The Crow's Nest

A friend of mine shared a joke on his Facebook page, “God made every person different—he got tired by the time he got to China.”

I forwarded this to my friends back home and they had a good laugh.

I guess it comes from the Chinese stereotype: “learned by rote, uncreative.” Likewise, during all the years I lived in China, I also heard many things about Americans, such as their informality and optimism, and how terrible they are in math.

But are all the stereotypes true?

Since the day after I landed in the U.S., I have become the main medicine my friends in China take to cure their curiosity about Americans, especially the mysterious life of American college students.

When I told my friends that the dormitory in my new school is coed, same building and floor, they were completely stunned.

At the college in China where I got my bachelor’s degree (and where my friends and I used to call “kindergarten”), dormitories are considered a second home among students. Based on the university policy, all college students have to live in dormitories during their four academic years. The dormitories are exclusively male or female, and all students must abide by curfews and visitation rules.

Rather than having a choice of one’s own, roommates are assigned, and four students share one room. In addition, the school generously provides a “babysitter” seated at the entrance of every dorm who spies on everyone who walks in or out. The babysitter is there especially to prevent visitors from sneaking in. A male who appears in a female dorm is unbearable to our guardians.

Partying plays a noticeable role in U.S. colleges. As one American student told me, “Partying is like a central part of student life, just a kind of relaxation and recreation.” At universities in China, it is the exception rather than the rule.

All dorms are closed and the electricity is turned off by 11 p.m. Even if students venture off campus to grab a drink, they have to be back before lights-out or they would be locked out for the night. Partying almost impossible.

Does this sound a little like the military? Maybe. On the bright side, I met three of my lifetime friends during our four years of living together. Every night when the electricity was turned off, we’d lie on our beds and chat about everything we saw and experienced that day. We played hide-and-seek games with our “babysitter” when she walked into each room to check if we were well disciplined. And we’d sneak out on weekends to do karaoke, one of the most popular entertainments among Chinese people, to ease stresses by yelling all the songs we knew on the list.

It is true that campus life in China is generally more conservative compared to America. However, for college students of both countries, college is not only a place to experience one’s independence and improve social development, it is also an environment in which one can be surrounded by friends and enjoy their transitional period between school life and reality.

nie@mail.usf.edu