One of my most important suggestions to Asian (Indian and Chinese in particular) students is to expand your horizons both professionally and personally. You are going to a new country - don't ONLY mingle around with your kind. There is a far broader experience to gain that will only help you professionally and personally in the future. There are many ways you can do it
* Share an apartment with someone from a different country
* Make acquaintances and talk to people outside work with diverse professions - don't stick to scientists ONLY
* Try to understand difference between cultures
Especially once you move to a new country, you have a great opportunity to understand difference between cultures. Don't miss it!
While I agree with your advice, there is one important point that you missed.
The fact that Chinese and Indian students tend to form cliques or enclaves, is a perfectly normal and natural behavior, because of the sheer large number of students in the same community.
Do not mistake this as "Chinese and Indians are not good at mingling with the locals because of their mindset and culture." It is mostly just because their social circle is large enough to sustain itself in a typical overseas community. In fact, it requires much more effort for them to get out of the comfort zone than students from countries that do not have so many students studying overseas. Another easy way to see it is that, they literally have a "larger comfort zone" to jump out of.
To put it into perspective, consider a US college where there is only a few Chinese or Indian students, chances are they will naturally interact more with locals.
Then consider a group of exchange students in an Asia university, chances are they are going to be mingling around within themselves all day with minimal interactions with locals.
So my point is, do not judge them negatively because of this, and do put in some extra effort in reaching out to them if you are kind enough and want to change the status quo.
Sticking to your language group is the easy thing to do, we realize that very well. But we also know its not the best thing to do, like eating a lot of ice cream.
I've seen family members who integrate and others who treat the new place as enclave and half learn english. The ones who do integrate did much better in life. It really is a waste, short term and long term.
I am an Indian in UK. Culture of heavy drinking and partying even in age group well past 30 is a real hindrance for me. If you don't drink or want to stop at a few, you are not really a sport.
A close family member faced the same issue when moved to UK for work. Being an athlete since the childhood (== not having a strong skill to handle alcohol + saving all time for training), he tried to avoid as much as he could - to the point where his manager made a "friendly remark" about how he should participate.
I think he now more or less secretly switches to juice after first couple of glasses (and I guess counts minutes till the end).
I feel you. I came back to Europe, but staying so long in an Asian country changed me already. Now it's sometimes really hard to reintegrate. Also because of the cultural stigma that was attached. And I am already thinking in terms of that cultural stigma.
Very interesting! Would you mind sharing in which way you became more 'Asian' in your values, manners or socialising? Usually I only hear about the reverse, e.g. Japanese going to the US or Europe and coming back more 'Western' in their ways.
One of the main points is really the alcohol. As all of my friends were not drinking, I also stopped to drink so much, that amounts to just on very special occasions. Also the aspect of friendliness. What I have to recalculate the reactions (much more aggressive, not really harmonic) of my surroundings. And so on. I could write much more, especially with family and so on. But I am definitely now a hybrid.
That is a stunningly racist thing to say. "All English are dunks so I'm forced to avoid them." Think if a visitor to India made a comment as wrong and silly as that about Indian people. British people will brush it off and it won't hurt them, while the converse may not be true it's the same sin and you should think on it a little bit.
There is the expectation that you drink too unless you are visibly muslim.
And with some people, there is the feeling that if you aren't drinking with them then they can't trust you fully.
In my first two years here i ran into all of that.
Then i said fuck it and just started telling people honestly why i wasn't going out drinking with them 'i really don't like to drink much, it makes me really sleepy and not much fun. I don't like being around drunk people when i'm sober, and besides all that i'm not spending £120 for a hotel so i have to drive.'
After repeating that a few times most people understood. Some never did.
Those people who never did understand or accept it, i don't work with them any longer.
Setting aside the odd use of the term "racist" (counting Englishmen a distinct race sounds very 19th century)...
> "All English are dunks so I'm forced to avoid them."
That's not what drieddust said at all. His (her) problem isn't with the English being drunk or not - it's with the English expecting him (her) to drink if he wanted to be part of their in-group. Which is a reasonable complaint.
Taking any nationality as a race is stupid. The whole notion of race is stupid. And racisim is now impossible because race doesn't exist. It's a shorthand wherever it is used. Read culturalist if you prefer.
There are a large number of teatotallers in the UK. There are large numbers of people who don't like to drink much and don't drink often in the UK. There are people who like to drink often to excess. Rain is wet, sugar is sweet...
It is difficult to find a group of friends when in a new country. I've heard expats claim Indians don't accept white people and scoffed similarly. I'm sorry if you haven't (yet) found a social group you like. Blaming the inhabitants of a country because of their culture, attitudes and practices for that is not something I have to treat with respect - whoever does it.
Nowhere does the poster imply that it's a bad thing or tend to dismiss English people as lesser mortals. It's just a matter of fact comment and is a barrier for him to socialize.
Apologies if it felt like that to you. There is no judgement on my part but I do face this challenge while socializing. I enjoy drinking but my body doesn't allow me to. Next day I feel horribly dehydrated and crappy. If I want to stop, I am being told I am too stiff.
It is perfectly normal for people in the UK to have social lives if they don't drink at all, or not much or not often. I'm sorry you haven't found a social group whose company you enjoy. Yet. Blaming the whole country being a "drinking culture" is sloppy and lazy at best. Maybe find a social group based on a common interest that isn't alcohol. Maybe organise a social outing with the same people who enjoy the pub, but centred on an activity doing something different. Maybe lots of things. But definitely we shouldn't blame the inhabitants and their culture of a country we are visiting for our lack of optimal social success.
I've made very cruel fun of some British people in Hong Kong sprouting similar nonsense in defence of having no friends outside the expat community. They were actually better people than that and deserved to feel ashamed about it and to their credit they did. People from ones own culture will always be an easier social fit when overseas, even if you wouldn't have much in common with them at home. Overseas you have home and the fact you're finding out about the foreign culture in common - but it's pretty superficial and lazy to fall back on that as a basis for your friends exclusively. Moreover you will miss rather a lot of the benefits of being overseas in a foreign culture.
My experience of Brits is that they are not all such hopeless alcoholics so as to be utterly incapable of socialising without excessive alcohol. If your experience is different maybe you should ask yourself why that is. Maybe you're expecting someone else to do all the work of socialising for you as one suggestion? You may come up with others.
This is mostly just human nature. When a westerner goes to an China for either work or study, a lot of them end up doing the same thing. The culture barrier makes it very hard to really bond with locals and they hang out in bars that are popular only among westerners. They feel lonely and find China a really boring place. Most Chinese immigrants also find America boring for the same reason.
I would say people from other places usually have less of such problems mostly because the culture differences are smaller. When Chinese people goes to Japan or other Asian countries, they blend into the local culture much more easily.
On top of that, a lot of Chinese immigrants are not seeking immigration when they came here for study or work. They'll go back eventually, and what they what out of being abroad is just a degree or some work experience. What's the point of mingling with locals if that's hard thing to do and will eventually be useless?
> When Chinese people goes to Japan or other Asian countries, they blend into the local culture much more easily.
Err, no. Yes, appearancewise, some Chinese are not easily distinguishable from Japanese, although the locals can often tell each other apart based on clothing, haircut, makeup etc. But rest assured, the moment a Chinese person in Japan opens their mouth, they will be every bit as much a gaijin as a blond and blue-eyed Caucasian, if not more so since the associated stereotypes are more negative.
You mean like a Polish guy coming to Germany, a Brit in France, a Spaniard in Switzerland or even a guy from Texas in New Hampshire. Of course there are differences and they may be much bigger in asia than in europe but still it is not comparable going from country to another and going from on continent to another.
I think you're right, but imo it comes down to "what is easy vs what is right". I think traveling and mingling with locals in another country can give a valuable glimpse of another way to live, allowing the traveler to reflect upon their own culture.
I attended a high school in the US where around 50% of the students were foreign. There were many people (including me) who were the only ones from their country (or one of few). Yet even amongst us the foreign-American split was still pretty obvious. We basically had our little group of foreigners, mostly Asians (they were the majority of foreign students) but white kids like me too. Like the stereotypical arrangement of high school cafeteria tables by popularity, ours were segregated by nations. There was a big Korean table, two "Amercian" tables, a Chinese table and 1 "other countries" table.
Out of curiosity, where did you go to school? I went to a science high school in New York City, and although there were a lot of foreigners, the segregation was not really along nationality or ethnic lines, but rather along lines of interest as per a typical high school: sports, music, hobbies, etc.
Sorry didn't notice earlier. A mid-tier (20k$/year range) for-profit private HS in Los Angeles proper. And just to be clear, by foreigners I meant kids on student visas who had no family in the US.
> To put it into perspective, consider a US college where there is only a few Chinese or Indian students, chances are they will naturally interact more with locals.
No, they aren't. Your original premise is incorrect. Those Chinese and Indian students are going back to their dorms/apartments and watching TV shows in their own languages and communicating with friends/families back home. The number has nothing to do with it. It's all about culture.
You seem awfully confident in your assertions about the behaviour patterns of a demographic to which you presumably do not belong. Can you provide any independent analysis of these behaviours, or systematic investigations of them?
Your observations may be true, but in this case there are more than one possible explanations apart from the numbers.
First, like you said, the cultural issue makes them more reserved and less open to others. But it can also be a pure personality issue, or a mixture of both.
Secondly, it could simply be a result of some prior events, like failed attempts to overcome language barrier, unwelcoming attitudes from local students, or even discrimination in some cases. All these could contribute to such things happening, and I think it is usually a mix of factors, not just culture.
> First, like you said, the cultural issue makes them more reserved and less open to others.
Except Indian and Chinese culture are not reserved at all. As the guide mentions, it is very common in China for people to socialize outside of work with their classmates or colleagues and even with their professors or supervisors. This often involves going out to eat and drink together. And when I say drink, I mean drink. It's amazing how much alcohol gets consumed in a country where acetaldehyde dehydrogenase deficiency is common. I'm not as familiar with Indian culture, but from speaking with Indian friends, I gather it's quite similar.
The issue is that Chinese and Indian international students have left behind all their social connections back home. It's not easy for anyone to start their social life from scratch. Then you add on the language barrier, and it's no wonder that they may appear unsociable.
> Then you add on the language barrier, and it's no wonder that they may appear unsociable
I went to poland for only a week for a foreign language meetup, and I'm very surprised at how much more introverted I became, with nobody to speak english to. It's definitely harder to socialize in a second language.
Salvatore Sanfillipo. the author of Redis, has a very good post about how he is more reserved when speaking in English as opposed to his native Italian.
Is that a pattern particular to Chinese and Indian or is that just generally an effect of trivially affordable global communications? It now takes decisive effort to have your mind in the pace of physical residence. Today I could move to the opposite end of the globe and still get hung up on the petty infighting in the city council of my hometown instead of opening my eyes to my new surrounding. I don't think that it is culturally determined at all, we just happen to see more or less of it depending on plain numbers (you see more Chinese than Swedes) and different "cultural distances" that influence the extra effort required to pull the mind out of medial diaspora. But the latter is perfectly symmetric for any two cultures.
It's really hard to socialize no matter what culture you come from. It's just human nature to seek safe environments. Also one has their priorities. Party or do well in school? I question how you can be so sure of your assertion.
Not just for people from Asia, this applies to anybody going to a different country.
I'd add: stop reading and listening to news in your native language, stop switching devices to your native language, force the immersion experience try to live, eat, read like a local.
> Not just for people from Asia, this applies to anybody going to a different country.
I agree with you. That said, there is higher probability of Asian students being in Europe and USA for a Ph.D than vice versa (context of this post). Therefore, while the advice is indeed applicable to anyone - I prefer it to be directed in order to be more concrete. The reason being Asian societies (certainly Indian ones) are not individualistic in nature. Therefore, everyone tends to follow the crowd. There is a set pattern - school -> college -> job/Masters/Ph.D -> House -> Marriage -> Kids. A departure from the usual is not encouraged and even frowned upon.
But even within the western world, even within Europe I've seen people going to a different country and immediately looking for people, restaurant and news source from their original country.
Go and spend some time on a country like China. You have the exact same problem but in reverse - westerners sticking with an English speaking social group, living in areas with large numbers of other westerners and so on.
Many English-speakers who live in China quickly find that any attempts to mix freely with local Chinese people is inevitably followed up by hard-to-refuse invitations to personally tutor their sister's or manager's young child in English. It's easier to draw the line so that these "invitations" don't come.
I know the type of situation you're talking about but it's also a cop-out of an excuse.
Firstly because there are plenty of westerners in China that are perfectly happy getting by completely in English regardless of anything else. 'Not wanting to turn in to a part time English teacher' doesn't account for the large number of westerners who have been in China a few years but still can't communicate in Chinese beyond 'knee how' and 'shay shay'.
Secondly, it's easy enough to say no to those situations, you just need to learn to say it the Chinese way, with a non-committal 'maybe' sometime at some undetermined point in the future.
Finally it's also possible to build a local social circle with people who aren't interested in English - my Chinese improved the most when I did this.
Anecdotally, I've seen this happen with pretty much any international group in a university environment when there is enough of concentration of that group to support an expat community.
I don't think you have to totally abandon your previous culture, but I think part of living aboard (or universities in general) is experiancing new things outside the classroom or lab.
It doesn't even take a concentration of a group of a specific origin. Take Erasmus students, for example, it's terrible. They come from various countries, so they do not speak the same mother language and do not share an identical culture; but they'll always stay together, always speak in English and not in the local language, and almost never mix with locals students or others locals (except the local drug dealer of course).
I was an Erasmus student, and some of what you describe definitely happened. A combination of factors like all the local students arrived before semester started and got the nice dorms, so all the foreigners were together in the old dorm without kitchens. All the local students had social groups and weren't looking for new friends the way other exchange students are (none of us were first years). We spoke French among ourselves because not everyone spoke English, but when we first arrived socialising in French was difficult, especially in groups, and other foreigners are much more patient and forgiving of that. I actually ended up making friends with a bunch of locals by joining a soccer team, but even there half the players were other foreigners. I wouldn't describe it as terrible at all, but everyone has an opinion.
Former Erasmus student here and I want to say that it's brilliant. Sure, you don't really end up living like a local, but you get to know people from all over Europe and the rest of the world. That's a great thing in and of itself. No need for locals. Sure, if you get to know locals that's great as well, but not doing so is not in any way "terrible".
Having only experienced it from the outside (observing perfectly functional flocks if "Erasmusses" not making local contact here, seeing friends join such flocks abroad) I even feel tempted to say "you learn a lot about all kinds of countries, except for the one you go to". The intensity of socialising inside those groups is staggering and part of the lack of contact with the local population might well be that those just can't compete in being as interesting: answering "here" to the conversation starter "where are you from" instantly makes you the least interesting person in the room. Kind of like the backpacker hostel vibe.
A decade or two back I met the daughter of a friend in Italy. She was English and studying Italian as part of her university degree in Wales. She complained that she wasn't really learning that much.
One part was hard for her to change - being fair and blond. However, apart from that, she had chosen to go to Florence - one of the few places where people did speak a fair bit of English. She also shared a flat with an English girl friend. They both remarked that one of the other guys on their course was also in Florence but they never saw him - he had joined rugby club and socialised only with locals - funnily enough his Italian had gotten much better...
My nr. 1 tip would be: Don´t say you understand when you don´t. I have had many wonderful experiences with Asian students always fun conversations and every single one I met was quite social from the start. But almost everyone I know has at least one story of a Chinese student doing nothing for days or weeks because they say they know what to do but don´t. I understand the cultural differences but try to be honest about what you know. Personally I consider it a form of strength to know your own weaknesses, I think many people in the west do.
Yes, and the same advice applies to westerners living in Asia! Especially in cities like Shanghai or Hong Kong, there are westerners who live for decades without interacting with the local culture in a meaningful way.
Heh, this hits close to home. My alma mater's international students did the opposite of what you advise. Whether it was lunch, class, or any kind of social activity it was impossible to spot anything but groups of Chinese students from the same area or university.
My roommate was a Chinese international and because we lived together he was sort of forced to come out of his shell. He'd be the first to tell you it helped him a lot!
Going to keep it 100. In my university, often Chinese students hang out together, join groups with Chinese advisors, etc. It's understandable to want to associate with your in-group, but it certainly does hurt to broaden one's horizons.
Speaking from my own experience having lived abroad in multinational environments half my life, cliques tend to form whenever a shared culture/heritage is sizable enough to form a community (usually starting at around a dozen) in a foreign enviroment
It's true, any foreigner in any group will face push back. It's tough, but it's human nature. To be fair, I wouldn't do that because that makes no sense to me personally.
My Chinese friend (25+) wanted to get married, so he had to choose how to spend the small amount of social time a PhD afforded. He could either try the American system which involves a lot of time at the gym and years of soul searching, not to mention racial bias. Obviously, he choose the Chinese way which involves recommendations from friends and more traditional views, that accepts that a male might spend 10 hours a day working. The guy went from virgin to hitched in a year and a half, and can still keep up high work productivity.
I've seen this from every country in school and job settings, the common thread is that people are interested in just what they're there for, no more. Travelers and "world stuarts" OTOH are there to do just the opposite, and embrace wherever they are. But most end up in other countries out of circumstance and would have prefered to stay in their own country.
Just wondering, have you ever lived in a foreign country? your advice sounds reasonable, but it can be very difficult to implement. It's easy to blame foreigners for not willing to mix with other people, but it's much harder than what it seems. Think how sometimes people have a hard time making friends when they move to a new city in their own country.
> Just wondering, have you ever lived in a foreign country?
Yup - I am currently living in Germany. I am well traveled too. I never said it is easy. I just wanted to get across the point that the benefits are worth the costs.
Wow, look at the amount of condescension! Only Indian and Chinese students need to broaden their horizons, not White students, right? Asians need to understand the difference between cultures, Whites being superior of course don't need to understand anything like that! Why are you assuming that all Indian and Chinese students behave exactly alike? Do you think diversity of behavior is to be found among Caucasians only?
You also didn't consider the issue of latent racism at all. A lot of times fresh off the boat Asian students get rebuffed by Whites if they try to develop contact. Often it takes the form of making negative comments about their home countries - how poor/regressive/authoritarian they are. Nobody likes getting badmouthed. This is one of the reasons they form so called cliques.
Sorry to call you out, but I'm sickened by your racism.
I think most of the people making these comments would identify as anti-racist. Furthermore, they would be shocked by similar comments addressed to students from Africa, the Middle East or Latin America.
Personally I think everything said about Asian students is true, I just wish we could be as open and realistic when discussing other cultures, rather than simply blame "racism" when people from other cultures encounter difficulties.
It's a general pattern that comments that would be considered "racist" when applied to any other non-White culture, are ok when applied to Asia (see the constant flood of orientalist articles about Japan on HN).
* Share an apartment with someone from a different country
* Make acquaintances and talk to people outside work with diverse professions - don't stick to scientists ONLY
* Try to understand difference between cultures
Especially once you move to a new country, you have a great opportunity to understand difference between cultures. Don't miss it!