INTERVIEW

Interview

Interview

A New York Times article, published on Nov. 5, titled “The China Education Boom on U.S. Campuses,” is about just what it sounds like: how Chinese students are thriving in America (Levin, 2010). While the article was well written and engaging, I found it surreal, biased and insincere. Most Chinese students do not get the “whirlwind transformation to college kid”. They do not join debate teams, do not go partying every weekend, and most certainly do not convert to Mormonism (as one actually does at the end of the article).

Therefore, I decided to uncover the other side of the story myself. For two weeks, I asked other Chinese students in the U.S. to tell me about their lives. Some were acquaintances, others complete strangers. As far as they've told me, they are not “booming” at all, not even close - they are troubled, isolated or sleep-deprived.

The most common complaint I get from my Chinese classmates is that Americans are shallow and boring. When Li Ruifan first came to the U.S., he tried having lunch with his new American friends. However, soon he realized that he was not interested in their conversations at all. “Americans like, to talk about petty things like eating, sleeping or having showers,” says Li. “Don't they have anything better to talk about?”

The social conversations are fueled by puns and jokes, but, the American humor is often lost in translation. “Once in class, the professor said something and everyone started to laugh, including me,” says Ge Chen, a freshman in Engineering. “I actually had no idea what he said.” Unable to understand the jokes, Ge finds it hard, to sustain conversations with Americans. “We would soon run out of things to say,” Ge smiles embarrassingly. “And that is when I say 'bye-bye'.”

What surprised me the most when I first came to the U.S. was how Americans would start cracking random jokes with strangers, as if they had been best buddies forever. I also noticed that the conversations rarely go beyond that level. People seem to be using jokes to keep each other at a comfortable distance. More serious topics such as philosophy, politics, coursework or personal issues would either offend someone or make you sound like a nerd. In Chinese schools, the ideas of “offensiveness” and “nerdiness” do not exist. Vegans, feminists or non-Chinese people are almost never seen, and everyone is a little nerdy.

Like many ...