Waukon High School senior Alex Marti shares her experience of studying, living in China this summer

by Brianne Eilers

Most high school students try to spend some time during the summer having fun with their family and friends and working to earn some extra cash. They don’t often decide to spend their summer vacation attending school living halfway around the world, but that’s how Waukon High School senior Alex Marti spent the majority of her summer vacation.
Alex spent two months living in China, immersed in the culture, learning the language, customs and studying in the Chinese education system along with several other American teenagers and their Chinese peers.
Her travels began in June with a flight from the Midwest to Washington D.C. for an orientation, along with other U.S. students who were traveling abroad to China and other countries to study abroad. After a couple days of orientation in D.C., the students bound for China then flew to Detroit, MI and from Detroit to Shanghai, China.
Last year, Alex attended a Chinese language camp at Concordia University in Minnesota to study Mandarin Chinese. Mandarin is most commonly spoken in Mainland China, but there are also other dialects. When the opportunity to study in China arose, she decided that would be a great experience. Alex applied for a scholarship from the United States Government, as well as doing some independent fundraisers on her own, such as baking and decorating cupcakes at Easter and baking pies at Christmas. She was set up for the program through American Cultural Exchange Services.

LIVING IN JIAXING
Alex was placed with a Chinese family in the town of Jiaxing, which she noted had a population of four million. Alex explained that it was considered a small town by population standards, considering that Shanghai has a population of 24 million.
During the week, she lived at the school located in Jiaxing, Monday through Friday. The students' day began at 6 a.m. when they woke up and got ready for the day. Breakfast was next on the agenda, with 30 to 45 minutes to eat before the walk to class. The students were in class from 8 a.m. to noon.
“The school was pretty strict,” Alex noted. Students were expected to sit still, be quiet and listen to the lectures. There wasn’t a lot of discussion or conversation between the teacher and students. Chinese students do not normally challenge authority. The students are expected to be able to memorize the material, and are tested at the end of middle school and high school.
The zhongkao, which students take at the end of middle school, will determine if and where those students can go to high school. At the end of high school, students take the gaokao to determine if they will go to college, what college they will attend, and what they will do for a career for the rest of their lives.
Alex said that on one of the trips they made through the school, students visited a factory where zongzi, basically rice dumplings, were made. Zongzi is a food traditionally eaten during the Dragon Boat Festival, a Chinese holiday. She said that the workers put in extremely long days with little or no breaks. While on the factory tour, the instructor noted that if students don’t perform well on their gaokao test, this could be where they end up working for the rest of their lives, as the Chinese government dictates what career a person has.
Other group trips that the students took part in included visiting some of the ancient gardens and Buddhist temples in the area. Sometimes, the afternoons would involve a class activity such as paper cutting, calligraphy or music class. “Chinese students play at least one instrument,” Alex noted.
Individualism is not really encouraged in the classroom. Alex explained that during their art class, if the students were supposed to paint a picture of a certain flower, they had to paint the exact picture with no deviations in colors or looks. “The school pushes students,” Alex said. “There isn’t much creativity, and test scores are really important.”
The students would get a two-hour “play time” during the day. Athletics are part of the curriculum, with martial arts like jujitsu, kung fu or tai chi classes available. Competitive athletics are not a major focus for students, studying is the top priority. “Most students live at the school during the week because they can spend more time studying that way,” Alex explained.
In their off-time from school, the American students could stay at the school and study, or go out in groups, no smaller than three individuals, and explore the city. “We met a lot of people,” Alex said.

TAKES SOME GETTING USED TO
One thing that was so different for her was that the Chinese population is very homogeneous when it comes to appearance. Americans are used to seeing different skin, hair and eye colors on people. Alex said that the Chinese people would approach the American students and sometimes ask them if they could touch their skin or hair. She said they also would have people offering to hold umbrellas over them to keep the sun off of their skin so they could keep their light complexion. In many cultures, a lighter skin tone is desired.
Sometimes during the school day, the Chinese students would “want to see” the American students, so Alex said that groups of the American students would visit the Chinese students’ classrooms. “We kind of had to entertain them,” Alex explained. The American students would do things like dancing or singing popular American songs, but Alex said it felt strange, almost like being on display in a zoo or something.
The American students could also visit the market places, which Alex said was interesting. While it is uncommon to see in Western shopping, haggling on price is common in the Chinese marketplace. “It was kind of fun,” Alex said of the experience, though many of her American peers were reluctant to try their hand at bargaining.
The students had a 9 p.m. curfew to be in their rooms, and it was enforced by their dorm supervisor, who was known to the students as “Auntie”. “She was pretty strict,” Alex said, but Auntie often left snacks on the students’ beds for them.
On the weekends, Alex lived with her host family, which included her host parents, host sister and host grandmother. The family lives in what Alex described as a small apartment on the twelfth story of the apartment building. There was no elevator in the building, either.
She noted that the image of China has changed a lot over the years. The Chinese do have a social class system and social manners are important, and a person doesn’t step outside the constraints of their class. The People’s Republic of China is a communist country, and there is an intense national pride. History is a very important thing to the Chinese people. When Alex spent time with her host family, they would take her to the ancient parts of Jiaxing or to other historic places that are important to the Chinese.

FOOD AND DINING
Alex noted that there was a lot of pollution in China. The water was pretty dirty, and the Chinese do not generally drink cold water out of the tap, but boil any water they will drink. Eating and food, in general, were also a different experience. The Chinese diet includes a lot of carbohydrates like noodles or rice. They don’t eat a lot of meat; it is used more as a flavoring. The meat that is purchased in the open-air markets is exposed to the elements, and the insects, and Alex said you weren’t always sure what the animal was if it was already skinned and dressed out.
When dining out at a restaurant, dishes are served family style, with everyone eating out of the same large portion. The Chinese also believe that certain foods have yin/yang properties, and foods are either hot or cold, and it doesn’t have to necessarily mean temperature. The goal is to have balance between the hot and the cold properties for optimal health.
“One time we were eating crab, which is a cold food, with ginger sauce, which was hot food,” Alex said. “My host mom told me that I better eat the ginger sauce with my crab. Otherwise, she said I would get sick if I didn’t.”
Alex noticed that the Chinese didn’t eat a lot of raw fruits and vegetables, unless it was something that could be peeled, which she said had to do with sanitary issues. She also noted that the restaurants often slaughtered their own animals, throwing the entrails in the trash. It created quite a smell in the hot, humid summer weather, and also attracted a lot of stray dogs and cats that ate the refuse that was lying around.
One morning at the school, Alex said she stayed a little bit later in the cafeteria at breakfast and was able to see a load of live chickens delivered to the school kitchen to be butchered for lunch that afternoon. As far as food production, the Chinese make use of every available space to grow things. Alex said that she even saw plants growing out of the cracks in the sidewalks.
While some aspects of Chinese cuisine aren’t very appetizing, the American students did enjoy visiting certain noodle shops for a bite to eat. At some places, the customers can watch the noodles being stretched and twisted by hand, which is an art form in itself. Alex also said that they found bubble tea - a drink that has tea mixed with milk or fruit and tapioca, which makes the bubbles - to be very good. She noted that she did not, however, opt to try the silk worm soup during a visit to a restaurant. Common food items served for school lunches included tofu, rabbit, fish, shrimp, soups and rice.

OTHER CULTURAL DIFFERENCES
Her host family was very gracious and did everything they could to make Alex feel like she was an honored guest. Her host sister is 15, which was the age all of the host siblings were. One big difference that Alex noticed between the Chinese and the American kids was that the Chinese children seemed to be more sheltered and not quite as mature as the American children in their age group. She thought that this could partly be because the Chinese do have a policy of one child per family, but Alex did note that there are ways around that and some families do have more than one child. “They have one chance and they want their children to turn out right,” Alex theorized.
During their time in China, Alex said her group of students visited an orphanage, which she said was really sad. Most of the children in there had a physical or mental disability, which possibly made them undesirable to their parents.
Alex also found that the older generation of Chinese try to keep very active. In the mornings, the elderly Chinese could be found in the public squares that each neighborhood had, doing exercises like tai chi, and in the evenings, the squares were a place to socialize with public dances. The American students also visited a Chinese nursing home. Alex noted that in China, there isn’t any government program that provides assistance to the elderly or disabled. If the family can’t take care of their relatives, they end up in such facilities.
Alex said it was kind of sad because one of the residents they talked to had bad knees, but they were not on the ground level and couldn’t do stairs, so they didn’t get out much. The American students visited with and practiced their Chinese language skills with those elderly residents.
When they weren’t out sight-seeing, Alex and her host family would watch television. In China, the government controls the media and news. Alex said that most Chinese don’t know about big historical events like Tiananmen Square, or if they have heard about it, they don’t believe it’s something that really happened. The history of conflicts between the Chinese and Japanese is a popular subject for television shows and movies.
Her host family enjoyed watching "Voice of China," which is a Chinese version of "The Voice." They also watched the televised volleyball match between China and the United States. There were opportunities to go for bike rides and do some walking on the Jiaxing Greenway.
While the cultures have some stark differences, Alex enjoyed learning about the Chinese culture and meeting the Chinese people. “The Chinese people were very friendly,” she said. The Chinese believe strongly in the concept of guanxi, which is building relationships and connections, and that was evident in many interactions.
“We would go to this one certain noodle shop, and after we went a couple times, they would bring out an extra dish or something like that,” Alex said. “That’s an example of guanxi.”
She also noted that some of the things western society might mistrust about China are mirrored in their society. “One kid at the school told me his parents said you should never buy anything that is made in America because we (Americans) put things in the products to tamper with the Chinese DNA,” Alex said. Many western people don’t necessarily trust things made in China, either.
Alex said while she was nervous about traveling so far by herself, she really liked China. “I felt pretty safe there,” she said, adding that the U.S. Consulate in China had told the students that the crime rate was pretty low. Alex says she would love to be able to go back to China someday.