Week 1 of classes - Finished

I am one class away from finishing my first week of courses here at Fudan. I knew that the Chinese always saw Westerners as loud, confident, and occasionally lazy people…One week of classes easily showed me why they see us that way. My Monday morning class is called Shanghai Studies. A group of 6 of us from the IES program entered the classroom about 10 minutes early. We were immediately pointed at and laughed at by three rows of Chinese students. They all considered us “late”. Every Western student moved as far as they could to the back of the classroom, whereas the Chinese students were fighting for spots in the front row. When the teacher (laoshi) stepped in briefly after us, every student in the front 3 rows sat up straight and stopped talking. We were all confused…we thought we had 10 minutes left of free time before class started.

The Chinese students on average take 4 classes a day from what I have gathered. They work around 16 hours a day purely for school. Meals are not excuses for taking a break – they eat while they study. Interestingly enough, the amount they study directly leads to a decrease in social skills. They even admit that they’re taking these English classes with us to increase their ability to comfortably talk and interact with strangers “like Americans do”.

My goal for tomorrow will be to find the Chinese equivalent for “T.G.I.F” although the chances of that expression existing are VERY slim.