The Harm of Studying Abroad
readingthechinadream.com
readingthechinadream.com
Some of the points seemingly have nothing to do with studying abroad, but the nature of the university he attended, for example,
> First, you have no time. You read a lot but there’s no time to think.
This is has nothing to do with being a foreigner, or being in any specific country. It's a university culture, and every university has its own pace of teaching, in China or US.
And then,
> Of course, it makes no difference if you don’t go > to bookstores in the US, but if you bring this habit > back with you, it means that you don’t go to bookstores > in China
Seriously? How hard it is to consciously decide to go to a book store when you are in need of a book? This also seems to imply that China has no good libraries, which is untrue. I'm from a small city in China, and I borrowed so many books from the city library. That was how I got into programming as well, borrowing a book about Turbo Pascal.
Personally, I think the biggest difficulty for a Chinese in studying abroad in the US, is the difficulty of being accepted into the circle. You could make friends and acquaintances with Americans, but you're never part of "them". I constantly feel like I'm on the wrong side of a aquarium glass pane, being observed and judged.
There are two real choices: 1) pretend to be a white person and be extremely amiable, or 2) fallback to the smaller circle of Chinese people in US.
> My sole desire is that when future generations come of age, they will inherit a mature academic tradition, and will not have to travel such long distances and endure these various discomforts.
I am sure the Chinese academy will continue to grow and develop dramatically over the next few decades, but it takes generations to rebuild after as big a disruption as the cultural revolution etc.
Can you expand on this? Are you saying that foreigners at university need to be more amiable to be accepted than they would otherwise?
I made friends because we loved talking about healthcare policy, from being on the debate team, from a shared love for Mad Men, from being interested in starting companies. I did all of this as someone who'd spent the decade preceding college growing up in Bangladesh, with a thick accent and somehow ended up with a group of friends from all around the world.
I'm not saying any of this was easy, but I do think there's a self-defeating element to believing what the parent does.
This is likely not true for most people.
What parent talks about is acceptance and being member of in-group. That is much much different. It is also much different to really click and be really in-group with people from another culture, because you can't rely on assumptions you grew with.
This is likely not true for most people.
You and almost everyone else. It's much easier to be emotionally vulnerable using a "throw-away account".
For an example, if you come out as gay to some stranger on a train, it's almost certain that there will never be any real-world repercussions. But if you come out as gay to someone in your hometown, it will likely change your life forever.
> I've made meaningful connections with people in every country I've lived in for more than a week. [...] This is likely not true for most people.
Funny, I've heard some variation on this speech from most people who get to travel around the world for a year.
I attribute it to not having to worry about money, myself, and it's my belief that a majority of humanity would be that way, if they could afford it.
Totally agree, if you start off thinking that it's hard to make friends with foreigners, it might discourage you and causing you to not even try.
That being said, pretending the barrier doesn't exist is also harmful, because you do need to try harder. Without that expectation and conscious effort, most people naturally gravitate towards their existing in-group, which may be drawn along not just racial lines, but also regional, political, class, or any other lines that causes difference.
Edit: different groups are also treated differently, because they benefit or suffer from different stereotypes. A white American living in Asia will have very different experience than an Asian person living in US.
It happens whenever you have that community available. If it's just yourself, then you are forced to adjust. I saw it happening with my family members too. The ones that went to the large immigrant community led to them not knowing English well, while the more isolated ones integrated properly. One even first went to somewhere with no community, and when they moved to somewhere with community they said that their English used to be better back there! I also saw how they became a burden on their children as they were not able to function properly in a country where they couldn't speak the language properly, closing off opportunity to themselves.
On the other side with Chinese students who come over to a western country, I found it frustrating that they were pretty shy & insular when speaking english while they were gregarious and cracking jokes in chinese amongst each other. I tried to connect, but I think they feel too embarrassed to try to speak english, so they don't practice enough outside the minimum and never reach competency and then stick with their chinese friendship group. And they don't seem that interested most of the time :(
You also see it happening with western expats in asian countries too.
So my suggestion to anyone moving to another country and planning to stay there for years, avoid the home group and force yourself to speak with mistakes. Otherwise you hurt and isolate yourself instead and write sour grapes essays like this one.
I am white but I have heard this from Asian people and Asian Americans. I wonder if some of it could vary from region to region. For example an Asian American friend had very big problems in Florida. Her white peers said unbelievably ignorant things to a fully American born, ordinary American from the northeast. And my first instinct hearing this was "yeah, well, Florida".
That's not to say it doesn't happen everywhere. I know I have heard complaints of this category here in San Francisco.
Actually calling those racism is a bit overblown compared to lynchings or police shootings. It's mostly biases and stereotypes affecting how people treat strangers, and Asians suffer silently in those situations like many other groups.
Think of the recent issue where a black woman and her child was denied service at a restaurant due to "dress code", if it didn't happen that a white kid had similar clothing as her kid, she wouldn't have realized it was racial profiling.
It's the same in Asia. Except not so subtle.
I think that the history, in both cases, is that imperialism moved groups of people around the world in response to specific labor shortages. That has left a lot of communities that are still concentrated in whatever economic niche the British dropped them in, and who the "locals" still resent sharing "their" country with.
I trust that the need for scare quotes is obvious when discussing an English speaking community that considers itself local to a part of North America named San Fransisco.
Having tried to make friends with people from many cultures I found my luck to be in the 10-20% range. Majority of people in every culture are only comfortable with people of their own culture. It can be hard to find the few people who are open to developing friendship with people of a different culture.
> This is has nothing to do with being a foreigner, or being in any specific country. It's a university culture, and every university has its own pace of teaching, in China or US.
I think it also has substantially to do with reading/linguistic fluency in the language the class is taught in. Many university courses are paced to push the abilities of well prepared, ambitious, and dedicated native speakers.
If you have to read 500+ pages/week (or in some fields, more like 1000+ pages/week), and write a paper on average once every other week, you have to be a very strong reader, with a lot of experience analyzing and constructing linguistic arguments.
A non-native speaker who is a bit uncomfortable with reading might read at half the speed of their fellow students; they could end up spending twice as much time while still comprehending less, and it would be a serious struggle.
> This is has nothing to do with being a foreigner, or being in any specific country. It's a university culture, and every university has its own pace of teaching, in China or US.
It seems odd to assume that every University's pace is set independently of every other University. The vast majority of Universities and professors base their workload using other similar Universities as a reference. Either explicitly or implicitly. Some professors choose to make their courses more or less demanding, but even this is done as an adjustment from the reference point. Because of this, norms can vary significantly across different parts of the world.
I've never studied in China, so I can't say whether Chinese Universities really are less demanding. But after living and studying in multiple countries, I've certainly seen that norms do exist, and vary across different parts of the world.
> How hard it is to consciously decide to go to a book store when you are in need of a book?
That's the entire point. It's not hard at all when you consciously think about it and decide to do it. But most of our decisions and thoughts are driven by habits, not conscious thought. For example, it is extremely easy to not waste my time writing pointless comments on HN. And yet, here I am, because this is my habitual response to boredom.
One of my classmates in university was from mainland China. He loved being in Canada and everything we were learning in school. He'd gone to another university before and already had a degree in a similar field.
Then near the end of the last year, he got word from home that his father was getting ill and it was time for him to return and takeover the family business. So after graduation, he left, lost touch with everyone and as far as I know now runs his family's business in China totally unrelated to what we were going to school for and that was that.
He seemed to accept everything, but was still pretty sad about it all. Not just his dad being ill, but having to go back, leave all the friends and life he'd made here, give up everything he'd went to school for and just go like the last near decade of his life never happened. I still have him as a facebook friend, he hasn't been online since he left though.
As a foreigner living in Taiwan, the vast majority of people here do the very same to me as well. I am constantly shut out of circles and deemed too weird to actually know yet always being watched like some sociological specimen. I don’t think that “othering” is a known concept here or if it were it registers pretty low on people priorities when interacting with me or mindlessly staring at me while I eat in public..
People will literally take their children away from the park when I bring my daughter to play. I must insist that I was a well adjusted and popular enough guy home. It’s been a bit of a heartbreaking experience to realize that probably every culture on earth has irreconcilably racial biases and prejudices inherent in the majority because the most common unifier amongst all people is stupidity.
Also, when you mention Americans and never being a part of them do you mean all Americans including blacks, latinos, natives, arabs..? I see a great deal of projection going on here where Chinese Americans are being shut out of socializing when it seems to me the truth is that many Chinese born people living in the west actually don’t like the culture all that much and don’t want to integrate either but don’t vocalize it this way because it doesn’t sound nice to say.
> Zhang is surely right that doing an advanced degree in a foreign language is a challenge involving at times a loss of autonomy and a loss of status. More interesting is the overall tone of the text, which comes close to saying that the experience is a waste of time. This is not only because study abroad involves rote learning of someone else’s knowledge, but because China is the place to be. As Zhang puts it:
> “If you live abroad for a long time, you will miss many theoretically interesting things happening in China. Society in the West has been settled for hundreds of years, and not that much that is really new occurs. But China is entering a new era, full of potential.”
...
Valid points, for sure, but not everyone is reaping that new era full of potential. China is a great place to be if you've got the right connections, but no so great if you're gay, muslim, tibetan, or like to have opinions. Plus the great explosion of growth of China is now slowing down. Still many developments to come, for sure, but those may not play out in ways we expect.
Also think it's hilarious that he's bashing the U of C's "rote learning" when that's a huge part of China's entrance exams, or how foreign Uni's will limit your thought -- cuz the CCP tells Tsinghua "teach what you want", right?
This might be true for the majority of China, but for big cities like Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen, no, connections mean far less even comparing to western world.
> but no so great if you're gay, muslim, tibetan, or like to have opinions.
Do you get this from reading western media or did you actually go there and talk to those actual human beings? I can't speak for everywhere, but being an ethnic minority comes with tons of perks in China. For ethnic minorities, one child policy never applied to them, the kids get extra points during high school/university entrance exams, my Mongolian roommate even got extra financial support due to his ethnicity. People would fabricate document to gain minority status because that gives their kids an edge in almost everywhere. Growing up, as a Han Chinese, I always feel this is unfair and absurd.
As for religions, again I can't speak for Xinjiang itself, but from my experience in east coast, no one cares what religion you believe in. It's only an issue when you try to challenge the government with it. You can find mosque and churches in most cities.
And gay? Believe or not, I know it sounds absurd, but being gay is sort of a hip thing among the youngsters. The will obviously face repulsions from older generations, but this rings true all around the world. Bottom line is, the general public does not actively persecute the LGBT group, nor do they care.
The only thing that would bring you trouble is having an opinion against the government. I am not saying this is not a big issue, but stop pretending that the country is constantly oppressing everyone.
This is also a perfect example of media manipulation, is it not? Put on a sensational title to grab attention, but convenient ignore the fact that similar sentences were given out to people selling straight porn. While I don't agree this should be illegal but this is not a good example of prosecutions against the LGBT group.
But stepping away from perceptions: being any kind of critic (say, someone warning of a new corona virus epidemic) or just being the wrong religion/ethnicity can mean your life will be hell in China. Look at the treatment of those giving first warnings from Wuhan - even the globally/publicly known critics have been disappeared; and there are many more that never reached this visibility and have the same happen to them.
More at scale: more than 1 Million Uyghurs are in what propaganda calls 'vocational training institutions', which translates to them being brought to and held against their will in reeducation camps. The stories coming out of there ate nightmarish. Assigned CPC representatives live in their homes to keep watch, and in cases where one or several parents in those camps the children were forcibly put into orphanages and the parents have no chance to find out where they are and even less chance to get them back.
Sorry but China is absolutely and 100% oppressing these people, just for existing and daring to be born in a specific ethnicity/religion.
Relevant excerpt: "The things you think about are decided by your professors, and you follow their lead as you develop your thoughts instead of asking yourself what questions you developed from your reading or what link it might produce with your own background. So you just do your best to chew the cud and digest the material. And if you actually learn something, it is transplanted out of nothing and remains attached to its origin rather than sinking roots or sprouting branches. When study is nothing but rote learning, who doesn’t lose their appetite?"
I've seen both sides. 99% of complaints you read on the internet are written by people who've never been to the country they're complaining about, and whose sum total knowledge consists of a cheap stereotype.
> You sing the praises of whatever it is that your enemy opposes, and you oppose whatever your enemy praises.
That screams like someone who feels pushed out and isolated from their immediate society (in this case, the foreign culture they were studying in).
That's me, and I totally have a different take.
I studied abroad as a foreign language major - but only after three full years of studying the language and culture of the country I was visiting. It was an enriching experience and I felt pretty comfortable navigating the country socially and professionally. Study abroad was a requirement for me to graduate. I did the longer trip after a previous two week trip to the same place. I met via skype with my professor back in the US weekly for an independent study course, and that gave me the chance to reflect and make sense of my experiences with a trusted mentor (who was a native of the country herself). The professor even dropped by to visit me in person during her summer trip to the country.
I think all of these things factored into making it an amazing experience and time of growth, as opposed to an isolating and depressing experience. Even with all that support and background knowledge I still dealt with my fair share of culture shock, home sickness, and isolation - all of which are important parts of the learning experience, in appropriate doses. But without the support system and preparation I had, I would imagine that the experience could have been very negative.
Study abroad is an incredible and enriching experience - but it takes a lot more resources than just buying a college kid a plane ticket to another country and sending them on their way. Of course that can be useful for a certain adventurous types as well. But institutionally, study abroad takes deliberate planning and support to make it meaningful for everybody who participates. Otherwise it can surely be just as bad as this author makes it out to be.
As an European who attended university in four European countries I can attest how enriching and fulfilling those years have been, and how much I have grown.
I would strongly recommend studying abroad to anybody who has the chance. Even as an introvert it was easy to make friends.
It's a cultural thing, some cultures are more open and welcoming than others.
Maybe there was no other Chinese students to hang with?
(She's currently on the student committee whose purpose is to get intl' students to interact outside their cliques. But I wonder how many there will actually be this Fall term.)
But IME that's nothing to do with studying. I had the same experience later while working in Germany
It's absolutely predictable. I sincerely hope I won't ever have to endure the displeasure of meeting any of these HN commenters in person.
Okay that has to be partially self inflicted. Too many people travel with no attempt to integrate with locals. I will grant that it's not easy, and many Americans fall into the same trap during their study abroad time, but that's perhaps the great allure and challenge is it not?
https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2012/06/19/the-rise-of-asian...
Most people don't hate or even loathe foreigners and certainly not Asians, but social circles everywhere tend to be pretty narrow.
He may have had some nice students or profs invite him on the occasional thing out of social courtesy and genuine interest, but people really far from one another socially are not going to get tons of 'hang time'.
As Uni becomes a little bit more simply 'where you go after high school' and more a social experience, as opposed to being a truly academic experience, I suggest this issue may even be exacerbated.
I don't doubt the social isolation is real for people, but I don't think hostile language is where we need to go.
I work with a diverse group of individuals and go out for socialization at least once a month with my foreign peers who don't speak my language as their first language and were born and raised in another country.
>I don't think hostile language is where we need to go.
When the POTUS is demonizing Chinese people by saying things like "the china virus" it makes people not want to interact with Chinese people. Language is very important, and hostile language, especially against different nationalities, is an easy step.
It does not end here though.
What they meant by the neo-legalism in the website, is actually centered a round a blended Taoism with a shell of a codified rules & laws in the legalism methodology. What historically is called "内圣外王", roughly "holds a saint-like attitude internally, but sternly executes the laws like a master".
The website claims that the capticalism is going to be replaced by such a reinvented system from the ancient tradition.
The whole thing has a strong flare of the historically-bestowed self-righteousness of the conventional Chinese scholar, as often recognized by western scholars on China study.
[1] http://www.xinfajia.net/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalism_(Chinese_philosophy)
I studied abroad because I REALLY wanted to. I was immensely looking forward to traveling, experiencing new customs, learning new ways of thinking and even learning more than the basics of the language.
It was an experience I will value forever.
I think a big difference is that when Americans or Europeans study abroad, they are looking for an experience, when Chinese students (if this guy is to be believed) are looking to pad their resumes.
Same goes for college. If you go to college so you can put it on your resume, then you will hate it. If you go to college looking to learn, make friends and acquire skills, then it will be fantastic.
I'm a bit dubious about a lot of the other reasons in the article, but one strikes me as very true, perhaps just because I directly observed it.
I'm just wrapping up an MSc in the UK. One thing I have noticed in my program is that language is a huge barrier for the Chinese students. Their questions often reveal they are struggling to follow in lectures, they struggle to make others understand their arguments, and they get tasked with less responsibility in group assignments. Furthermore, the extra time needed to read texts, write papers, and generally learn more English comes at the cost of time spent on their actual topic of interest.
I can't imagine how demotivating this must be, and generally how much more difficult the program must be as a result. I wouldn't be surprised at all if some of their counterparts in China have more academic/career success as a result of not having language as another burden.
So naturally, he resisted and resented this fate, not unlike many of my friends resented having to finish University and pass classes they had no interest in.
The points he makes, I did not find to be insightful or interesting. They're down to earth, simple, human observations, not unlike the stories I hear from someone who goes on vacation. At least this guy didn't spend most of his time talking about food :)
1. This is completely false. You have just as much time as you would have had back at home. Yes, you might have more things to worry about being on your own but you can certainly make up for it and learn to make compromises quickly. Expecting to come out fully prepared out of university is plain stupid. In most scenarios you end up with an average amount of theoretical and practical knowledge but you are nowhere before you end up crashing into your first job when you realize that the studying is just beginning.
2. That is highly personal. You either live with the mindset that you need a degree to get a job or take the most out of the situation. If the degree is your primary goal, then yes, you won't have the adequate will and determination to better yourself. I had professors that spent 5 or 6 hours after lectures talking to me and explaining some nitty-gritty details just because they saw I had genuine interest. I never asked them to dedicate any more than a few minutes but on multiple occasions we ended up staying in the hallways way past midnight discussing different topics.
3. I honestly don't get that point.
4. While the friends and family statement is correct and fitting in somewhere new is something that takes forever, regardless of the tons of effort and dedication, if you find peace in being alone, it's a huge advantage. Sooner rather than later I fell in love with digging deeper and deeper and following rabbit holes that most of my peers had no clue about. Eventually I became the second-best student by a fraction of a percent, given that I was studying in a foreign language.
5. Depending on what you are studying, this might be a good thing. My native language has very little in common with the two other languages I've had to learn, other than the fact that they are all European. Their structure is vastly different, two different alphabets, completely different way of constructing sentences and thoughts in general. For software engineering, I feel like this is a brilliant mental exercise.
6. In a vastly globalized world, this seems like a non-issue. If anything it teaches you to look at things from multiple perspectives and take the best out of both worlds. Certain solutions can be applied successfully in completely opposite social and political environments and solve multiple problems in the process.
7. Same as 3, I really don't understand the point the author is trying to make.
> You read really quickly, discuss really quickly, turn in your papers really quickly. The things you think about are decided by your professors, and you follow their lead as you develop your thoughts instead of asking yourself what questions you developed from your reading or what link it might produce with your own background. So you just do your best to chew the cud and digest the material. And if you actually learn something, it is transplanted out of nothing and remains attached to its origin rather than sinking roots or sprouting branches. When study is nothing but rote learning, who doesn’t lose their appetite?
It also seems that a lot of what caused the century of humiliation for China was this inward-looking tendency in Chinese culture, a tendency that left them ignorant of western ideas and technology until it was essentially too late. It also seems that a lot of the reinvigoration of China is due to a spirit of openness towards the rest of the world, with western ideas (most obviously marxism) being the driver of a phenomenal amount of change.
Not being Chinese, it makes me a bit sad to see China drift the kind of insular, chauvinistic direction it has been going in the last few years. Chinese culture is amazing, but it's at its very best when it's vigorously confronting the outside world.
How so? The examples that spring to my mind—Imperial Japan, the Manchurians, that Genghis bloke—all end very badly for China and its culture.
I feel OP is projecting himself too much here. It is completely up to how a person mingles with others, in my opinion. As long as the person is not too unapproachable or the groupism of natives is not strongly at play, I think one can make awesome friends and families abroad.
Not saying the author wrote it for that purpose, but I'm sure it's being pushed atm for that reason.
If our societies are so shitty, why not let young Chinese students see for themselves?
Then they know what they have in China.
Interesting that this first criticism is commonly leveled at students from the People's Republic of China. Does the language barrier force students to rote-learn to keep up?
I know from personal experience studying overseas that rote-learning was my default mode to try and keep up.
Are all the critiques of PRC students for rote-learning when studying in the PRC false? It seems an extraordinary claim give personal and abundant reported experience.
>If you are wearing yourself out every day, you naturally embrace the spirit of “minimalism,” in which you do as little as possible, and once you’ve finished something you go to sleep, loathe to take the initiative on your own to explore anything else.
Seems language struggles could be blamed for this.
>it makes no difference if you don’t go to bookstores in the US, but if you bring this habit back with you, it means that you don’t go to bookstores in China either.
The third criticism seems a spurious addition to the next two.
> you wind up really lonely, which makes you appreciate the vitality of life in China. When you come back, you’re like a bird let out of a cage, and your only urge is to fly. Who wants to study?
There are many places in the PRC even today that has never seen a foreigner. Exposure to foreign ideas and ways is limited even in the cities. The result is a massive culture shock when going overseas. If there is a language barrier then it is going to be hard to connect. The result is the PRC students form small and impenetrable cliques. That has to be a lonely experience.
>trying to think in a foreign language is like trying to scratch an itch through your boots
This is why a lot of PRC students now study abroad before going to an overseas university to avoid these cultural and language difficulties. If they have difficulty after that then there are other problems.
>if you live abroad for a long time, you will miss many theoretically interesting things happening in China
There are big changes afoot in the PRC. If the student is unprepared to gain the most from an overseas education then they shouldn't go. Since the U of C was mentioned, the US has been underestimated many times in its past. Time will tell which was the better choice.
The seventh criticism makes no sense to me. It seems wrong or, worse, self-effacing in the worst way for a young vital student.
> because of various difficulties abroad, you wind up feeling rebellious, and spend your days arguing with foreigners.
This engagement is precisely why you go abroad and is a big part of Western thought.
Can't say that everything is wrong but the solution is not to pull back but to study outside the PRC with the proper expectations and preparation.
"This web site is devoted to the subject of intellectual life in contemporary China, and more particularly to the writings of establishment intellectuals. What you will find here are essentially translations of Chinese texts that we consider important, together with discussions of related issues and a number of reference tools that can help those interested to navigate the project."
I had the good fortune of small class sizes and being able to debate professors. (Appeal to authority didn't count lol) I think that some school even prioritize what you mention: St Johns school of the great books (not sure if this is the name) in Santa Fe, for example, makes you learn ancient Greek and Latin. When you learn Geometry, you read Euclid in Latin and argue about his books for weeks on end... It's the opposite of the superficiality the author mentions. There are costs to this, however, and they spend less focal time on the 20th century, when, arguably, many important events and works occurred.
...and then trying to use Heidegger as an excuse for intellectual laziness is pretty silly too. The more languages you know, the more you really understand the true meaning of words in your "own" language. (Certainly with Latinic languages and English, for example.)
There's also a point to be crossed at which you can dream in another language and there's a bit of a desert to be crossed before that happens.
Overall, it was a challenging and somewhat thought-provoking read, but I feel that
1) the author approached the subject superficially and in a flippant manner
2) the author is young and has much to learn about LIFE on earth, whether it be China, or any of the other 180 something "countries" we have divided our planets human societies into.
That said: I've noted that large nationalistic nations (China, the USA, Brasil, Russia...) tend to know less about the outside world and navel-gaze more, whereas smaller nations with many different neighbors (most of the world) tend to be aware of the cultural framing on almost any issue, even if they defer to local customs or beliefs. This is obviously a gross generalization, but a flavor one nevertheless is imparted with due to:
1) A tendency towards being linguistically bound in thought. (I will propose that the author here is dead wrong, Martin Heidegger notwithstanding, and that languages bound thought possibilities by their grammars and biases)
2) A tendency to not have experienced any foreign nationals in rural areas, or certainly none that are deemed to be equal human beings by a significant part of the local society.
3) A tendency to believe the local media and governmental narratives at the cost of being completely un-aware of other narratives, regardless of belief or resistance to such narratives.