My STEP Signature Project was to participate in Fisher’s Operations Global Lab, which provides Fisher students a unique opportunity to see operations from a global perspective in China during visits to both manufacturing and service facilities. We also went on excursions to sites throughout Hong Kong, Shanghai, Suzhou, and Hang Zhou that are of historic and cultural significance.
I was fortunate to travel to China my senior year of high school, so to have the opportunity to travel back with that experience behind me made this trip even more valuable because I had a better idea of what to expect culturally (and was more prepared for squatting toilets and a lack of forks and knives). My biggest transformation of the trip came thanks to the diversity and openness of the group we traveled with. A lot of our group was from Cleveland (my home city), but four girls in our group had either grown up or had close family ties in China, Africa, the Philippines, and Mexico. Learning from their experiences in high school and at OSU changed the way that I view my relationships, and our very honest conversations about living in today’s America gave me a new perspective.
My most impactful event of the trip as a whole occurred when we were in Hangzhou. It sums up what I mentioned before about changing the way I view our country. The day in Hangzhou had some awkward points when locals were following or taking pictures of us without our consent and that experience put me in a slightly irritable mood, but when we got to the West Lake and decided to take a boat tour, the afternoon took a pleasant turn. Collin, Patrick, Yu, and I were in one boat and we ended up having a pretty powerful conversation about Chinese culture and Yu’s experience at OSU.
Talking about interactions between domestic and international students, as well as dating someone from a different culture were two of the topics we discussed. My perspective having a Chinese minor means that I know a decent amount about modern Chinese history and cultural norms. That being said, sometimes it is hard to tell how the impact of the Cultural Revolution is felt by China’s millennial population. Growing up in China with less diversity and freedom of speech than what we experience in the US surely has an impact, but I always go back to a comment my high school principal made during our trip to China. He said kids are kids everywhere. As we grow up societal differences and biases become more apparent, but for the most part my belief is that coming of age and things that people our age are concerned with are similar in a lot of places regardless of our geographic location. We worry about making our parents proud, picking the right job, and finding a significant other- all while trying to decide who we are in this world.
It’s a little crazy that I ended up all the way in Hangzhou, China before I had a deep and very honest conversation like this with an international student, when I have been at OSU for 3 years and had classes with countless international students. It made me realize that even though I claim to be so interested in Chinese culture and learning from our international students, I haven’t really put forth an effort to get to know Chinese students in my classes on a more personal level. That day empowered me to put more effort into speaking Chinese when I am home and on campus, and I hope to join a student organization that will allow me to form new relationships with Chinese students at Ohio State.
