The whole article rings false to me. Although I get that it's Zhang's personal experience, but the reasoning makes zero sense, and it feels like he just wanted to vent.
Some of the points seemingly have nothing to do with studying abroad, but the nature of the university he attended, for example,
> First, you have no time. You read a lot but there’s no time to think.
This is has nothing to do with being a foreigner, or being in any specific country. It's a university culture, and every university has its own pace of teaching, in China or US.
And then,
> Of course, it makes no difference if you don’t go
> to bookstores in the US, but if you bring this habit
> back with you, it means that you don’t go to bookstores
> in China
Seriously? How hard it is to consciously decide to go to a book store when you are in need of a book? This also seems to imply that China has no good libraries, which is untrue. I'm from a small city in China, and I borrowed so many books from the city library. That was how I got into programming as well, borrowing a book about Turbo Pascal.
Personally, I think the biggest difficulty for a Chinese in studying abroad in the US, is the difficulty of being accepted into the circle. You could make friends and acquaintances with Americans, but you're never part of "them". I constantly feel like I'm on the wrong side of a aquarium glass pane, being observed and judged.
There are two real choices: 1) pretend to be a white person and be extremely amiable, or 2) fallback to the smaller circle of Chinese people in US.
Some of the points seemingly have nothing to do with studying abroad, but the nature of the university he attended, for example,
> First, you have no time. You read a lot but there’s no time to think.
This is has nothing to do with being a foreigner, or being in any specific country. It's a university culture, and every university has its own pace of teaching, in China or US.
And then,
> Of course, it makes no difference if you don’t go > to bookstores in the US, but if you bring this habit > back with you, it means that you don’t go to bookstores > in China
Seriously? How hard it is to consciously decide to go to a book store when you are in need of a book? This also seems to imply that China has no good libraries, which is untrue. I'm from a small city in China, and I borrowed so many books from the city library. That was how I got into programming as well, borrowing a book about Turbo Pascal.
Personally, I think the biggest difficulty for a Chinese in studying abroad in the US, is the difficulty of being accepted into the circle. You could make friends and acquaintances with Americans, but you're never part of "them". I constantly feel like I'm on the wrong side of a aquarium glass pane, being observed and judged.
There are two real choices: 1) pretend to be a white person and be extremely amiable, or 2) fallback to the smaller circle of Chinese people in US.