Studying abroad helps shatter cultural barriers

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It is a beautiful Saturday afternoon in Iowa City, Iowa, and all my elementary school friends are playing soccer. I am sitting in a dusty, dimly lit apartment basement, preparing to take a dictation test on Chinese characters. Every week, under the "strong encouragement" of my parents, I spend three hours learning Mandarin along with other Chinese-American kids. I don't understand why my parents want me to hold on to the country where I was born while I strive to embrace the country where I am being raised.

Fast forward to my senior year of college. Now I am enrolled as an international student in Peking University's School of Economics through the Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE), the first study abroad program established at Peking University. Instead of a single afternoon every week, I am spending the entire semester taking classes in Mandarin on ecological economics and China's foreign policy.

The journey from then to now is a long story, but a turning point happened my first year at the University of Iowa. Before school started, I volunteered to pick up international students at the airport and help them get settled in to their dorms. I am a member of a Chinese Christian church in Iowa City, and we help students from China with anything from finding a place to stay to applying for a bank card. Empathizing with the struggles of international students to overcome language and cultural barriers, I began noticing how those barriers manifested in divisions - and even discrimination - between American and international students.

As Chinese-American who is often labeled as Chinese in America and American in China, I especially empathized with international students from China, who comprise about 60 percent of the University of Iowa's international student population. In order to build a more inclusive campus, I started organizing groups of international students, Asian-Americans, and student government leaders to improve services for international students, such as a more integrated international student orientation and a more fair housing registration process. My advocacy was rooted in my ability to bridge the gap between students who often came from very different backgrounds - an ability rooted in my own experience growing up as an Asian-American in a predominantly white state.

I also took on more leadership roles to build more sustainable relationships between China and the United States on a broader scale. Serving as vice-president of University of Iowa Student Government my junior year, I helped establish an International Student Advisory Board as a channel for international students to voice their concerns and input. Additionally, I promote U.S.-China educational exchanges as a campus ambassador for the 100,000 Strong Foundation, a nonprofit organization that seeks to expand and diversify the number of Americans studying Mandarin and studying abroad in China. While attending an event in Muscatine with the 100,000 Strong Foundation, I learned that Iowa has a special connection to China. I met Sarah Lande, who facilitated President Xi Jinping's 1985 visit to Muscatine and hosted him in her home again in 2012. Inspired by her model of citizen diplomacy, I hope to eventually work as a diplomat to build bridges between countries. Toward that end, I interned at the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs this past summer.

Nearing the end of my undergraduate journey, I feel that studying abroad at Peking University is the equivalent of coming full circle. I have another three-hour course that frightens me, on Tuesday nights instead of Saturday afternoons and on Chinese approaches to foreign affairs instead of character dictations. For most of the class, I am frantically looking up words in my Chinese-English dictionary, piecing together meanings of terms through loose-fitting English equivalents, nodding at what I hope to be appropriate times in the instructor's lecture. Now I know the difficulty of being an international student in another country. Study abroad is a useful lens for diplomacy. Each nation must fully understand the other's perspective to the extent it could argue in favor of it in theory without agreeing in actuality: To not only befriend the other but to actually step into the shoes of another.

Recently, I was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford University in England. I plan to attain an MPhil in International Relations. Oxford has a student population from over 140 countries around the world. When I study abroad again next year, I hope to examine how the United States and China can cooperate to build a more inclusive world.

Study abroad is a useful lens for diplomacy. Each nation must fully understand the other's perspective.