College Kids and Cultural Conflicts

Caveat: This is not the nicest of blog posts, but the purpose of this blog is to let friends and family know about my experience of living in China, and this topic has played a major role in that experience. Therefore, this entry might not be very PC. Apologies.

One thing about the Yale-PKU program that had me very excited was the opportunity to live with a real, live Chinese college student. I was so excited to learn about Chinese culture first-hand. Now, I knew there would probably be times where our cultures would bring us into some conflict, but I was excited for that too. It would be an opportunity to open dialogue on the differences in our cultures and allow us to help understand each other better.

No. Conflicts are stressful, especially when both parties are operating under different sets of rules. My recent conflicts with some of the Chinese students, while certainly not indicative of Chinese culture as a whole, has illuminated just how wide the cultural gulf stretches. As you can guess, one of these instances was very recent. But first, I'll give you a general sense of some of the more stress-inducing characters in this little drama.


There are two Chinese students in the program who are very... peculiar in their conversation habits. They are short and abrupt when they speak, and they interrupt you in the middle of your sentence. One has a habit of simply dispensing whatever information he approached you to give, then turning around and leaving without listening to your response. The other will loudly mumble to herself if she doesn't agree with what you are saying until she just finally interrupts and tries to correct you. She is also prone to reciting information that she has memorized without giving thought to its accuracy or possible mutation when applied to the real world.

Those two we have to deal with on a daily basis. One adjusts, and refines one's methods for dealing with such characters. I personally have found that being direct with them, besides being fun, is actually fairly effective... unless they refuse to let go of the delusion that the Chinese government does not do anything to control the appreciation of the RMB.

Now the other two characters who played much more prominent roles in recent drama had not been aggravating in any way other than their habits of... togetherness. You see, these two program participants are dating, and one happens to be my roommate. As my roommate, she has been encouraged to take me to her hometown for one weekend so I can become even more familiar with her life and Chinese culture. Our trip was planned for a weekend in the near future, but then a program activity got rescheduled to the same weekend. My roommate and her boyfriend very much wanted to participate in this activity together, to the point that my roommate would rather cancel our trip to her home than miss this activity with him. Well, that wasn't going to happen. I confronted both her and her boyfriend about the entire issue, including the deeper issue of their efforts (past and present) to utilize the program (and its funds) for purposes other than inter-cultural bonding. It was an epic battle of words conducted completely in Chinglish (by this point, I think my Chinglish might be better than English or Chinese alone). It felt so good for me to get things out in the open so we could solve them, but it was such a struggle talking to these two (more like one, my roommate didn't talk) because they didn't know how to handle open speech. In case I haven't set this up enough, this is one of those major cultural differences.

After a long sequence of further exasperating events (including him blatantly lying to me!), we finally got things settled. Or at least, they acted like things were settled. I'm sure they're still very upset. I tried to explain that they didn't have the right to be angry about anything, but I don't think I was very successful. The boyfriend was incredibly stubborn.

Anyway, I'm still going to visit her hometown, and she and I will have our own separate cooking class together. The boyfriend will go to the cooking class with the rest of the group. There is one benefit to all this, and that is that I am getting a deeper understanding of how the Chinese conduct their interpersonal relations. This is actually pretty valuable, because even though I can afford to be a young, brash American now, there may come a time that I will need to conduct myself according to their customs. So, yes, these interactions are stressful, but they're all the more educational for it.