International students intrigue me. I think it’s because I don’t know anything about them; they carry an aura of mystery. They have an accent and have different physical features and that’s about the extent of what I know. But what irks me is that they have a story waiting to be heard; there is something behind the smile, strange accent, and mismatched-looking clothes.
I think it’s important to get to know international students on a personal level because of the inherent biases we have as Americans. We think of middle easterners as terrorists. We think of Chinese students as brainwashed by their government. But we think all of these things without any firsthand experience.
The troubling thing now is that America is pushing out foreigners: restricting immigration from the middle east, plus building a stronger Mexican border wall. When we build walls between countries we are only reinforcing these biases.
This thought process led me to an idea: Why don’t I interview some of my international buddies and see who they really are.
Meet my friend, Weisheng.
He goes by Eric (it’s much easier to pronounce), but for the purposes of this post, I’m going to stick with the name he prefers.
He’s from Xiamen, China.
He tells me it’s a small-ish city. I looked up the population: 3.5 million. For perspective, it is five times greater than the population of Boston.
Weisheng plans on either studying Computer Science or Biology here at Penn State. He loves game designing. He tells me that playing and designing games in China is what almost everyone does. Here we go to football games, but in China video games play the exact same role.
When I asked him what he likes or does for fun, he told me he likes to play League of Legends, which is a multi-player online battle arena video game. He also likes to watch Japanese anime.
I also wanted to know more about his parents, because some people have stereotypes of Chinese parents as being overly strict. Decades ago, the stereotype would be true, but, according to Weisheng, not anymore. Today they encourage their kids to study whatever they want. Most of the time, they just want their kids to do their best and Weisheng’s parents are no different.
Weisheng has no siblings. For millennials in China, 99% of them don’t have any siblings, which is shocking for me to hear.
How do you like it here?
I thought it would be very different, but it’s just like China. One very different thing is that people like to party, but in China you can’t find any parties.
How do you like the food here?
I really like the food. The most different part of the food is the cheese, because in China they don’t really eat cheese.
I asked him why he chose Penn State. He told me his family filed for a green card and has been waiting for it to process for the past 14 years. 14 years! Once the process goes through him and his family plan to move to the U.S. and live here.
He also told me that he came here, because both him and his parents know that he will have a better future here. In China it’s too competitive to get into a good university. In order to get into the top university, it’s even harder than getting into Harvard. Also, Chinese universities only look at your score, and if you thought that was bad, you only get one shot at the exam that gives you the score. That one score basically determines what your future holds.
Because of this, Chinese high schools are very rigorous. If their students get a bad score on the exam, it will hurt the school’s reputation.
Also, their educational system as a whole is unlike anything we have here in the U.S.. Here at PSU you have the freedom to study whatever interests you most: math, philosophy, and maybe even mushroom science. But back in China, everything is exam-oriented.
So, in high school, you can basically only study what will show up on the exam. And then once, or rather if, you get into a university, sometimes the university will decide what they want you to learn.
So, there you have it. In future posts I plan to explore this idea more. The lesson for today is that although international students are often the quietest, that shouldn’t restrict you from learning more about them. Don’t let the accent scare you away.
The only child idea is something I guess I knew, but never really put into my mind if that makes sense.
I knew about the one child policy that is now a 2 child? I think? But I guess it never hit me that it meant most children don’t have siblings.
I do wonder if friends become so close as to be siblings more often than here in the US – if you could ask him that would be very interesting to me.
The League of Legends part I could’ve called before anything else – It is HUGE in Asia – especially Korea and China, they sell out million dollar arenas all the time, Esports is a true industry there, while it continues to grow here in the US.
Keep these variety blogs coming! I love coming here and getting the surprise of what might be next!
Matt
Thanks for checking out the latest post. I actually went out to dinner with Eric last night. I forgot to ask him about the siblings question you had, but he did mention to me that he was sad because his League of Legends team had lost. I don’t play video games, so the thought of a whole country playing and watching someone else play is crazy to me. However, I’ve never watched League of Legends, so, who knows, I could really like it.