2023-09-22
The International Divide in Chinese Student Housing
Sunday night in Beijing. After an excellent dinner the four of us head for a short stroll around campus. We're all new foreign exchange or dual-degree programme students at the Renmin University of China. Over the past days we've begun to acclimatize to the country we'll be calling home for the next four to nine months. Our reception has generally been welcoming and hospitable, though the degree of communication from the international students' administration could have been more thorough. Nevertheless, we have begun to settle in, our housing is arranged, we've shopped for necessities, and enjoyed lots of local food. Complaining about minor inconveniences is a core part of the human experience, but in general, our position is comfortable.
On our walk we pass by the sports grounds, which even at half past nine in the evening are full of athletic students throwing hoops and whacking at shuttlecocks — mostly locals. Moths swarm in the bright floodlight beams surrounding the fields. The air is almost tropical, heavy with heat and moisture. The university has really invested in its sports facilities — there's a nearly Olympic-length swimming pool, several gyms, basketball and tennis courts, a running track, whatever one could desire for maintaining a good physical condition. The surface of the tennis courts is still being finalized, and the reek of drying paint hangs in the air. Bicycles and skooters dart around us; even at night, the people of Renmin are active.
Gradually our attention is drawn to the large number of students carrying buckets and vats, dressed only in pyjamas, or at most, a t-shirt and gym shorts. Streams of people coalesce out of the crowd, all headed in the same direction as us. As we turn the corner away from the sports grounds in between some apartment buildings, we see their destination: the shared showers. The queue is longer than the line-up in front of an Apple Store on the iPhone 4 launch day. The students chat with their neighbors while queueing, buckets and all. The line crawls past a hair salon — open late into the night — into the basement of the apartment building. We walk past in silence, politely averting our curious gazes. We can't see a single non-Chinese student in the queue.
A safe distance away we stop to discuss what we know and what we've just seen. We international students live in single or double rooms, each of which has its own bathroom. The local students' dormitories have just one toilet per floor; there isn't even a single shower in an entire ten-story dormitory, but rather, there is one shower per dormitory block. Their living quarters are also tighter: the local students share the same space between six undergraduate students or four graduate students. I am reminded of my housing in a military barracks during my national service in Finland; for twelve months I lived in a 12-conscript room (though that room was at least twice the size of my current space, and as conscripts we were mentally prepared for such conditions). We also had shared toilets and showers, but that was about three per floor in the barracks. Again, it was the military, we were prepared for such conditions. To me, military service and student life occupy completely different spaces, and shouldn't look alike. Compared to the spaces shared by the local students, my four-bedroom shared flat in Florence was a palace.
We allow the stark differences between the local and international dormitories to sink in. Would we agree to live in the same conditions as our Chinese coursemates? Would such packed housing even be legal in our countries of origin? How much have we, our families, even the Chinese state and our exchange university spent on our accommodations compared to the dormitories local students are expected to live in? Complaining about the bathroom floor sloping away from the drain or the buggy face-ID system at the building entrance feels trivial when just how good we have it compared to the majority of the student body is made plainly evident.
When one gets the chance to speak with local students about their experiences living in undersity dorms, their attitudes are surprisingly neutral — even positive. We international students may have more room to ourselves, something which the Chinese students yearn for and try to create within their cramped quarters, but for many Chinese students university room-mates become lifelong friends. For international (and especially exchange students) it's woefully common for friendships to remain shallow and end as soon as the study period abroad ends. For the local students even a packed room following a stressful day of lectures offers an oeasis of support, safety, and a welcome respite from studying. Many students report that the dormitories are friendly, communal places. However, this experience is not universal — bullying is woefully common among Chinese college students.
This pondering doesn't remove the gnawing sense of unfairness from the comparatively luxurious living conditions afforded to us international students in our single and double rooms. Of course we pay more than local students for both our accommodation and education here. International students are a cash cow for universities the world over, whose tuitions can potentially be used to subsidize the entire system to the benefit of local students — if such spending is prioritized. Let's hope it is. In any case, to house all Chinese students in even shared flats rather than shared rooms would require a significant and costly construction effort. Such an effort is certainly overdue, as many Chinese universities face acute dormitory shortages. Given the present woes of the Chinese real-estate sector, improvement seems unlikely. It is also worth considering how much this increased dormitory construction would require increased utilities construction to support it. I don't expect local students to have more room or lower rents any time soon.
As I write this post in the peace and quiet of my own room, I can't claim to be anything but satisfied in my accommodations, and it's difficult for me to imagine working with three room-mates. But do I really need all this space? How much more compactly would I be prepared to live to save on housing expenses for myself, as well as society? What traditionally private spaces would I be prepared to share, and among how many people? It is difficult for humans to adjust to a decrease in perceived quality of life, personal space, property and territory, while shared space increases. However, a more communal style of living would benefit both a society plagued by loneliness as well as a planet strained by overconsumption. With sufficient consideration, I may reach a satisfactory compromise.
It's worth keeping your eyes open on an evening stroll; there's no predicting what sort of deep-dive you'll plunge into.
This post was originally published in Finnish on 2023-09-20.
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