Andre Tavares Silva English 191 Section 99
Jiawen Wang (Run)
Changsha, China
Monday, March 15th, 2010
First Report
Interview Transcript
My efforts on looking for an interviewee were entirely affect by the way I relate to people in this country. For those who may not know, I am also an International student. Then the first impression was that it would be an easy task, once I would be interviewing a person with, in most cases, similar story than mine. That is true. However, when I first came into the U.S, most of the people around my environment were actually Americans. With the exception of the other exchange students in the school, whose stay in the country would expire and they would return to their home countries. Not by choice, but as a recommendation, in order improve my English skills.
Therefore, almost a hundred percent of the people I know in this city are U.S citizens. This surely appeared to me as an obstacle, once I would have to really approach some unfamiliar people, in contrast with those who have foreign friends living in the same floor at the dorms and/or who choose to hang out with people other the U.S nationals. Nonetheless, my work as a Spanish tutor in the Department of Foreign languages of SCSU at Lawrence Hall gave me the possibility to reach some other tutors who occur to be citizens from other parts of the world.
I decided to use my session as a tutor, which usually is not very busy, allowing me to have flexibility of my time, to carry on the interview. Coincidentally, a Chinese tutor, which happened to be a person who in fact was my Chinese teacher during the spring of 2009, had the same scheduled time as me. We have talked before, and we both exchanged experiences and cultural differences between Brazil and China, especially after I learned a little of his language in his class.
The interview was conducted inside the tutor room of the Department of Foreign languages at Lawrence Hall, on Monday, March 15th, at 3:00 p.m. I arrived some minutes earlier in the room and set up my laptop with the questions, so he would be able to read them. I decided to keep the same questions we have produced in class, making some adaptations according to the way I put my speech. Also, I recorded the conversation, though, as a form of support to the ideas I produced while I listened to his answers, and not as a literal transcription. This is due by the fact that I believe that if the person who is asking the questions make comments or speak in between the answers, the final argument of the interviewee can be affected, or even influenced by my opinions. Therefore, I decided to hear him in silent, and after we were done then I made comments about the whole process, with the recorder turned off. Again, I believe that during this kind of interview, the interviewer’s opinion does not really matter; my report will be my written judgment about how it all went. It is a simple process: There are the questions, and then the answers. No matter how briefly his words were, that is what he thinks.
The way I approached him was directly. As soon as he entered the room, I waited for him to sit down, greeted him as usual, and talked about the interview. I asked him if he would not mind answering some questions and talking about his culture and country. I had one hour to do the whole process. I might have talked to him for about forty minutes.
The person, who I talked to, is Jiawen Wang, from China. When talking about China, a huge and typical culture appears and leads most people to believe there is a homogeneous set of traditions and customs all along this country. Particularly, most of the facts I heard during the interview were already known to me. This is because I have been ,for a couple of times, in the same classroom as other people from Asia, and often times the professor would stop the class and randomly ask the international students how different or similar was a determined custom in their home country. Making reference to the large number of Chinese students in this campus, I had a lot of chances to hear a little about this culture, especially after I took Chinese classes with the native students, in the past. There was however, one fact that caught my attention during the process, and it was the detail that within the families the father is the one responsible for getting money to fund every member, however the mother is the one who takes care of the expenses, in other words, she decides what the money will be spent with. This seems a little different from what happens in my country, where both of the parents work, and thus, they have a flexibility to make major financial decisions, without requiring opinion from each other.
It is important to recognize that even inside China, it exist a great diversity, as well as a variety of races, dialects and, thus, differences that for outsiders might be unperceived. Run, as he adopted himself the American name, comes from a Southern Province in China. He once told me, that in contrast to the weather in Minnesota, his city could reach really high temperatures along the humid summer, and which contributed for him to want to give a break from the heat and easily adapt to the Minnesotan reality.
Run’s home city, Changsha, according to the info provided by him plus some of my research, is the capital of the Hunan, which consists of a Province located in South-central China. According to Wikipedia its population goes a little over six million people, and about 2.7 million of the total population lives in the urbanized area of the city, leaving the rest to country areas and rural communities. As many Chinese cities, it brings the contrast of urban and rural, the modern and antique, intensely laying side-by-side in that nation.
Interview Transcription:
Interview Questions
1. Who are you and where are you from?
“My original name is Jiawen Wang, but I use the American name ‘Run.’ I’m 19 years old and I come from China, my city is Changsha.”
2. What is the family structure/social life like in your country?
“In my family my father takes care of work, he gets the money for us and my mother takes care of finances and sons, house works.”
3. What type of government does your country have? How is it different from the US government?
“China is Communist. In this kind of system the President works more with out of the country issues, and the Prime Minister takes care of domestic ones. Currently, there is more freedom of speech than in the past. Media has more liberty to talk about the government.”
4. How did you find out/decide to come to SCSU/US?
“Minnesota was the first state I knew when learning English. The first things I learned about the U.S were from Minnesota. Also, SCSU is the second larger school in the state, and I think it is a nice place to live.”
5. What do you plan to do, where do you want to go after you graduate? Will you go home?
“I plan on travel around the world. Give a break from school. Maybe work while I’m abroad and gather some money. I don’t know yet where I wanna live. It depends on which country can I get the better job. My major is Business.”
6. What is your daily life like in your home country? How is it different from your life here?
“Actually, it is pretty much the same. Go to class, then homework, then go home and watch TV on free time, however, high school in China goes from 7 am until 5 pm, which takes most of our days.”
7. What is the greatest influence the US has had on you?
“Since I got here I Improved my communication skills, in terms of what way do I use to approach people. Here in the states people have a really good sense of how approach and socialize with community.”
8. What is the image of the US in your home country? What do you think now?
“I used to think the U.S was a place with many job opportunities. It is not quite like that anymore, though. This is because I thought of how it used to be some years ago, but recent economic crisis changed this scenario. People in my city have a stereotyped image of this country as of college students partying all the time, as seen on many American movies. Soon, I found out that exists, but of course it is not all like that.”
9. What is the food and clothing like in your country?
“In my province we eat rice both for lunch and dinner. Almost everything thing is cooked, like Chinese cabbage, green peppers. That is specific from the southern part of my country. Clothing can be diverse, once there are the people who live in the rural areas, and those who grew up in the city, like me. This latter kind will tend to dress more westernized clothes, even being similar to the dressing manners in this part of the world, including the U.S.”
10. What are some of the social "norms" or "customs" in your home country?
“It is hard to think in one right now. Actually, I know there are many, but one of those is that in classroom, we are not allowed to ask direct questions while the teacher is talking, such as interrupting him, because this is considered not polite. If it happens that one student does so, there will be pure pressure from the others, like people instantly saying: “Don’t do this! That’s rude!
Another one I can remember is that children are not supposed to talk when adults or older people are having conversations, like within a family. This is because the youngest ones should learn with the older ones by listening only. It’s like they have no opinion because they are inexperienced.”
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