College Culture

As much as it was comforting and familiar to live on a college campus again, life for Hwa Nan students is much different than life for American students, at least at Puget Sound. As I mentioned before, the Pacrimmers were much bigger spectacles in China than in any other country, and our celebrity and limited timeframe definitely prohibited us from really getting accustomed to Chinese college life. Nevertheless, I think it is interesting to compare the attitude and outlook of Hwa Nan students to those of my peers.

I don’t know whether it was due to the all-female dynamic, Chinese family structure, government influence or some other cultural difference, but the students at Hwa Nan stuck me as being a bit less mature and certainly less personally driven than most of the college students I know. The campus had a high school-like atmosphere, the girls seemed naïve to me, frequently shrieking and giggling, walking in small, tight groups, dressed to the nines for class each day, and seemingly much more concerned about social life than their studies. I felt guilty and misunderstood when I insisted that I had to finish writing my final paper, which was due the next day (25% of my grade!) instead of getting my nails painted with a girl I met one night. Excelling in academics wasn’t a priority for most girls, and when asked why they chose Hwa Nan, most answered that it was simply one of the few universities that accepted them – they reacted as if it were a no brainer. The grueling college entrance exams in China certainly make or break futures.

When I told my mom about Hwa Nan being a school for girls, she immediately assumed that it had a feminist, female-empowerment mission, which I never found to be true. Girls just go there to get a degree and a “ticket to the middle class” as one of the English professors put it. Many of the girls I met didn’t necessarily seem happy or motivated to be proactive about their futures at all, and female solidarity as not a priority for anyone.

The girls seemed to have very superficial relationships with their professors, and according to Marjie, a UPS graduate who is now teaching English at Hwa Nan, they are used to being lectured at rather than participating in class discussion. It is common to see girls speaking to each other, not even discreetly, during lectures and even during their classmates’ presentations. Education is a stepping stone and not a pursuit in itself it seems. This definitely may not be true about other Chinese universities and students. But at the very least, I think I can say that generally speaking, education in China isn’t the luxury that it is in the United States.

The more I thought about the Fuzhou university district atmosphere, and the more I talked about it with other Pacrimmers, the more it began to strike me as being incredibly mechanized, rigid and almost repressive for the students. As I’ve said, the only contact with life outside campus is a 30-60 minute bus ride downtown, as there is literally nothing within walking distance but other campuses. Pretty much the only people on that bus are college kids. Each campus is gated, even the biggest ones, with security guards on duty 24/7. Students need to flash their school IDs before being allowed in. Hwa Nan is even surrounded by a mote. It may have something to do with irrigation or plumbing, but still, not exactly welcoming.

Anyway, I could be totally off base with all of this, but a lot of what I observed gave me the feeling that freedom and individual prerogative are not only less of a priority for Chinese people, but less of a possibility. Many of the people I met seem to have bought into their role in the big China “machine,” and they seem to trust that if they do what they are “supposed” to do, they will achieve a comfortable life. No one seemed to have exceptionally lofty aspirations.

I know I’m making judgments based on very little evidence here, but this is just me thinking out loud. No offense.