Being an international student in the United States has its fair share of culture shock. If you’re from Far East, particularly from China, the xenophobia takes a whole new level.
It doesn’t help that the work culture in China encourages tremendous hard work, and the results, allied to the perception of their natural intelligence seems to magnify the threat. Needless to say, it comes with fair amount of misconceptions as well, further magnified by language barriers, culture shock, distinctive facial features and food habits.
Let’s take a look at top 10 misconceptions about Chinese students in America:
- The “Chinese” speak the hardest language in the world. Like any foreign language, the rules of Chinese are hard to master. More so, because people in the Western World are used to a certain kind of grammar and phonetics, while a logographic language like Chinese follows differently. That still doesn’t mean it is ridiculously harder than English. It is just quite different.
PS: Written Chinese is quite hard to master though!
- Chinese students are much smarter than Americans. This is mildly irritating at best and pretty annoying generalization at worst. China, like most of Asian nations has an elementary technique of teaching numbers, colors and subjects without gadgets at the primary level. Thanks to plenty of international schools and demands of multinational companies though, that facet is fading fast. An average Chinese kid today, is as reliant on calculators and gadgets as the American kid. Some of them ARE really smart, just like some of Americans.
- Chinese students are super rich, and go to America to just have fun and party. The other end of stereotyping is the misconception that all Chinese kids come from affluent families, and come to the States to just party and have fun. Hey, they are international students coping with culture shock, financial constraints and homesickness (and fair few instances of racism!) – and then study.
- Chinese students get better grades. This is another rampant illusion. The grading systems in China might be different from the American GPA, but better marks don’t make a better ‘grade’. Besides, having a perspective and an opinion counts more than just marks on the transcript.
- Chinese students believe in communism. Maybe their parents do, but China gave up on Communism (officially) in 1976, once Mao Zedong passed away. They do curb a lot of freedom of press and media, but that doesn’t make their students pro-communism.
- Chinese students eat stinky fish. Okay, this is partially true, but fully offensive. The Chinese do love their preserved dry fish, and the smell could be pretty intolerable to the unaccustomed. But hey, that isn’t any different from Peruvian sea-food, cured beef dishes from Europe or Indian curries. They do eat a lot of delicious, authentic Chinese food too. Give it a try!
PS: Panda Express is oily, unhealthy and disgusting, and it isn’t Chinese. Period.
- Chinese students are smelly, they don’t shower regularly. This is a gross generalization and totally obnoxious. Personal hygiene is a weird subject to mix nationality with. A ride in public transport of Miami, New York or L.A. might land you as many ‘smelly’ Americans. If you don’t wash regularly, you’ll stink. Besides, some regions like the Midwest or North-east suffer bitter winters, which make taking a shower everyday near impractical.
- Chinese students come to America to steal jobs! Talk about misinformation. Most American CEOs find it effective to offshore/ outsource jobs to qualified people in China. Capitalism works on profit, simple! And here’s another fact, USA has lost more jobs to automation than outsourcing.
- Chinese students have funny accents. Their natural lilt owes to the phonetics of their language does sound different (even funny) to American ears. But increasingly, they have native speakers and language coaches training them for offshore jobs, international schools and much better spoken English. To the point that plenty of Chinese applicants earn TOEFL waivers.
- Chinese students are anti-Americans. Are you serious? This isn’t 1984, people! They enjoy American equality laws, freedom of expression, flashy fashion and Hollywood movies. Heck, they even complain how the internet back home is slow and masks so much compared to here. Do you really believe they’d commit to several months in a country without liking it?
So there you go. Next time you run into your Chinese friend on campus, find more reasons to know him better. Totally worth it!
