Roommate Musings

As of today, I have exactly two weeks left in the Beezh. I have loved my time here, but by this point the weather/ pollution/ complete lack of organizational skills on IES’ part (I still don’t know when my finals are! Nor do I have regular internet access!) have made me ready to head back home and eat Mexican food with my loved ones. Nonetheless, I still have two weekends left and I am determined to squeeze as much out of them as I can while still having tests sometime in the next couple weeks.
Nothing noteworthy has happened since I got back from Shanghai, so I’m going to use this space to expound upon an aspect of my time here that I haven’t talked much about: my roommate. People keep asking about her, and I feel lucky that I get to live with her. In my experience, Chinese people are hard to meet. Even when we’re sent out into the Bei Wai neighborhood to talk to the locals for class, they’re often hesitant; we’ll ask them if we can ask them a couple questions about [Spring Festival, family dinners, their hobbies] and often anyone over thirty won’t even verbally respond to us. Instead, they’ll shake their heads and wave us away. Before I arrived here, I read all about the Chinese notion of politeness and conflict avoidance, but if I were to judge by the rude drivers and closed-off Beijingers I’ve met, I would think Chinese people were incredibly impolite.
Thankfully, there’s Zhang Ran. Although not a native Beijinger, she is adorable and super sweet (and her native Beijinger friends are too). Although our overlapping time in the dorm is short (she has classes until about the time I head out for the night), we talk quite a lot, and we’re fairly close; she’s given me advice on various issues related to the Unfair Sex, which probably would have been great if I’d ever had the chutzpah to use it, and we talk about the general stresses of collegiate life, and deciding our futures, a lot.
The one thing that stands out specifically, though, is the vast difference in maturity level between us (and, I would venture to say, between most of the other Chinese roommates in general). Example: Zhang Ran, within the past week, has acquired her first boyfriend. I probably have no right whatsoever to be talking about this, as I’m in the middle of an 18-month dry spell with the gentlemen, but I was fourteen the first time I dated; without exception, everyone I know had their first actual relationships in high school, usually toward the earlier end of it. According to Zhang Ran, though, most Chinese students don’t date until college, or sometimes later (this is applicable to young people in general, as about 90% of Chinese young’uns go to some type of college/tech school/etc.) Her boyfriend, who I have only met once, seems particularly inexperienced in the ways of romantic etiquette. Zhang Ran reports that upon seeing a picture of me for the first time, he commented that I was “prettier than her.” Fortunately, I wasn’t present at the time; if I had, I probably would have chewed him out as best I could in Chinese.
Last night, she told me she was going over to his building “to study overnight.” I bid her goodnight with what was hopefully a knowing look on my face and returned to studying. She returned fifteen minutes later saying that the guard in the boyfriend’s building wouldn’t let her in (I guess they’re equally obnoxious about curfew on the other side of campus), and when I asked her where she would have slept, she wrinkled her nose and said that she had actually planned to pull an all-nighter with him. With the workload she and the other Chinese students seem to have, I’m not surprised this qualifies as a date. The Chinese students rarely, if ever, go out – the most I’ve heard of this is a couple of the guys’ roommates getting some beers after dinner.
At the same time, I can’t help but wonder if this – the school-sponsored team jump rope competitions, the popular (among college students) brand of t-shirts with school-uniform-clad teddy bears on them, which would have gotten anyone laughed out of the fifth grade in the US – is evidence of actual immaturity, or if I’ve just become sort of numb to what’s “normal” for people my age after having spent two years immersed in promiscuous alcoholic scantily-clad* party-hearty American School (not that Northwestern is a particularly egregious example of any of these). At any rate, it’s been sort of an interesting thing to reflect on, and I’ve had to adjust my worldview to realize that the Chinese students’ lifestyle doesn’t mean they’re weird or “behind” like it would in the US; instead, it just means they’re Chinese.

Dumpling Tally: 267

*Overheard in the Northwestern student union: “Your North Face is so sexy!”