China Prep

I’m starting to fall into a routine here. It’s only been two weeks of classes, but already I know that it takes me forty-five minutes to wake up and get out the door each morning, fifteen minutes to walk to the IUP building, and three hours to do my homework each night. Even cooking dinner, which used to take multiple attempts and an embarrassing amount of time, is almost down to a science. Last week, though, I was reminded of just how little I know of even my immediate surroundings.

As I walked home having just completed of my second week of classes, I overheard a conversation between two Tsinghua University students on the topic of Taiwan-Mainland China relations. I was surprised by how much I could understand, and furthermore that they were discussing a topic that I had just been talking about that day in class. I followed the girls all the way to the South Gate, eavesdropping on their ten minute or so conversation, which touched on a variety of points, from the quality of life and cultural differences between the two locales, to the Taiwanese pop sensation, Jay Chou.

I couldn’t help but wonder where these two girls were from, and as silly as it may seem, it was the first time I had really considered the (thousands of) other Tsinghua students that I passed every day on my way to Wen Bei Lou, (my classroom building), which is inhabited mostly by foreigners. It is so easy to fall into a little community in Beijing, and this year I am trying to push myself to expand my boundaries. I accomplished this in one sense by making my first (real) Chinese friend, a friend of my brother’s who had just moved here from Hunan. But aside from him, I do spend the majority of my time outside the classroom with my English-speaking friends. After my walk home behind these two Tsinghua students, and especially after being prompted by a question sent to us by the Light Fellowship, I started to think about how I want to spend my year in China, particularly in comparison to the whirlwind of a summer that was 2008. I came up with a rather simple answer: I want to live in the real Beijing, and not in an artificial, ex-pat dominated Beijing. I do not want to spend my time holed up in my apartment studying characters, nor do I want to spend my nights working at an American company where I’ll be handling the same business that I encountered back in NYC. Despite living in Wudaokou, (a district known to be inhabited by foreign students because of the many universities), I have been, and am going to continue, to take every chance I get to leave campus, and leave Wudaokou.

But back to the point of this post... That night, some friends and I went out to dinner, and somehow the documentary China Prep came up in conversation. I’ve always been interested in how educational systems vary between countries, so I googled it when I got home and spent the next hour or so watching the show. It is fascinating. It tells the story of five high school students attending one of Sichuan’s best schools, all competing for entrance to China’s two best universities – BeiDa and Tsinghua University. Their futures are contingent on one test, known as the Gao Kao, and this documentary follows their final year in high school as they prepare to take the test. The show does a decent job of addressing the ever so obvious question of bureaucracy, which exists in almost every realm of China, and in the end convinces the viewer that while the system may not be perfect, it’s as close as it’s going to get to giving a Party Secretary’s son and a poor farmer’s son equal chances of success. If you have a chance, I highly recommend watching it. You can find it at: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/episodes/china-prep/video-full-episode/2722/

These students’ lives are completely different than anything I have ever experienced or even seen through my travels and time spent studying abroad. While I knew in theory this is what China’s educational system was like, (just based on the sheer numbers), I did not have a clear sense of what this meant for somebody my age. This documentary tells the stories behind some of the students I pass every day on my way to class. These kids are tested at the age of 13 and 14 for entrance to high school; some of these schools have the capabilities and resources of getting their students into college, but most of them do not. Then at the ages of 17 and 18, they take the Gao Kao, an SAT-like test that will most likely determine if they stay in their hometown forever, or if they are able to attend college in the nation’s capital and have a chance at any sort of higher standard of living. For those from poor or rural backgrounds, this outcome has significantly more important repercussions than for those living in cities. Some argue that their lives will be determined by that first test at age 14, and that there are no second chances. And I thought the world of prep schools and the Ivy League was stressful… Imagine having only one chance at success, and having to take that chance at the age of 14.

We had to give a short speech in class last week on a topic of our choice, so I chose to discuss differences between the American and Chinese educational systems. My teacher explained most of the students that attend Tsinghua are local Beijing residents, but some, if they score high enough on their Gao Kao, (higher than Beijing applicants), are accepted from outside the city. I certainly have a new found appreciation for being able to attend class everyday at Tsinghua. We are not only among the nation’s brightest students, but also learning Mandarin in the midst of what some might declare the biggest competition in the world.