My Year Studying Abroad in China: Part 2

The Great Wall, 2002

You may recall in Part 1 of this story that I had just arrived to Beijing with an unlikely friend I met hours before on the flight from the USA. I was about to spend my Junior year of College in a foreign land: China.

The War in Iraq had started just before I left, and it was a very volatile time to be abroad.  The U.S. Department of State had given us a little script to use in difficult situations: “My name is ______, I am an ordinary American citizen and have no connection or influence over the President of the United States of America…”  America was one of the least popular nations in those days—warmongers, bullies, isolationists, greedy—you name it, and I assure you the French kids on the floor above ours made that abundantly clear. 

But in the brand-new international students’ dormitory, filled with Koreans, Germans, Canadians, and Japanese students, not everyone was antagonistic—not even all the French kids.  Now we were all international students, seeing the world from the other side of the coin, debating our youthful political ideas with Professors, cabbies, and restaurateurs—and in Mandarin. 

My Mother, a Professor of Socio-Linguistics, had prepared me for the staring—she said it was unlikely that I would go unnoticed in such a visually homogenous nation; after all I was relatively tall, brown, and had curly hair.  She was totally right—I was an object of fascination from the day I arrived to the day I left, continually mistaken for a famous Brazilian volleyball player.  No one believed me that I was actually no one special from Chicago and had never even played beach volleyball—they just thought I was being modest. 

On one occasion our Program Director took us to the Beijing Opera to meet a legend of the stage, after which he asked to be formally introduced.  Turns out he was a big fan of the epic volleyball championships in the 2000 Olympics.  In the course of a year I saw nine people who I would classify as having visible African origins, and they were all Engineering Ph.D. students from East Africa.  The fact that I spoke Chinese only fueled the fire.  I was regularly asked if people could touch my hair and my skin, and while it was a bit odd, you only had to look in people’s faces to see that these requests came from a place of curiosity rather than fear or hate.

My ‘outsider-ness’ was welcomed with great generosity of spirit and gifts.  It was easy to make Chinese friends—they were interested in the same things, just much more modest about everything.  We would all hang out, and go to the Palaces, the markets, the noodle bars, and then break off to go to our internships all over town.  I was working at the Golden Key Research Center of Education for the Visually Impaired—a pioneering NGO affiliated with UNESCO—doing Chinese-English text translations and learning how exactly Chinese Braille worked.

The Great Wall, China 2002

In the entire year there was never a dull moment: I climbed the Great Wall twice (see me with my friends in the picture above). I travelled for two weeks through Tibet staying at Buddhist monasteries, cycled amid thousands of people in Rush Hour traffic, and felt the sands of the Gobi Desert rush across my face when the weather turned.  I bartered so well in Mandarin by my second semester that certain vendors called me ‘The One’.  Once, a passing USC soccer player stopped to ask me in broken Chinese where the silk market was. 

It took me and the vendor about five minutes to stop laughing at the situation. Me! An American woman who had struggled for years to even get a grasp on Mandarin, was now being confused by another American for being Chinese??!  I had lived abroad before this, and I did so many times after my year in China—including getting a Master’s degree from Sweden—but interviewing committees always want to hear more about my experiences in China. 

International opportunities at elite universities will change your life and are well worth the challenges.  Most undergraduate and graduate school programs you would be interested in, and that I would suggest for you to consider, are courses taught in English.  If they are not taught in English then there are significant portions of the course which are taught in English and lesser portions taught in a language you are familiar with, such as French, German or Italian. 

By taking on this international university challenge you join an elite group of individuals who are worldly, memorable, and have networks that help establish unlimited professional careers.  Internationalism is the cornerstone of the modern world, and my decision to study in China was thus the starting point of my international career.   

The big question then, is what sort of career do you see for yourself?