Sophomore describes experience as a foreign exchange student in China

As sophomore Sophia Steckelberg sat inside a fast food restaurant, eating with her aunt, uncle and cousin who she hadn’t seen in years, she watched a small 5-year-old boy walk out of the restaurant. He turned around, pulled down his pants and used the outside of the restaurant as his restroom. Then, he bent down and used it again.

Though a shocking sight at first, seeing a bit of excrement as she walked down the street became ordinary. Most shocking scenes became ordinary when Steckelberg spent four months in China.

Steckelberg had decided in June that she wanted to study abroad in China during the first semester of her sophomore year. From August to November, she would walk down streets alongside the Chinese people and converse in the language she has been speaking on and off since birth.

“My mom and I were talking, and I told her that I would really like to improve my Chinese speaking and mostly writing,” Steckelberg said. “I came up with the idea to go to China and basically learn there.”

Steckelberg’s first trip to China was when she was one month old, then at age 4 and again at age 6. Her mother is from China and has family that lives in Qing Dao, a city on the eastern coast of China by the Yellow Sea. Now at age 15, Steckelberg was returning to the country, where she would live with her aunt, uncle and cousin.

Despite the fact that she’s half Chinese and speaks the language almost fluently, Steckelberg couldn’t prevent herself from feeling like a outsider while in China. Every day when she walked down the streets of Qing Dao, she could feel a thousand eyes follow her, their minds picking out her thinner face and out-of-place sweatpants, labeling her as a foreigner.

What made the unwanted attention worth it was the fact that she understood every word they whispered about her. At the beginning of the trip, when Steckelberg’s mother was with her, the two went to a pottery store, and bought three beautiful but hefty decorative rocks. As they carried the bulky items down the street to their car, a man passing by said in Chinese, “Look at these stupid Americans, they buy everything!”

“I immediately turned around and said in Chinese, ‘Excuse me, I can also speak Chinese,’” Steckelberg said. “That’s probably the meanest thing I’ve said to someone older than me.

Steckelberg met with other foreigners from around the world every weekday at her Chinese class at Qing Dao University.

She helped Nicole, a 39-year-old from Texas, pronounce the Chinese words she had difficulty with. She occasionally met up with Sebastion, a 22-year-old friend from Libya, after school. During class she could always get a laugh from Damir, a 37-year-old Croatian and resident class clown.

Though her course at Qing Dao University helped Steckelberg improve, she found it didn’t have to be her only classroom. After class got out at noon, she was free to do whatever she wanted in the geographically diverse city of Qing Dao. Right outside her window she saw the beach– a dense mass anytime after 10 a.m. of seaweed infested salt water, sand and pale skinned Chinese people swimming in shorts and a T-shirt.

“There they believe pale skin is best because it represents pureness,” Steckelberg said. “Whereas here the tanner you are the ‘sexier’ you are, if you have a tan in China people look at you as very poor and dirty because you work out in the sun a lot.”

Only a 45 minute car-ride away were the mountains. To reach the top of the mountain could ride a red, ski-lift type ride, or walk an endless flight of stone stairs. Steckelberg visited the top of the mountains four times and took the stairs once.

Going out and immersing herself in the Chinese culture was a second reason for studying abroad. Going to class was not her priority, and with her aunt, uncle and cousin, Jao Xin, Steckelberg took days off and traveled to different places throughout the country, such as Beijing, Hong Kong, and Dunhuang, a desert area in northern China. Aside from the typical tourist destinations, she also visited more isolated places.

“I got to visit the High Priest Monks, which I don’t think anyone in my family has even heard of,” Steckelberg said. “I felt very honored and grateful that I had the opportunity to be there.”

But Steckelberg learned a lot about China and its culture from her family’s apartment in Qing Dao. Families still hang their clothes out to dry and are lucky if they have a mini-fridge. When she turned on the even smaller television, Steckelberg had a choice of the news, Chinese history shows, anime cartoons or Tom & Jerry, minus the comical violence. A nice computer in China is the equivalent of a Ferrari in the U.S.

Though this kind of lifestyle could be seen as archaic, Steckelberg sees it as simple. She enjoyed hanging her clean clothes out to dry; it made her feel like “one of them.”

“In China it’s about keeping your morals, being a good person and sticking to your roots,” Steckelberg said. “[The past] is probably the biggest part of them.”

Steckelberg brought her personal MacBook and iPod with her to China to make up for the technological differences. But the thing she did not prepare herself for was the extreme poverty she witnessed.

In China, Steckelberg found it right outside her front door. With people from various classes living together, she saw things more shocking than a bearded hobo asking for money at a busy street intersection holding a cardboard sign.

“There were people who broke their own legs just for money,” Steckelberg said. “There was this lady I remember, who for hours would just bow down to everyone that walked by.”

She first encountered of the impoverished people of China in a wealthy part of Qing Dao. A short, dark-skinned lady with a messy braid and torn clothes hobbled around with a tattered sign reading, “Medical money, please help.” In her arms was an infant that had been burned. Passing by her was a fresh-faced woman, clothed in designer brands, straight from the day spa.

Experiencing this Chinese culture first-hand has made Steckelberg feel lucky for what she has in America. Before her trip, she took things like air conditioning, a car and a house for granted. But in China, she very likely wouldn’t have all of that.

“Americans should be very thankful that they can live in America and that they have literally everything they have” Steckelberg said. “China is a great place to live but I honestly don’t think a lot of high schoolers could live there and be okay with it. Don’t take anything you have here for granted.”