Freedom

It’s funny; I remember thinking about China before I left and wondering what the society would be like. Would the communist government’s rule of law keep everyone in check? Would I have to be worried about accidentally committing a crime because of obtuse laws?

I arrived and found nothing of the sort. While China, and Shanghai, have many of the same laws as the U.S. that govern day to day life, there is still a lot of freedom and lee-way. For example, it is pretty much acceptable to ride a bicycle anywhere. The bike lane, sidewalk, and even a busy road are all allowable places to ride a bicycle. While this may seem rather minimal, there is something pretty fantastic about riding a bike down a main road in Shanghai and passing luxury sports cars.

This sense of freedom has pretty fully inhabited my life while here in Shanghai. I have class three days a week, Tuesday through Thursday, but I get out of class at noon on Wednesday and don’t start until 1:30 on Thursday. This leaves me with a four-day weekend and a lot of time to explore. On any given day, I can wake up, ride an OFO bike to the metro, hop on and end up in any part of the city. I can spend the day searching for the best dumplings in Shanghai, studying at a café in the French Concession, exploring the location where the Chinese Communist Party was founded, or getting my hair dyed blonde (I did this yesterday).

My hair is a little lighter

I am not trying to be the cliché study abroad student who goes abroad and discovers their true self. However, I will say within in my situation, I have had a lot of time to pursue any project that I am interested in. I can spend hours walking around, taking photographs and eating the best street food this city has to offer. This freedom is something truly special and the reason that I would recommend all students to pursue a semester abroad.

I understand that I have been lucky enough to have a school schedule that allows this, a public transportation system that can very easily get me around the city and country, and a great group of friends to do this with. However, for the first time in a while, I have started making decisions because they are something I truly want to do. I am not worrying about how it will affect my professional appearance (my hair). I am not worrying about American politics (this is amazing). I am not stressed about assignments that are due in a few weeks (I have a few weeks). I am taking advantage of my time to do things that I want to do, and I am doing this because of study abroad, and that’s pretty cool.

Update: Sense of Community

It has been a little over a week and a half since the food vendors in front of my building were shut down by the government. To me, this was a significant loss of culture and a pretty big inconvenience as it significantly increased the distance I have to travel in order to get food. However, for some of my classmates, this was a truly major blow. This weekend, I went with a friend to scour the city, attempting to find Shou Zhua Bing, a crispy scallion pancake topped with egg, lettuce, meat, cucumbers and sweet chili sauce. After hours, we finally found a place selling it, and were slightly disappointed by the results. Since I wrote a piece about this last week, three of the restaurants/foods stalls took the bricks down and have begun setting up shop again, including the Korean restaurant that sells Shou Zhua Bing (honestly my favorite Chinese food). It's rather funny; If I were in the same situation, and had decided to reopen by shop, I would have smashed the brick wall down with a sledge hammer. Instead, these vendors removed the mortar and took down each individual brick and stacked them in a pile on the sidewalk. It appears that they will be opening in the next few days, which has made many of us rather ecstatic. You don't really appreciate something till its gone. However, I sure as hell will appreciate it once it's back. 

Education in China

I have always been fascinated by education. In America, it is not only looked upon as a necessary service, it is required by law. American Children must be educated, at least until they are 16 (around 10 or 11 years of required schooling). The majority of millennials or younger have or will receive a high school diploma, and around 40% will continue on to receive a bachelor’s diploma. In many communities, it is the norm to continue on to college after high school. Since being in China, I have realized that education is not looked upon in the same way.

While it is compulsory in China to go to school for 9 years (only 1 or 2 less years than in America), traditional education is very different than western education. The Chinese education system is very much based on memorization. Critical thinking skills are widely skipped over in favor of regurgitation of facts. Students in China will all partake in this type of education up until high school, at which point they have to choose to either attempt to go to college in China or choose to attempt to go internationally. If they choose China, then they will spend 3 years studying for the Gaokao, the Chinese university entrance exam. The test is extremely difficult and almost completely determines which colleges you get into. If they choose to go internationally, then they will either go to a private school or the international version of a public school. These schools will have either AP or IB curriculum and teach students in a similar way to the American education system. This past week, I got to visit several of these international public and private schools to meet students.

On Monday, I visited three schools for Chinese national students. All three offered an international curriculum, either AP, IB or both, and were preparing to send students abroad for their college education. Many of the teachers were American or Canadian and instruction was completely in English (with the exception of language classes). Despite this international curriculum with a focus on critical thinking and creativity, there was still a big push for STEM and memorization heavy subjects. For example, one of the college counselors was telling me about a parent who had told her that her daughter was interesting in studying art in college. Instead of encouraging this, the college counselor suggested that she study engineering and go into the artificial intelligence field. Despite the excellent education that students at this school were receiving, they are still only given a limited number options when it comes to choosing a field of study in college.

On Tuesday, I visited three schools for international students. These schools were mainly made up of students from America, Europe, Hong Kong and Singapore. The teachers were almost exclusively American or Canadian and the college counselors had all been educated in America. Almost all of the students were planning on attending college in either America or the UK. The interactions that I had with students made me feel like I was back in America and the education style seemed very comparable to what I was used to in America. It was a very weird experience as it seemed like an American high school was simply placed into the middle of Shanghai.

While the education style seemed to differ very greatly, the students all seemed eager to learn and were concerned about their futures. They had a lot of questions for me in regard to education in America and what college was like in Washington, DC. The experience as a whole simply made me more curious about international education and the way that the governments of each country structure their education system in an effort to promote a developed society.