Approaching this final paper,
frankly, was one of the more intimidating things I have ever done. This is
certainly not the first time I have been asked to write an essay. As a college
student, essays are just a part of life. What’s intimidating about this
endeavor is that I feel a kind of import that I have never felt before. I want
so badly to express the experience that I have had in China. This is no easy
task, as my time here has been the single most important experience of my life.
How does one even begin to express that? Despite the overwhelming nature of the
task, I am still compelled to say that there are certainly some broad
impressions that I have drawn from my time here. I would break my time in China
into two distinct periods. The first is my time in Beijing at the Beijing Institute
of Education. This period was a rollercoaster of emotions and lessons, both
about China and about myself. The young man that came to Beijing is not the
same one writing these words now. The second period would be my time with China
Economic Review in Shanghai. The lessons offered by my time in the world’s
largest city were different from those of Beijing, but no less important. This
division, while it may seem obvious, represents two very different perspectives
on China and my time in this endlessly fascinating place.
To say that I was unprepared for my
time in Beijing would not be altogether inaccurate. I would take this moment to
point out what might seem to be a semantic difference between ill prepared and
unprepared. To say I was ill prepared would lead the reader to think that the
Chinese education I received from the fantastic teachers at UNC was somehow
lacking. I would stress that the instructors at Carolina are some of the best
teachers I have ever had. They have a genuine concern for their students, and a
commitment to improving their Chinese. Furthermore, I would be remiss if I did
not take a moment to thank all the talented individuals within the Study Abroad
Office at UNC who helped me through the past year. From the application process
to the pre-departure meeting, they did a great job of preparing me for the nuts
and bolts of a study abroad experience. But there are certain things that not even the
most talented teacher or advisor can give you, and those are the things that
you have to bring yourself.
There are many facets to this, but I
would first like to point to the all-important matter of confidence. When I
came to China, I was already a confidant person. But confidence in your intelligence and confidence
in your Chinese skills are two very different things. If you ask anyone that
has learned a foreign language what the biggest difference between classroom
instruction and real world use is, I would bet that the majority of them would
point to the initial lack of confidence that accompanies your first immersion
into the language. This deficit can have many effects, but in its worst form it
is capable of keeping someone from ever truly improving their language skills.
The program at BIE develops that confidence in a trial by fire. Less than a
week after you arrive, you are given a language pledge that essentially throws
you into the deep end of Chinese learning. There are many reasons why this is a
scary proposition. Perhaps the most terrifying was expressed by one of my good
friends as we prepared to sign the language pledge, “Well, say goodbye to my
personality.” On a very basic level, this is a truly harrowing prospect.
Communication is taken for granted until you are suddenly given a huge handicap
like having your vocabulary reduced to less than a thousand words. Even as I
jokingly reassured him that he would be annoying no matter what language he was
speaking, I was filled with doubts of my own. What would I lose by signing this
piece of paper? Am I about to sign away my ability to show people who I really
am? This was a crisis of confidence in its purist form, and I would only come
to conquer it through months of hard work. There really is no other way around
it. When I first started speaking Chinese it was almost physically painful, but
bit by bit hard earned bit, I came to reap the rewards of what I was doing.
Before long, I started to take back my own personality. Every new word or
grammar opened up another opportunity to connect with the people around me. By
the end of the semester I had learned what might be the most important lessons
of this entire experience; sometimes confidence is accepting that you are going
to mess up, and then getting over it. Its simplicity belies its significance.
As a beginning Chinese learner I realized that mistakes are the basis of good
Chinese. Sure, you are going to say some pretty silly things in front of your
Chinese friends, but you will rarely make that same mistake twice. It was
because of this difficult period that I was so much more prepared for the
summer in Shanghai. Every Chinese roommate that I met would tell me how much
better my Chinese was than the other foreigners, some of whom at studied longer
than me back in the US. The real difference between me and the students who had
just arrived in China, however, had less to do with how long I had studied, and
more to do with my confidence that, while my level wasn’t very high, I would
only improve through practice. The language pledge’s effect on my relationship
with my classmate was also the opposite of what I had expected. Instead of
acting as a wedge between us, our struggles with Chinese only brought us closer
together. It is incredibly reassuring to be able to look around you and see
other people going through the same difficulties. There certainly practical
benefits, like be able to ask about a new grammar point or vocabulary. But
perhaps even more useful is simply being able to relate, and sometimes just
complain, with someone that truly understands the struggles. The result is that
I have a wealth of new friends from all walks of life, friends that I will keep
with me for years to come.
While confidence is something that
you can gain while in China, a sense of adventure is just something with which
you are born. I often commented to my friends that we were a special kind of
crazy just for being here. But those who would argue that just agreeing to live
in China for six months is adventurous enough are the same people who would
fail to make the most of the experience. For someone with a penchant for new
experiences, China is a playground. There seems to be something happening
around every corner. In China, every
time you leave your room, it is another potential adventure. I know that this
is a major part of why I enjoyed my time abroad. I have always been a person
that prioritizes my life in order to meet the needs of my studies, but my best
stories didn’t come from the classroom. They started when I decided to take a
step out of my comfort zone and try something new. I remember one night when my
friend approached me and asked me if I wanted to go to a jazz concert. I had a
choice, I could buckle down and complete my homework in the next hour, or take
the easy way out and just stay in that night. I am happy to say that I chose
the former. That night, we ended up going to a part of the city we had never
been to, finding a whole new area to explore. The concert itself was at the end
of a dark alleyway, but it was one of the better experiences of the entire trip.
I got to sit with my friends in Beijing and watch a jazz band fronted by a
Chinese man, with an Australian playing sax, an American on drums and an
Austrian on the keyboard. My time in China is full of stories like this. Like
the time I danced to Korean pop music in a tent in a traditional minority
village on the Tibetan Plateau in Northern Sichuan (The villagers provided the
music, for the record), or the time I rode rusty metal ice sleds across Hou Hai
Lake in Beijing, pushing myself along with two rods that were just screwdrivers
that were welded together. Regardless of what I do with the rest of my life,
whether it involves Chinese and China as I hope it does, or if I choose another
path, I will always remember these moments. And they would not have been
possible if it weren’t for a simple willingness to go outside of my comfort
zone and try new things. This is a lesson that I will take with me no matter
where I go in life.
Hand in hand with the desire for
adventure is the second quality that I brought to my time in China, and a
quality every Weir Fellow should possess, the desire to expand their world. I
would describe this as my biggest motivation for this entire undertaking. Of
course I wanted to improve my Chinese. Of course I wanted to gain valuable work
experience and skills that will one day help me find a job. But these are not
necessarily going to make me happy, or make me into the best person I can be.
For me, expanding one’s world is one of the surest ways to do just that. If
there is one thing I never want to be called, it is small minded. I don’t
believe that it is impossible to be a good person and still grow up and live in
the same town your whole life. But I have always a desired a chance to see the
world. Whether that means a weekend road trip to the coast, or a summer in
Yellowstone like I did two years ago, I just know I want to see the world. My
motivation for this extends beyond wanting to tell good stories. I have found
that the more I get out and see the world, the happier and healthier I become.
These past couple years have a journey of self-reflection that I never could
have imagined, and China was easily the biggest part of that. I have never before
had a time where I was forced to stop and consider what I felt about some of
the most important issues in life. Whether it was religion, politics or my
career goals, my assumptions and ideas were challenged at every turn. The
result is that I have a better idea of not only how I feel about difficult
topics, but how I feel about myself, and what I want to do with the rest of my
life. I won’t say that I have all my ducks in a row, but I am certainly better
off than I was when I arrived here six months ago.
While my time in Beijing was
incredibly fun, I would remiss if I did not acknowledge that it was not without
its difficulties. This is inevitable when leaving behind everyone you have ever
known and loved to travel to the other side of the world. I can recall sending a message to my loved
ones in which I compared relationships between people to muscles. You cannot build up a muscle without first
stretching it, even tearing it, so that it can come back stronger. I can honestly say that some very important
relationships in my life have not survived this test. But in their place I have grown more and
stronger relationships that I will take with me for years to come. Perhaps the
most difficult thing about coming to China was knowing that I would not be able
to see two very special people in my life. One was 12 months old, and one was
98 years-old. The first is my nephew, Darren, who was born almost exactly a
year before I left. I cannot describe the feeling of being an uncle to anyone
that has never done it, but I have had many a conversation with my roommate at
UNC about how wonderful it is. We would compare pictures, his of his niece, and
mine of Darren. There we were, two 21 year-old college males that were nearly
brought to tears talking about kids that couldn’t even talk yet. I knew that
during my time in China Daren would grow to be almost unrecognizable. Through
Skype, I watched him start to walk around on his own, and then to run, and
finally, to talk. It was one of the most bittersweet memories of my life when I
heard him say his first word to me. I have never been so proud, and yet I have
also never been so sad, because I always feared that when I came back, he
wouldn’t even know who I was. Thankfully, that feeling only solidified my
determination to make the most of my time in China. The other person I would
grow to miss the most was my great grandfather, Harry. Harry is a 98 year-old retired
nurse, and he is also one of the most influential people in my life. I cannot
begin to count the memories I have of going fishing with my grandfather on
Canandaigua Lake in upstate New York. He is someone that has taught me so much.
But the fact of the matter is, he is 98 years-old, and there was the potential
that his health would fade during my time abroad. I often thought during those
first few months about that possibility. With that in mind, I made every effort
to see him as much as I could, and I truly came to cherish those few minutes of
contact. Like Darren, thinking about my grandfather only proved to make me work
harder and longer to make sure our time apart was worth the heartache. I owe a
great deal to those two.
The next phase of my Chinese journey
would take place in Shanghai, but in between, my parents stopped by for a
visit. I suppose it is almost always the case that you don’t know how much you
miss someone until they get off the plane after not seeing them for 4 months.
At least that was my experience. My parent’s time in China was a nice ending to
my own time in Beijing. Their presence was an opportunity for me to stop and
truly appreciate my journey there. The rigors of course work and the effort to
get out and see as much as possible means it can be a bit of blur. It is conceivable
to focus on your work without realizing that weeks, even months have passed. But
when my parents arrived, I was able to truly notice the progress I had made.
Not only could I speak pretty good Chinese, but I also knew my way around the
city. I won’t pretend that sharing a hotel room with my parents for twelve days
is the greatest thing I have ever done, especially since my dad is quite a
snorer. But it was certainly worth it to see the look of pride on my parents
face as I showed them around one of the most interesting cities in the world.
If my time in Beijing was a lesson
in stopping to appreciate my time abroad, my time in Shanghai was all about teaching
me lessons about what I would call “adult life.” I will start by introducing my
internship site, China Economic Review. CER, which is owned by Sino Media, has
been around since 1990, and covers almost every aspect of China’s economy, from
trade policy, to investment. The founder himself, Graham Earnshaw, has been in
China since the early 1980s. CER has been one of the most dependable,
knowledgeable voices on the Chinese economy for the past two decades. When I
say that my time at CER was a lesson in “adult life,” I mean it was lesson in
what I can actually expect once I graduate. This was a real 9:00 to 6:00, five
day a week job. I left home at 8:00 am and got back around 7:00 pm. It gave me
a serious appreciation for what I have watched my parents do for the past 22
years of my life, especially my mom. She is a hospice nurse that goes to work
at 7:00 and get back at 7:30 or 8:00 at night. It was a serious departure from
my time in Beijing, where I had almost every afternoon all to myself. Needless
to say, it took some getting used to.
As an intern, I split my time making
content for two parts of Sino Media, CER and CERMBA, Sino Media’s MBA guide
website. While did not originally know that I would be working with CERMBA, it
turned out to be a fascinating opportunity to learn about the MBA business in
China. Each week I produced two articles for the CERMBA website that dealt with
MBA news in China. I have never had any exposure to that sector of the
education system and each article I wrote expanded my understanding of the
industry, and increased my interest in a future MBA education. In the office,
my daily tasks included updating CER’s social media profile, writing briefs on
the day’s news events and transcribing interviews. This brings me to the most important
thing that my internship at China Economic Review taught me; how make a goal
and then figure out how to achieve it. The duties of an intern, as I see it,
fall into two broad categories: performing the tasks you are asked to do and
working independently to find the things that you actually want to do. I worked
hard to do everything that was asked of me, whether it was updating social
media, doing research for articles or transcribing interviews. The job of an
intern is to take on the small jobs that fall between the cracks in order to
help the entire office run more smoothly and to take some of the burden off
full time employees. We are like a pressure release valve; when things start to
boil, we are there to make sure nothing explodes. The real challenge of an
internship, however, isn’t finding the jobs they give you. That, by definition,
is easy, and certainly won’t get you noticed. The hard part is simultaneously
doing those jobs and also going out of your way to find the jobs that will show
your superiors what kind of skills and talents you are bring to the table. At
CER that meant in between tweets and writing 90 word summations of articles, I
needed to keep an eye out for the golden egg; a feature on the CER website that
I could write myself.
It is worth mentioning what can
happen to you if you don’t go out of your way to set this kind of goal. There
is a certain kind of glazed look that some people get when doing internships.
These are the people that go to their internship and do the same thing every
day. I call them “internship zombies.” There are certainly internships where
your supervisor will bring you new and interesting work every day. I will not
speak for other people, but my experience was that my tasks mainly consisted of
more mundane business like the tweeting I mentioned above. If I didn’t work to
set a goal for myself I would have spent every morning writing summations of
Reuters wires and the occasional interview transcript, which are the bane of
every journalism intern’s existence. You have to decide whether you are happy
toiling away at small tasks, or whether you want to go that extra mile to make
the most of your experience.
I am only comfortable saying this
because I have dabbled in that kind of attitude. I will admit that my first couple
weeks at CER were not my best. I summarized the articles, tweeted the tweets,
and didn’t do much else. But at some point I decided that wasn’t going to be
enough. I realized that I was just waiting around for someone to tell me what
to do. But that is exactly what you cannot do in an internship. An internship
experience, above all else, is what you make of it. That means you can’t rely
on someone else to tell you what to do, and this is where the goal setting
comes in. I have always been a goal oriented person, and without them I tend to
float through life. Clearly, CER was no different. The day I realized this was
a turning point in my internship experience. I went from a man with no
direction, to a man on a mission. I knew what I wanted to do; write an article
for CER. With that goal set, the rest was simple. I pitched story after story
to my editors. Most of them got shot down pretty quick, but eventually I
pitched them an idea that stuck. Two weeks later, I was a published journalist.
I realize that not everyone will be able to have such a clear goal, but the
principle applies to every intern. Your goal could be as simple as staying busy
all day. There is no surer way to become an “internship zombie” than going to
work and doing nothing, so this should be a goal for every intern. When people
ask you about your time at Such and Such Company Inc., you want to be able to
tell them it was a wonderful experience. In other words, you want to be able to
say that you accomplished what you want to during your time there. What better
way to do that than deciding for yourself what you want to accomplish?
Working at CER was a crash course in the
Chinese economy. I have always had an interest in China, especially the
phenomenal growth that it has experienced, but being bathed in headlines for
nine hours a day truly made me appreciate the amazing changes that China is
experiencing right now. It also brought me face to face with some of the issues
that China is facing. For example, CER wrote an excellent profile of China’s
issues with housing and construction, which suffers from widespread corruption
and poor quality. China is currently experiencing a housing bubble that could
eventually cause a major economic collapse. The problem stems from the
combination of bad policy and corruption that can only lead to disaster. The
construction industry is no better. I specifically remember transcribing an
interview with an Italian architect that operated in China. She described some
of the malpractice that takes place in the Chinese construction industry, like
replacing the suggested materials with cheaper alternatives, or sacrificing
safety for productivity. It is thanks to my time at CER that I can address
topics like this with a level of knowledge that I could not approach before
this summer.
The article, and my experience at
CER overall, also gave me an inside look at the cat and mouse game that is
played between the Chinese government and the media in China. We often hear
about censorship in China. It is one of the many boogey men that the American
media and politicians love to trot out to raise the shadow of the giant of the
East. By no means am I downplaying the censorship of China, it is real and
dangerous threat to the development of the country. Being at China Economic
Review meant I could sit in on writers meetings where the pressure of
censorship was not some scary thing that exists 7,000 miles away, it was in the
room with us. I specifically remember one of the staff writers proposing a
great story idea about corrupt political dynasties at the local level,
something that doesn’t get the attention it deserves. After agreeing that it
would be a powerful piece, there was an audible pause, and my editor said,
“But, if we publish it, we might find ourselves with some serious visa problems
in the future.” As in, the Chinese government will make sure that, should we
ever leave China, we would have a hard time getting back in. That was a real
reality check for me, the epitome of a “you aren’t in Kansas anymore” moment.
My time in China was full of this
kind of experience. One of the best things that being China ever brought me was
the opportunity to step back and see myself, my culture and my country from a
completely different perspective. There were small examples of this, like
having to correct countless young Chinese people on the fact that, no, not all
American college students get drunk, go crazy and drive a car into a pool every
night. You wouldn’t believe the faces I got when I said the infamous film American Pie was not very accurate. But
there were deeper issues. I saw the way that Chinese people look at the US in a
combination admiration and distaste. In some ways, they look to the United
States as a model of what they want China to be, especially true of our economic
power. I never thought that I was especially wealthy, but when I told my
roommate in Beijing that my family had six cars, one for each person, he was
blown away. This alone was an amazing lesson in be self-aware and grateful for
what I have. My roommate in Shanghai was even more enlightening. As a 31
year-old graduate school students that had worked in the textile trade for
seven years, taking him all over Europe and China, he was a fountain of
knowledge. He shared a very poignant story with me from when he was growing up
in Hunan province. One morning, he said to his father, “I want bread and milk
for breakfast every morning.” “Fine,” his father replied, “then go to America!”
This kind of statement is ingrained in many of the young people that I met in
China. America is still very much an idealized place, but not in every aspect.
Many people see it as extremely hypocritical. Being in China during the ongoing
Snowden debacle has certainly given me another perspective on the issue. I had
quite a debate with my father during my parent’s time in China about the issue,
with me falling more on the side of Snowden. My point was that, no matter his
motivation, what he exposed deserved to be exposed. I think my experience in
China has a serious effect on shaping that point of view. It is much easier to
see from without how America could seem to be incredibly hypocritical,
condemning countries like China for their lack of openness, while
simultaneously operating surveillance programs on its own citizens. It is an
incredibly complicated issue, and I certainly haven’t made up my mind about it,
but I know that my China experience will profoundly affect my view of it.
Profound is probably the best word
to use when describing this entire experience. I have certainly never gone
through anything as meaningful and all-encompassing as my time here. I am so
very far from being the young man that came here six months ago. I have enjoyed
a period of introspection and growth that is unprecedented in my life. I start
my senior year with a clearer idea of what I want my career to look like than
anything else I have ever had. Beyond that, I can’t help but see this adventure
as a launching pad for the rest of my life. Before these six months, I was
pretty sure I wanted China to be part of my life. I knew it was a dynamic and
changing place, but I underestimated what a profound effect it would have on
me. Now, all I can say to China is “See you again soon.”
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