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Letters from China
- From a SUNY student at Fudan University (4/01)
by Tom Simcoe (reprinted from Newsletter Vol. 27, No. 4, April, 2001)
Tom is a student at the University at Albany who has studied Chinese language and is spending the
year at Fudan University in Shanghai (sort of China's Harvard).
Student life at Fudan, and in China in general, is certainly very interesting. There are so many
aspects to the experience of being here, from learning to speak and think in a different language
and learning about life as lived in other parts of the world, to learning how it feels to be in
immediately recognized foreigner with no hope of blending in and have people assume all sorts of things about you.
I guess the thing that's always most present in my mind lately is the way the foreigners,
particularly in the first world--US, France, Germany--interface with the Chinese. There are
several different types of people here: businesspeople (who generally have no Chinese language
and a lot of money), teachers and students, tourists (both backpackers and those on very
expensive trips.) All these types have distinctly different experiences in China and also leave
behind different precedents in their passing. As a result, when I have lived and traveled
here in the past six months I have encountered all sorts of situations with Chinese people that
have their origins in the behavior of other foreigners.
Fortunately, my language skills have advanced very quickly. I think that if a person can't
speak Chinese, their experience is going to be totally incomplete. The non-Chinese speaking
foreigner is going to be limited in their interactions to the well-educated, the moneyed,
the ambitious, etc. and to those people who have been extensively conditioned for dealing with
us. I guess my meaning is this: it's very easy to be fooled by China! Of course I don't mean
this in a completely negative sense (although there definitely exists a negative side.)
But is a fact of existence here.
Anyway, perhaps none of this makes any sense; I haven't really sorted my thoughts and feeling
about China yet. I don't think I will be able to do so until I get back home, probably.
On a more concrete note, I've had the good fortune to travel a little bit here. I've been
to Suzhou, Nanjing, Wuxi, passed through Guangzhou and recently I visited Hong Kong, Macao,
Zhuhai, Guilin and nearby Yangshou. I have had the opportunity not only to meet Chinese but
also people from all over the world at Fudan. I've made friends with people from places I
never heard of and still can't spell! We started the new semester of classes this week and
the weather is getting warm, so I'm reminded that I have only four more months. When I arrived, a year sounded a long time, but it is passing too quickly.
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