keeping whitie down
my former student was excited to show me his new apartment. well, apartment may not be the best word. a junior, he still lives in a building owned by the university. he still calls it a dorm. but it’s outside campus — barely outside, mind you, but outside nonetheless — and gives him some feeling of independence. “no curfew,” he said to me proudly. no hot water, either, but he’ll take what he can get.
we exited campus and walked through the gate to his complex, past all the families who live amongst the students. it appeared pretty typical for china — all the buildings looked the same, and they were lined up like huge dominoes, one after the other.
we approached the entrance to my student’s stairwell … and a middle-aged man approached my student. he put his arm around him, turned his back to me and whispered in my student’s ear. my student didn’t say a word. he just listened and nodded again and again. the man walked away. he never made eye contact with me.
“my landlord,” my student said, looking embarrassed, as he led me up to his room.
“what was that all about?” i asked, even though i had an idea.
my student couldn’t face me for his reply. he kept walking as he said, “no foreigners allowed. but you are allowed this once because you already made it this far. so i hope you enjoy your only trip to my room.”
my student has a good sense of humor. but he looked uncomfortable. this wasn’t how he had planned his teacher’s first visit to his room. but there was nothing he could do.
“did he explain why?” i asked, although no explanation would have explained anything satisfactorily.
“no, but” — chinese students seemingly always try to come to the defense of the system — “maybe the school doesn’t want foreigners to know how students are living here.”
“but the school does want foreigners to know that the school discriminates against foreigners?”
and the living conditions weren’t that bad, anyway. sure, six guys were crammed into a space in which maybe three guys could live comfortably. but, hell, this is china. the conditions didn’t seem any worse than those on campus (strangely, no one gave me a hassle about entering those dorms last year).
but the no-foreigners rule is hardly the most frustrating one my student and his roommates must deal with.
“girls aren’t allowed to enter, either,” my student’s roommate — also one of my former students — sighed. “but still, it’s a lot less strict out here than it is in there.”
he pointed toward the wall that encloses the campus of shanghai university.
09.11.2003, 12:39 AM · Observations, School
3 Comments
My guess is that it
is one of those Chinese “face” things. They didn’t
want u to see their poor living conditions
,crammed dorms and all that. kind of embarassing for them that u were able to see them up close.
Bum deal. Though if it really is because they’re embarrassed, I could see why that might be a policy.
I wouldn’t lose sleep over it.
Maybe the student is a junior of senior student. Because we freshman and sophomore are living in the dorm with good condition, four sharing one room and a toilet.