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An IT student spends a year in China
by Laura Walbrink
"China seemed like the best fit for me," says Michele Zoromski of her decision to study abroad last year. "One Chinese class turned into a minor and then into a major. I figured that the quickest way to get an overseas position with a company would be to have already gone to China."
Michele, a senior majoring in chemical engineering and Chinese, spent 14 months in China. Beginning at Nankai University in Tianjin, she completed one year's worth of credits in Chinese language and literature. She enrolled at Beijing University through the Chinese Universities Exchange Program. Michele's studies at Nankai University were "very structured. I went to a Tai Chi class before school. I took literature in the afternoon and Chinese language in the morning." She attended four hours of language classes each day and notes that "the basis for grading of tests and papers was very similar to U.S. academics." The relatively rigid schedule proved to be "a good transition. The first three months were concentrated on my language skills," which, she says, needed improvement.
Because the Nankai program is developed in conjunction with the University of Minnesota, grades and credits appear on a student's transcript. For this reason, a program coordinator is assigned to ensure that the grading is fair and comparable to that of the University of Minnesota. During Michele's stay, Theresa Wang, an American graduate student at the University of Minnesota, filled this position, but her duties extended beyond academic administration. She coordinated extracurricular activities, including a trip to inner Mongolia. As a fluent speaker of Chinese, she was able to help students with visa problems and other bureaucratic difficulties. "She knew the faculty and the president of the university," Michele says. "She had the 'guanxi,' or 'connections'. If you don't have the 'guanxi' in China, you'll never get anything done." For students who were living abroad for the first time, "she was always there. She was your friend, your mother, your everything."
At Beijing University, Michele, who had taken two years of Chinese courses at the University, pursued an intensive course of study. She earned an additional thirty-six credits in classical Chinese, Chinese literature, and Chinese grammar courses. Her advisor spoke only Chinese and, while helpful, offered less guidance than the coordinator at Nankai. In Tianjin, she was among other University of Minnesota students and many Americans; at Beijing, she was the only student from Minnesota, and the majority of international students came from Korea, Japan, and Europe. During the first five months, Michele studied Chinese in classes comprised exclusively of international students. When she enrolled in language courses with Chinese students for the second half of the program, she found the courses more rigorous. Particularly demanding, she says, was classical Chinese. Even native speakers find this subject challenging because the characters are more complicated than the simplified ones used in China today. Because "one character can mean seven words," translation is difficult. She worked with a private tutor six hours per week to enhance her skills. "It gives you respect for students who are coming here and studying engineering," Michele says. "They have to take the tests and do the homework. The technology terms are entirely different from standard English vocabulary, and they're doing their whole degree here."
Before participating in the study abroad programs, Michele had decided that she wanted to use both her chemical engineering and Chinese degrees by working for a U.S. company in China after graduation. She knew little of the culture, however, and was concerned about taking a job there before seeing the country. "Just because you like the language doesn't mean you're going to like the country," she says. "But I loved it there and definitely plan, if the opportunity arises, to work in China."
Although learning English is now mandatory for Chinese students, they usually read and write it far better than they speak it, simply because "they don't have anyone to practice with." Since "it's very rare to find a Chinese person who can speak English in your everyday travel, you're completely immersed. You're always speaking Chinese." Michele remarks that the Chinese were very supportive of her. "They're very impressed when you just try to speak Chinese. It's shocking to them."
As an exchange student, Michele was housed in an international student dormitory. "Foreigners are always housed separately from the Chinese," she explains. "They don't want foreigners influencing the Chinese. Before I went, I was a little upset because I wanted to be fully immersed, but it was really great living in the international dorms." The 400 international students at Nankai University and 800 at Beijing University are housed two per room. By comparison, six Chinese students share a room. Space is at a premium in China, Michele says, and the government is subsidizing Chinese students' housing. International students, on the other hand, must pay their expenses. Michele participated in a University of Minnesota program in which she paid tuition for an exchange student to come here; in return, she received a scholarship to attend school in China.
Universities in China are arranged quite differently from those in the United States. Each university specializes in either liberal arts, technical studies, or medicine. All, however, are generally located in one area. "Every school is like its own city," Michele says. "It has a wall and guards. You have to show your ID to get in and out. The teachers live there, and most of the students live there. There are stores and restaurants inside the university. All campuses have lily ponds and landscaping. They're meant to be very beautiful."
At Nankai University, "there are guards, but you don't usually have to show your ID. They're not armed at either university," but security is much tighter at Beijing University. The school is considered to have been "the nerve center for the uprising at Tiananmen Square. As the top liberal arts university in China, it's got a lot of people with opinions." She compares its political climate to that of the University of California at Berkeley. As the nation's capital, Beijing itself is heavily guarded. "If anything were to start, that's where it would happen," Michele says.
As a foreigner, Michele struggled daily with China's pervasive bureaucracy. Even the seemingly simple act of purchasing train tickets can be frustrating for those who don't understand how the system works.
"It's like when you first come to the University of Minnesota," she says. "Offices don't know anything about other offices, and the rules are really rigid. There's no book where it's written down, but every culture has its own way of getting things done." In Beijing, though, new legislation left Michele wondering whether she would be forced to leave China. "I came with a three-month visa because Beijing hadn't given me the papers for my year-long visa. They said not to worry and that it wouldn't be a problem. In the meantime, they changed the laws so that now you have to leave the country to get a visa extended. I would have had to go to Hong Kong, which would have been very expensive." Believing that "that wasn't my responsibility," she refused to travel to Hong Kong. After a month and a half, she finally received special permission from Beijing University to renew her visa every three months.
Foreigners who move to the country go through three stages, Michele says. "When you first get there, everything is exciting and new. You have problems with the bureaucracy, but you block them out. Then three months later, as you begin to recognize the system, you realize that you've got these problems and you're arguing every day." For Michele, the stress associated with the constant battles resulted in anger and fatigue. "But one day," she discovered, "you're fighting just as hard and it doesn't affect your day at all. You're not angry or sad or moody; you realize that that's what you have to do to get things done. All of a sudden, the irritation stops. That's when you become integrated into the society."
Of the Communist Chinese government, she says, "Of course it's a trade-off. But when I left this country, I wasn't very happy with the U.S. either. It's very materialistic here--so much excess and waste." After living in China, she finds that "there are still bad things in the U.S., but you realize how much you have here." For Michele, China's attractive qualities compensate for its governmental deficiencies. "It's amazing to live in another culture. The people are so nice. They're very hospitable and friendly. Their culture is based on three thousand years of history. They all know their history and are very proud of it. You won't find that in the U.S."
While in Beijing, Michele developed appendicitis and needed surgery. The symptoms, which she initially mistook for food poisoning, began late at night. She took a cab to the foreigners' clinic, where she was referred to the Chinese-Japanese Friendship Hospital. The hospital, a joint venture between the Chinese and Japanese governments, is generally considered to be Beijing's best because all of its doctors have studied in Japan, a first-world nation. Before her surgery, though, she was unsure of the quality of China's medical resources. "The worst thing I had to do," she says, "was call my parents. My mom, who has worked in health care for years, asked, 'How's the medical care?' I had to say, 'I don't know, but I don't have a choice.'" As it turned out, she was pleased by the high quality of treatment she received at the hospital. Although she endured hours of testing before the operation, "I was very fortunate because the medical care was excellent--doctors, nurses, everyone was great." Because her Chinese health care coverage did not extend to the hospital's geographic district, she had to pay up front for her surgery. "I charged it with my Visa card," she says. Her private insurance policy eventually reimbursed her for the her one-week hospital stay, which cost just one third of the price of comparable medical care in America.
One benefit of residing in China as a foreigner is the low cost of living. The favorable currency exchange ratio allowed Michele to buy breakfast for as little as fifteen cents. Even dinner at a restaurant usually cost only slightly more than a dollar. Transportation was also inexpensive. Taking the bus across town cost twenty cents, and Michele traveled around the country by train for less than fifty dollars round-trip. The low cost of public transportation combined with the high price of cars provides an incentive not to purchase automobiles. "The only cars allowed are Audis, BMWs, Mercedes--expensive cars that few people can afford. The government doesn't allow cheap cars to be imported because the highway system can't support the traffic."
Although crime in Beijing is said to be on the rise, Michele never witnessed one. The most common crime in China is theft, she says. A typical setting for pickpocketing is the bus, which is usually extremely crowded. "Criminals see where you take your money out to pay the attendant. Then they take the money from that area, sometimes using a knife to cut open fabric." Friends told Michele how to carry her money safely. She suggests that another reason why she was never a victim of crime is that "if you were a Chinese person caught committing a crime against a foreigner, the sentence would be pretty severe. It might be stricter just because of the potential publicity. The American embassy is located nearby, and if something happens to a foreigner, CNN is right there. Foreigners are very visible," she adds.
Shortly after arriving in Beijing, Michele attended a University of Minnesota Chinese alumni meeting. The 'U' has the highest Chinese population of any American university. At the meeting, she listened to people, some in their seventies, describe their experiences and what they're doing today. "They made me food and explained traditions and history," she says, adding that she visited their homes once or twice a month. Michele befriended Chinese as well as international students, but most of her friends were older adults. Many of the Chinese students wanted to go to America and had questions about life in the U.S., but they were also looking for an English tutor. "That wasn't what I was looking for," she says. Instead, she spent time with the families of her older friends, many of whom had children her age.
One of the more difficult cultural lessons Michele learned was how to bargain for the best prices in the Chinese open market. Vendors prey on foreigners, particularly Westerners, who they correctly perceive as having a lot of money, at least by comparison to the Chinese. They were surprised when Michele refused to accept their initial marked-up price. Bargaining is "kind of addicting," she admits. Usually, though, she didn't mind paying what she considered to be a fair price. "They figure that you've got money to spare, so they'll make money off you if they can. They know that you definitely have more money than the Chinese," she explains.
Unlike Americans, who typically do not consider it polite to discuss salaries and ask the cost of others' purchases, the Chinese consider it a compliment to ask someone where an item was purchased and how much it cost. Asking about the price of something serves a practical purpose: it helps the inquirer determine the proper value of the item, which is valuable information when bargaining for it.
The stereotype among Chinese of the wealthy American followed Michele throughout her stay. "They think we all live like in 'Dynasty,'" she says. "When you tell them you're a student and you borrowed your money to get here, they don't really believe you.
Sometimes it's hard to get around that. People ask questions; they want their ideas verified. They want to hear that you have a lot of money. It can be frustrating."
During the Chinese New Year holiday, which lasts one month for students, Michele hiked through the mountains of Yunnan, a province in the southwest near Vietnam. She spent three days on Hainan Island, a tropical locale in the south of China. Fireworks exploded throughout her visit. "You could never have imagined anything that loud in your life," she says. Last year, she adds, was the Year of the Pig. "There were all these little inflatable pigs everywhere," she describes. "People would put up signs, poems, and sayings on their doors. It's like a carnival. There are games and music. There was a basketball contest." She spent New Year's Day mountain biking through the countryside in Guilin, a southern city known for its mountains. "It's beautiful," she says.
Michele went to China with very little knowledge of the country. "Everything I knew was based on the accounts of people who went there five years ago," she says. When she arrived, "it was the modernization that shocked me, just because it's progressing so rapidly." She believes that Americans should become proficient in Chinese language and culture. "If you can speak Chinese and English," she says, "you can converse with half of the people in the world. If we expect everyone to learn English, we're going to be at a disadvantage. Right now, we're bringing our products to China.
Someday, they're going to bring their products to us--cheaper and more efficiently. We're going to have to be able to communicate and negotiate with them." The U.S., she says, expects everyone to conduct business in the Western model. "If we don't understand the Eastern way of doing business, we're going to lose out," she warns.
Studying abroad "gives you a different outlook on life. It gives you a sincere sense of accomplishment. You've learned a new language and become integrated into the society. That's what draws me to China," Michele explains. "It's a challenging place. You come back and you really appreciate how convenient everything is in the U.S., how easy it is. Everything's so comfortable here. Every place has air conditioning and heating. You have a car. You can go wherever you want and do whatever you want."
Despite the advantages of American living, Michele hopes to return to China after graduating. "The job, in general, will offer me a technical challenge as well as a cultural challenge, which is what I'm looking for," she says. "I live for that challenge."
For further reading, see "Exploring IT Abroad" (Mar/Apr '98 Technolog), IT students' adventures abroad and the possibilities for the future.
