Sam Bieler | Trading Spaces: Beijing edition

This is a particularly painful column for me to write. Not because I have to expose unpleasant truths, but because I have to do something every 20 year old hopes to avoid: admit my parents were right. Since high school, they told me that study abroad was a vital part of college education, but it has taken a summer working in China for me to believe them.

When my mom suggested I spend a semester in another county, I thought of friends, who much like me, had little-to-no language training, but went abroad anyway. Their accounts tended to center not around learning more about the country they were in, but learning where in that country to find the cheapest happy hour or the cutest locals. I called their trips “Scholastic drinking trips”: high on alcohol, but low on learning.

Confident that I had no desire to study abroad, I planned a double major that would keep me on campus. Then I took a summer job as intern in an American law firm in Beijing, and realized I had made a huge mistake.

For starters, learning and using the language becomes much more satisfying abroad. Rather than going over dull textbook conversations, I am interacting and surviving on my language skills. Discussing car preferences with my taxi driver in broken Chinese was more thrilling than a whole semester of scripted classroom conversations. I also learned that I should avoid Chinese cars, better to stick with German.

I also am getting a view of history unlike any American perspective. Having taken courses in the history of Japan and China, I felt I had solid grasp of the region’s history before coming here. Then I heard the local version.

Talking to a tour guide I learned about rivals Mao and Chiang Kai-Shek in a way I never had before. Chiang was no longer a brave if bumbling leader. He was a thug, a “Shanghai gangster” who held power by selling out Mao, the communists and all of China to the invading Japanese. For my guide, this wasn’t an alternative history, this was the story of China — how it actually happened. Little can challenge your perception of history as much as a new narrative perceived as basic truth by someone else.

This alternative history is forming one part of an all-encompassing cultural experience while I am abroad, an experience that is changing how I view the world. When Time Magazine writes about new political restrictions on TV in China, it’s not an abstract — it’s the reason my reality show is not on right now. When friends at home send YouTube videos I can’t watch, the issue of censorship takes on a new dimension because I am on the receiving end. It’s personal now.

And for those Penn students interested in the bottom line, all this cultural learning doesn’t just make you smarter, it makes you more employable. According to Career Services associate director Claire Klieger, “There are lots of advantages to studying abroad from an employer’s perspective. More and more, the cultural sensitivity and adaptability that come from living abroad are central to the global workplace.” As I get close to graduation and the horror of finding a job, it is nice knowing that I possess at least one skill deemed central to employers.

Luckily for Penn students seeking to gain this edge, most semesters abroad don’t involve censored internet or newspapers suspiciously cheerful about the Communist Party, so you have even more reason to go.

It doesn’t matter if you are fluent in the language. My Chinese, as frustrated Penn tutors, confused waiters and direction-less taxi drivers know, is appalling. You’ll adapt, integrate and come back with knowledge and skills that will help you for the rest of your life.

Sam Bieler is a rising College junior from Ridgewood, N.J. He is a member of the Nominations and Elections Committee. His e-mail address is sbieler@sas.upenn.edu.

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