with others. With the addition of limited Chinese proficiency, the difficulties in this area are even greater.

Sudan is a relatively conservative nation, and Islam provides that men and women should keep a certain distance. Many students will observe China’s customs, especially for boys. Men students will have more chances to make friends and go out. Women students are not. They have to wear headscarves when going out, and their relationship with classmates is normal as Islam stipulates that men and women can only be together in a legal relationship. As a result, Sudanese girls are more conservative than Sudanese boys whose parents are not against their studying abroad.

The older international students who come to study in China, the stronger their psychological adaptability, while the younger they are, the weaker their psychological adaptability. The survey reveals that, most of Sudanese students in China are young people who come to China after graduating from high school. There are no older students. The author has interviewed 3 Sudanese students under 20 from South China University of Technology. They often think of their families and friends, and sometimes suffer from insomnia at night. Sometimes they will want to go home. This shows that international students’ adaptability has a lot to do with their age.

Table 16 explains that most Sudanese students learn Chinese for job demand, and their motivations for learning Chinese are clear. Since China and Sudan communicate with each other in trade more frequently, learning Chinese is

conducive to both employment and business startups in the future. At present, many Chinese enterprises invest in Sudan, mainly in the oil and agricultural fields. Therefore, Sudanese students learn Chinese mainly for the purpose of a better job selection in the future.

As they stay longer in China, the international students will become more informed of surroundings. The cross-cultural adaptability of international students who have been in China for 3 to 4 years has been remarkably improved than that of students who have been in China for 1 to 2 years. Their mental adaptability will be influenced by how long they stay in China. The Sudanese students who have just come to China will feel anxious, scared, and miss their families, while those who have been in China for a long time have adapted to the living environment of the cities where they live, so their anxiety will also decrease accordingly. International students will have few difficulty in adapting to other cultures if they stay in China for a long time. Therefore, all the schools should organize rich and colorful culture experience activities for the new comers from foreign countries so as to help them enhance their mental adaptability.

When going to a new country, foreign students should be strict with themselves and respect the laws and regulations of that country. They must also observe the principle of respect and respect their teachers and schoolmates in classes to build favorable teacher-student relationship. Moreover, the international students should also respect China’s etiquette and traditional festivals including the Spring Festival, Qingming Festival and the Dragon Boat Festival as well as customs of each festival.

The principle of understanding is an indispensable one for international students in life and they also have to follow this principle. China has a vast land and abundant resources and a profound culture, and also each place has its own unique customs and habits, so the international students need to keep to the principle of understanding in both class and real life and improve their own quality.

Many Sudanese students have affirmed the efforts their schools have made. For instance, there are no classes scheduled on Friday afternoon so that Muslim students worship on that day without affecting their studies; schools help new freshmen with troubles in eating, shelter and means of transportation; schools also hold culture week activities to invite the students to display their own cultures so that those from different countries can better understand their own customs.

In addition, colleges and universities can also implement some other specific measures: hold cross-cultural activities or set up relevant courses for new international students; organize exchange activities between Chinese students and foreign students to help foreign students enhance their interpersonal communication capability; add language tutoring courses for freshmen and regularly offer some cultural tutoring classes to help them build up confidence and increase interest. Cultural tutoring courses is beneficial to have a deep understanding of Chinese culture, cultivate international students’ communicative ability, and decrease misunderstanding and obstacles brough about because of cultural difference.

On an individual level, foreign students should develop favorable learning and living habits in their daily life, and work out some short-term, medium-term and long-term learning goals to realize them. They also have to improve their willpower, overcome difficulties and promote their own quality. Many Sudanese students have not accepted any training on cross-cultural adaptation before coming to China, so their psychological adaptability is weak. Therefore, foreign students had better read some works and textbooks on cross culture and watch some relevant videos before coming to China, which will contribute to improving their cross-cultural adaptability.