Why CHINA?!” That was a question I got asked quite often before my year abroad. It is a question the Dean of Students asked me on the first day of orientation. It is also a question that I never really had a satisfying answer for. I hadn’t spent my youth dreaming of climbing the Great Wall, nor had I had a burning passion for studying Mandarin. Heck, pandas aren’t even my favorite animals. The question was usually followed up with polite enthusiasm and worry about my well being. “Don’t you know they are importing air from Canada there?” or “Don’t they eat weird things like dogs?” I was warned of the scary communists and the lack of “freedom” (whatever that means). I was put in this weird position where I had to defend the merits of a country I had never been to and to explain a culture I didn’t understand.
The craziest part of all these inquiries was that I didn’t get nearly as much antagonism when I told people I was going to Rome the semester before I went to Beijing. When I told people I was going to Rome, people told me to eat a lot of pizza and pasta. Friends told me to bring them back a “Paolo” from the Lizzie McGuire Movie. No one asked me “why Italy?” Because that was self-evident. Why wouldn’t I want to go to the birthplace of the Renaissance? Why wouldn’t I want to see the Coliseum and eat gelato by the Pantheon? Why wouldn’t I want to learn a language as melodic and romantic as Italian?
That isn’t to say that I didn’t enjoy my time in Italy last semester. In fact, I have memories to fill a lifetime from Rome. Rather, I felt like the social expectations of my two journeys were wildly different. The unifying theme of this year abroad has been my research project. I am one of the eight Ricci Scholars this year. We follow the journey of Mateo Ricci SJ by going from Italy to China exploring our own academic interests. At the end of each semester we produce a research paper. When we return to Loyola Chicago our senior year, we will synthesize both halves, and produce a refined final product. My research project is about examining the historical, cultural and societal barriers that exist for college educated women within the workplace.
Being a Ricci Scholar has made my time abroad both challenging and rewarding. It has presented the academic challenge of doing graduate level research as a junior fulfilling her undergraduate. It has presented me with the challenge of trying to learn how to say “male chauvinism” in Chinese (大男子主义) before I could even properly order food. On the other hand, it has also given me the opportunity to get a unique insight on two different cultures. As any researcher will tell you, your research is not a 9am – 5pm affair. It changes the way you see everything. When I take the train I look at the advertisements and see the careful construction of femininity. When I hear our Chinese tutors and roommates talking about getting jobs after graduation, I think about Ma Hu suing the Chinese postal service for gender discrimination. Perhaps the biggest blessing of this project has been that I no longer think “why China?” but rather, “why not China?”
By Hiba Sheikh, Loyola University Chicago, Spring 2016 Student
Recently, I had the opportunity to participate in a volunteering activity that left a deep impression on me. It was a day dedicated to cultural exchange, creativity, and a wonderful reminder of the vibrancy of tradition — both Chinese and beyond.
The past few weekends have been some of the most exciting of the entire semester, full of trips to the zoo, mountain hikes, ancient parks, and more! Our first trip out of many was a visit to the Beijing Zoo. I had mentioned earlier in the semester that I wanted to see some pandas, since I was in China after all, and our TBC friend Andy made it happen.