Jack Meyer is a sophomore journalism major and writes for the Daily News. His views do not necessarily agree with those of the newspaper. Write to Jack at jlmeyer3@bsu.edu.
If there is one thing that surprised me most in the six weeks I spent in China over the summer as a part of Ball State's first Chinese cultural immersion program, it's how skewed Americans' views of the Chinese people can be and how skewed my own view was.
Americans have become used to thinking of communist nations as places where citizens are constantly under the supervision of an oppressive government, but after spending a month and a half living in a communist state, it would be hard for me to point out an example of that oppression.
After talking with the numerous people my group met with during our time abroad, the positive attitude the Chinese have toward their form of government became clear. For some reason, this was a possibility that hadn't occurred to me.
In a country with so much promise, it should have seemed obvious that many Chinese are proud of what they have become — a global superpower.
Growing up in America, a country that harbors so much national pride, made it hard for me to imagine how people could be happy living any other way.
One conversation I remember more than any other was a discussion a few of my classmates and I had with a Chinese man who was helping to run a restaurant-rating website in Shanghai. We talked about Chinese vs. American politics.
I had always wondered how the Chinese felt about the "one-child policy," which is meant to control the population in China, and I had to ask.
To my surprise, he didn't seem opposed to the law, which many people in the United States, a country of about 300 million, see as a crime against humanity. He said it was hard to make a case against the law in a country with more than 1.3 billion people in it.
It's these kinds of ideas that make the goals of this year's cultural immersion in China so important.
This second group of Ball State ambassadors will be trying to strengthen a relationship with faculty and students at Hong Kong Baptist University and take in Chinese media, newspapers, television, advertisements, etc. The goal will be to analyze how Americans are being portrayed to the Chinese citizens.
This mission is becoming more important every day as the economic relationship between the U.S. and China becomes more vital to both countries' prosperity.
In the decades to come, the two countries will have to find a way to set aside differences and learn to accept each other. Our cultures and governments that might not always agree, but a strong relationship between the nations will benefit us all.
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