Chinese contemporaries

On monday we had dinner with friends we made from Beijing Normal University. We went out to a hot pot place, it was very tasty. It was a lot of fun to talk with Chinese contemporaries and see the similarities and differences between the cultures. College seems like its a lot more intense here. They take around 20 classes a semester, and though each class meets less often than ours do, they still seem to have a much steeper workload. They say they spend most of their time studying, and live in dorms with like six people in a dorm room around the same size as the doubles back home. It doesn't sound like as much fun as American universities.

Even on weekends, they tend not to go to bars or parties that much it seems. They have a curfew of 11:30 PM; if they arrive later than that, they get fined (They say the way around this is to just stay out all night until the dorms open for morning hours).

Note that we're talking about students at Beijing Normal University here. BNU, along with Beijing University, is one of the top schools in the country, so these kids are probably a lot more intense than others. In general, it seems like college requires a lot more studying here at the expense of social time. Keep in mind that college is a lot more elite here than in America: A lot lower of a percentage of people go to college here than in America. Also, the percentage of people who can intellectually handle the rigors of college who can actually attend college is a lot lower too: We met many people working in the markets who could handle themselves very well in at least three languages (And while our interaction was limited, many of them we spoke to clearly had a grasp on the language that exceeded the note-list vendor-phrase type thing). Many of the vendors who work at such markets are young, college age people who are in many cases smart enough for college but do not have the money or connections to go there.

To be honest, i think i like our system of universities better. Perhaps this is easy for me to say, as I enjoy the free time and social aspects of our system (the idea of studying all the time isn't fun), but i think there is a lot to be said for the aspects of college that happen outside the classroom. College is when you do a lot of learning how to conduct yourself as an adult and when you really start to define yourself on your own terms, and I think the freedom to do things other than studying (and at times at the cost of studying) is one of the most valuable parts of college. The rigid study regime the Chinese colleges impose on their students I feel makes their college experience more akin to an intensified high school (in terms of the more structured environment), which I don't quite agree with. But, this is more conjecture.

Anyway, the dinner was very fun. It was fun to explain bits about our language and culture to each other. We explained to them what "nerd" was (and in the process found out that the stereotype of British people as rather stodgy was shared by at least one other culture), and explained to them that the pop music that the rest of the world thinks is "the" music of america is not actually listened to by anyone in america with the exception of girls in their early teens. We found out that they viewed Taiwanese people as backwards and out of touch, and then informed them that Taiwanese people had the same estimation of them.

We also found that out most significant things about college kids are pretty universal, including the humor of repeatedly prematurely dropping things from your chopsticks into the hot pot, splattering hot and spicy broth all over your friend's plates and table.

-Tom