As the Light Fellowship has dearly reminded me, I have completed my program, but have yet to fulfill my blogging requirements! I’m blaming it on the fact that I was so busy studying and immersing myself in Chinese culture, and attempting to rectify my mistake with a few last minute entries. Hopefully this will do.
Because of my parents’ Chinese background and my limited exposure to my Chinese relatives, I always had a conception of Chinese students: hardworking and no fun. Oh how little I knew then, and probably how little I know now.
Upon arriving in China, I realized that my roommate and I weren’t from completely opposite worlds. We went to bed around the same time, had an unhealthy addiction to Facebook (or renrenwang in my roommate’s case), liked the same music, enjoyed shopping, and had generally similar personalities. Perhaps the only glaring difference is that I can run around for days on end and never tire while she needs lots of sleep (including midday naps) and easily tires in the heat. And with this epiphany, all of my preconceptions vanished.
The first week in China, my roommate showed me her old dorm room. At Zhejiang University of Technology, all of the students live four to a room (two bunkbeds), with boys and girls separated into different buildings. Boys aren’t allowed in girls’ rooms, and all students must be back by 11:30 PM before the ayi locks the door. If the ayi locks the door, you can pound really loudly and scream and hopes she wakes up and lets you in, or wait until 6 AM when she wakes up. Luckily for us international students, our building was never locked. When I first heard this, I assumed Chinese students just never went out, but as one of my friends informed me, Chinese high school is all struggle, but Chinese college is mostly play. While it differs by student, my friend said that whenever he and his friends go out, they often rent cheap motel rooms together and just all pile in, or just return at 6 AM and wait for ayi to wake up (unlike Toads, most of the clubs are open until 5 AM).
Chinese people love karaoke and other random games!
We made a bonfire with one of the roommate's parents! And then danced around it!
When it comes to using the internet, websites like Facebook, Blogspot, and Youtube are blocked, but students use proxies, VPN-like software, and other means to access these websites. Every so often these sites are blocked, but there are always more proxies than the government can control. Sensitive words like Tibet are often censored and replaced by symbols, but web-users always find a way around the censors.
And the Communist Party and Mao Zedong’s philosophies? Not very influential. Mao’s old policies have become a laughing point, and the Communist Party is more of a network. Several of the roommates are members of the Communist Party (an arduous process filled with years of essay writing, interviews, and events), but none of these believe the party’s principles. For them, it’s more of a box they can check off when applying for jobs.
So what’s the point of all this control? In a country fueled by economic growth and Westernization, how much longer can the government control the people? How many more websites must the government shut down? How can outdated politics move a country? The government can no longer brainwash: the people are already free.
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