Interview 3
11/11/2012
Eng 191 section 28
Interviewer: Nick C-A
Interviewee: Jua L.
Country: China
Preparations:
Before
interviewing, I set up my questions, objectives, and technology. I begin by
looking through the class set of questions to find ones that I felt would help
me learn the most about China. I rearranged these questions in a way I felt would
make sense to ask and put them into three sub categories: Intro, Questions
about China, Concluding questions. The intro questions were designed to be
personal and easy questions to help the interviewee open up. The Questions on
China all related to cultural values to ideas that would teach me about the
country. The Concluding questions were courtesy questions for the interviewee
allowing them to ask me questions to feel that they had gained something from
the interview. The objectives of my questions were all related to subcategories
of Chinese culture. My first objective was different though because it tried to
understand how the interviewee fit into Chinese society. The five other
objectives were about Chinese youth, education, religion, holidays, and foods.
Due the required transcription, I needed to find a way to record the interview.
My iPhone has a built in application to record audio so I decided to use that.
Unlike
in the first two interviews, I did not have someone to interview from the other
class. To help find someone to interview, I asked Hua from the previous
interview for help to find my third interviewee. He said he’d help and he gave
me contact information of a fellow exchange student, Jua. I contacted him via
text message in which he accepted to do the interview.
Execution:
I had
found my interviewee, we had to set up a date and place to do the interview. We
decided that the best time for both of us would be on Sunday at two. Like the
previous two interviews, we also decided that the library would be a good place
to have the interview. On Sunday, I went to the library to find a place where
we could have peace and quiet and found a secluded corner on the first floor
that would work.
From
what I learned through the interview, he comes from a city called Louli just
like the previous two interviewees. He decided to become a foreign exchange
student because some of his friends and classmates had decided to do it. He
also felt that this would be a good way to learn of other cultures and practice
English. He decided St. Cloud because he had been told by a friend that this
was a nice place. Jua is twenty years old and is going to St Cloud to get a
bachelor in biomedical studies. This is his second semester in St Cloud.
The
interview went over pretty not quite as well as the first two but still went pretty
well. The first thing I noticed in the interview was that Jua had better English
than the first two interviews which really helped us to communicate better. Due
to his fluency in English, the part that impressed me the most was how natural
the first phase of the interview went. He was able to go through the questions
with easy and with very little stuttering to help him think of what next to
say. Moving onto the second phase of the interview, Jua brought up something that
moved me.
When I
asked Jua about the differences between American and Chinese educational
systems he began to talk about high schools in China. In China it is regular
for students just to attend high school during the weekends and to work through
the week. This leaves very little free time and not a day off in the week. This
moved me because I feel that this is far more stressful on a fifteen to
eighteen year old than the school I had gone through as a teenager. If I were
to have been moved from one country to the other at that age, I know would have
lost it in culture shock for at least a month. This part of the interview I
found interesting but not all parts of the interview went over that well.
Going
from a student in English 151 to a student that was neither in it or had taken
the class in the past was an unseen challenge for me. The change caused me to
ask questions in the same way I had to the previous students to Jua. This left
him feeling oddly when transitioning from question to question sometime causing
him to wondering what I was going at. During the middle of the interview I
simply had to quickly explain the assignment to avoid further confusion. This
could have been easily avoided by leaving that information to the beginning of
the interview or between phase one and two.
Post-Production:
The country China is located in
eastern Asia. China is known for its enormous size and population which causes
it to be very influential from a global perspective. China is the most
populated country with 1.3 billion citizens making it have about 18.5% of the
world’s population (2). By land area china is the second largest country in the
world (1). Both of these statistics allow for china to have a long history,
large world economic influence, and large cultural differences throughout the
country.
Anthropological
study of China points to civilization first sprouting in china sometime before
3.5 thousand years ago. (1) Modern China is a massive country in land area that
could not all be governed by an ancient society. The most populated area being
in eastern China was split up into dynasties which would commonly fight for
power and resource. This dynasty styled governance lasted until 221bc when the
Qin Dynasty conquered and unified the dynasties (1). The Qin Dynasty eventually
fell to others which would hold power for only a few hundred years and lose it.
Dynasty ruling style led all the way through to 1912 when civil revolt led to
the forming of the Republic of China which lasted until 1949 (1). After civil
war modern day China, People’s Republic of China, was formed.
The
formation of the People’s Republic of China led to the installment of a
communist party led government. Under strong leadership, China has become the
second largest economy in the world in terms of GDP (1). Under strong
leadership, Chinese economic growth has been rapidly growing, when compared to
other major economies around the world, since 1978 (1). Prior to China’s modern
economic policies China went through some economic shock while forming into a
communist style country. This caused starvation and little economic growth
until they figured out how to successfully run a state controlled economic
system.
Modern
day china is a massive country with many subcultures. In China there are fourteen major ethnic
groups (2) and many other minor ethnic groups. This diversity causes there to
many languages throughout China but their national language is Standard Chinese
or Mandarin. Even though the country has no official religion the largest
religions are Daoism and Buddhism. The Chinese Education system is a lot like
the American system with twelve primary grades and secondary options available.
High School systems differ because the students only attend class twice a week
on the weekends and are normally working during the week.
Through
a mixture of economic strength and sheer size, China has come into the
spotlight a world super power. With this foreign power China has taken the
opportunity to create trade and create international influence. As a way to
help strengthen relationships with other countries China has a large foreign
exchange program which is nice because it allows firsthand experience through
talking and interviewing these international students.
Observations:
As brought up earlier, the
thing I found most interesting in this interview was about how the high school
system differed between the countries. The large amount of work put into
graduating high school in China is impressive and shows a great deal of perseverance.
A decent conclusion that I have come to is that this would cause the students
to be more disciplined at graduation than their American counterparts. This is
arguable and would have to be studied further to bring more tangible evidence
to prove it. Another thing that would be important to know is dropout rates and
the percent of citizens that begin to attend high school.
Work Cited: referred material has been paraphrased
(1) "China." wikipedia.org. N.p., 22 2012.
Web. 23 Oct 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China>.
(2) "The
World Fact Book." China. CIA, 4 2012. Web. 23 Oct 2012.
<https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ch.html>.
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