Student Life

As many of you know or probably could have guessed, school in China is very different than it is in America. In fact, "very different" is probably an understatement -- "completely different" is more accurate. Starting in elementary school, kids are under a lot of pressure to test into a good middle school, which will get them into a good high school, which, in turn, will open up opportunities to test into a good university. You may have also heard that Chinese universities are very lax because all the big, life-altering tests are over. While this may be true to some extent, I am here to tell you today that life at a Chinese university is no lame walk in the park.

Chinese universities are much more structured and stiff than American universities, I have found. Nearly all students -- even the masters and doctorate students -- live in the dorms on campus, and most of the time they eat at the school cafeteria. Graduating late or slow is barely even an option, as all required general and major classes are planned out by semester for each major. Students can loaf around and not be diligent with their schoolwork if they want, but if they want to do well in their classes, they have to work just as hard as they did in high school. One other big difference is that classes are often lumped together into long, drawn-out blocks. For example, in America, a three-credit class would probably consist of going to a one-hour lecture three times a week. In China, however, this means that you have one long three-hour lecture every week. On top of that, semesters are generally eighteen to twenty weeks long, and chairs are not comfortable at all. My back is hurting already.

Nanjing University itself has some "special features." Originally, Nanjing University was an American Christian school established in the late nineteenth century called Jinling University. Jinling University was one of five of such American schools, and according to one of my probably very biased professors, it was the best of the five, maybe even the best in the whole country at the time. I cannot verify the accuracy of this statement, but I do know that award-winning author Pearl Buck and her husband were stationed in Nanjing as professors, so I feel like it was at least a noteworthy university. As time passed, wars, revolutions, and other things happened, the American professors were sent home, and the name of the university was changed to China Zhongyang University, then to Nanjing University. Today, it still ranks around number five out of all Chinese universities, and the original campus remains intact.

Although the original campus is still there, nearly all of the undergraduate classes and many of the graduate classes have moved out to the new Xianlin campus. The study abroad building is on the old Gulou city-center campus, so all the students in our program are required to live close to this campus, even though most of the classes are about 40 minutes away by metro. This also means that most of our undergraduate peers are living out in the middle of nowhere on the Xianlin campus. New freshmen at Nanjing University probably have it the worst, though: Not only do they have to live out in the middle of nowhere, away from their families for the first time, they also have to participate in full-time military training for the first two weeks of school. According to my roommate and tutor, this training is a nationwide tradition borrowed from the Soviet Union, and the students are not expected to become soldiers after graduation.

Now, all of these things that I have brought up about Chinese universities and Nanjing University in particular are quite different than anything I have experienced in the US, but none of them hold a candle to the havoc that is wreaked when a foreigner walks into a Chinese classroom. I got to experience this exciting phenomenon on my first day of class, and I have to say that the attention I got for being the only white guy that any of these Chinese students had ever been in a class with is much more notable than any of the differences listed above. For example, in the first class I attended, the teacher himself was obviously very perturbed that I was in the class. He stood up to start teaching, and said in hesitant English, "Hello everybody, welcome to class." Then, gesturing at me, "It looks like we have a visitor here today. Where are you from?" If not all of the students knew I was there before, they definitely were keenly aware now. All eyes were on me. I answered in *Chinese, and the professor immediately looked much more relieved. His English was pretty good, but it probably would not have made it through the whole three-hour lecture. That aside, I have no idea what the other students would have done if he had continued in English. They have enough material to wade through as it is, adding a foreign language on top of that would be chaotic.

The second class that day was even more exciting. It was a bigger class full of bright-eyed sophomores. The teacher had the foresight to talk to me beforehand and make sure I could speak Chinese. What I failed to realize was that he was going to use me in his lecture. He started off like most professors do on the first day with some general life advice, telling the students that freedom means you have to accept the consequences of your actions and such. He went on with that for a while, and the topic eventually drifted to American politics. The next thing I know, the professor is asking me across the whole classroom in his thick Jiangsu accent, "American friend, why did President Nixon resign?" I was caught off guard, and literally the whole class was staring at me, so I just said, "Ummmm." He asked me again, and I managed a slightly more coherent response about something to do with the election. At this point, the class had already exploded into mini-conversations about what I can only assume were about the Chinese-speaking American that doesn't even know his own country's history. The teacher didn't call on me any more after that, and none of the students were willing to make eye-contact with me, even if I caught them staring.

In short, attending a Chinese university is simultaneously eye-opening and exciting. I highly recommend it if you have a chance.

-小强

*During the next lecture, I decided to talk to some of my classmates and try to make friends. The guy I ended up talking to said that he had heard that I had lived in China for a long time and had been speaking Chinese my whole life. I guess rumors spread fast around here!

Here I am on a rainy day at the front of the Xianlin campus