Recently, I met with a Penn State student, Wenyu You (or Steve, his American name). He is a Sophomore computer engineering major and plans to work in the U.S. tech industry, hopefully as a computer engineer, after graduation. I was introduced to Steve a few days ago through a mutual friend, and after talking to him for a while, I thought that he would be perfect to interview for this project. So, I decided to ask him if he would be interested in an interview, to which he, of course, said yes to. When I interviewed him, I was able to learn all about him, his favorite foods, hobbies and interests, but I’ll get into all of that later. I started off with all the basic questions like where he was from and what his family was like. Wenyu told me was born in a city called Jingdezhen (Town of Jingde), China in 1998 to his parents, Li Li, his mother, and Jun You, his father. He told me all about his hometown, how they they used to make ceramic cups, dishes, plates, and bowls for the Emperor back in ancient China. Growing up, Wenyu was bored a lot of the time, as he did not have any siblings or organized sports to keep him entertained, so he turned to other things to keep him busy. He watched movies, TV shows, collected and played video games, and he became fascinated by computers and technology so much so, he built his own computer at 17.
The next series of questions I asked Wenyu was about his education. At the age of 15, Wenyu moved to Sydney, Australia, where he became an international student and stayed with a host family. A year and a half later, he moved to New York City, where he would also be an international student, and stayed there for three years, without going back to China at all, to finish out his high school degree. In New York, Wenyu was able to learn a lot about American culture, food (which by the way, he hates, and even said, “I hope I don’t get diabetes”, when commenting on it), and sports, which he didn’t really get much of at home in China. When he came to Penn State after completing high school, he quickly started to notice one thing about the people here, they were “way more friendly than in New York.”
I next asked Steve about what life was like here at Penn State and if it was difficult adjusting from high school to college. He said “Honestly, it’s not really all that different for me. I was already living away from my parents and in a different country, so that aspect of it was pretty easy. But, if you are asking about the schoolwork, good luck adjusting to that.” We both let out a laugh, because I, of course, already knew what he meant with the work and I only have two classes right now. He also said, “making friends here is really easy. You just have to be willing to try new things.” I definitely agreed with him when he said that because, being here for almost five weeks now, I have already experienced having to go outside of my comfort zone. When I asked him about any prejudices that he faced here, he said, “No, I haven’t really experienced anything like that here, all of the people are pretty nice.”
After talking to Steve for about twenty minutes, I started to realize that, even though we came from very different backgrounds, and had many differences, we had just as many similarities. To start, we both chose the greatest university in the world, Penn State. We both love to play video games, specifically, Playstation, we also both enjoy marvel movies, Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad. Both of our fathers are business men, and our mothers were both stay at home moms (even though my mom works now that all of her kids are older). It really cool to hear his perspective on some American issues, such as border patrol and healthcare, but it was especially cool to learn about his family’s traditions, because believe it or not, some of theirs are pretty similar to American family traditions. For Chinese New Year, Steve told me, he receives red envelopes from his relatives, filled with money, which is, I guess, pretty similar to receiving money for your birthday or Easter, or whatever the holiday may be.
Interviewing Steve was a very cool experience, one that I would not have had if it was not for taking this class. I was able to learn a lot more about the Chinese culture and the life of an international student then I previously did. It really opened my eyes to see that not everyone had a similar upbringing to myself, and I think I may have even made a new friend.

Steve posing for the camera.