The author, a PhD candidate at Beijing Foreign Studies University, is a visiting scholar with the Center for China-US Cooperation at the University of Denver.
US universities are famous for their freedom and openness, values best symbolized by the absence of walls on their campuses and thanks to which they have attracted the world’s largest number of international students. Lured by the promises of quality education and unique cultural and academic experience, students from China now account for nearly a third of the US overseas student population.
Ironically, while it is easy to accept US values such as freedom and openness in the abstract, a considerable number of Chinese students studying in US universities have found themselves facing an uphill struggle as they attempt to integrate into US society. Their efforts often prove futile because instead of tangible walls, they run into invisible walls that divide them, both culturally and emotionally, from their US peers.
Transplanting oneself to a foreign country is never easy, and the process can be particularly stressful for Chinese students in the US, leaving strong family and friendship ties at home in exchange for much weaker social connections abroad. As strangers from a different shore, they have to navigate an exotic culture, meet academic challenges, adjust to the US way of life, and juggle all three simultaneously in the absence of their familiar support systems.
The hardest part of all is fitting in. For Chinese students who fail to integrate, their conundrum is perfectly captured by the Chinese word guoke, meaning a sojourner who is more than a tourist but less than a citizen.
After studying her undergraduate courses in the US, a friend of mine decided to skip the commencement ceremony and take the first flight back to China. “It is meaningless to me,” she told me, “the university will mail the diploma to me anyway.” For her and other Chinese students who “got what they came for,” graduation from a US university is perhaps less a cause for celebration than a source of relief.
While busy recruiting Chinese students for big tuition dollars, American universities have not been equally effective in addressing the difficulties and frustration commonly experienced by displaced Chinese students seeking support. Although university administrators and teachers are keenly aware of the pressing issue of integration, they have not paid enough attention to the qualitative dimensions of Chinese students’ college experience in the US.
This misplaced emphasis can be illustrated by the contents of “survival guides” for international students, usually in the forms of orientation handbooks prepared by the universities. Most of these pamphlets focus on providing foreign students with practical advice to increase their chances of academic success, as well as fulfill their basic needs of everyday life, while saying little or nothing about how to develop cross-cultural competence or foster a sense of belonging.
The sheer size of Chinese students in the US also poses a serious challenge to their successful integration. It is not unusual to hear students from China complain about the high concentration of their fellow nationals in the same classroom. Since students of similar backgrounds naturally huddle together, there will be fewer opportunities for Chinese students to integrate with the rest of the campus.
As Chinese students have found out, invisible walls of social and cultural exclusion have prevented them from enjoying the full college experience inherently entitled to their American peers. However, even if the ideals of integration have largely eluded Chinese students, it should not stop the universities from trying their best to help them integrate with their American peers as much as possible. http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1003295.shtml
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